Swearengin is an author, emotional & spiritual well-being coach, podcaster and content creator through his social media presence as Unconventional Pastor Paul. He talks religion and politics at times joined by his wife Ashley, a former elected official and community leader. Find him at Pastor-Paul.com.
Recently, I was taken aback by the need of many to defend country singer Jason Aldean's song Try That in a Small Town. Some spoke out against the song as a racist celebration of the type of vigilante violence once prevalent throughout the Jim Crow confederate south (you can see my video commentaries here and here.) Those defenders took a song that had languished on the ratings charts and drove it swiftly to the top.
However, the song's menacing lyric, "see how far you can get down the road" may have found an answer in the Montgomery, Alabama boat dock incident - now known euphemistically as the "Alabama Sweet Tea Party." Perhaps you've seen the video of a group of white men from a pontoon boat attacking a black boating officer. It did not go well for the white boaters as a large number of black Alabamans were able to get "far down the road" by jumping, sprinting and even swimming to the officer's defense.
For me, this incident, in light of that song and its vigorous defense, reverberated with the biblical concept of those "who live by the sword, die by it." Could it be that when we celebrate the idea of vigilante violence, we may find violence visited upon us? Particularly when we disregard that violence often becomes the only perceived recourse when historically oppressed peoples become fed up with injustice.
At a time when our culture wars include the teaching of American history in schools, it might be worth examining this song and incident as an indicator that we need a robust discussion of wrestling with the worst parts of our history, rather than feeling defensive about them?
This history is very real. My own father grew up in a small midwestern town the type of which were known as "Sundown Towns." Each main entrance to that small town had signs warning "'N-word' (pejorative term for black person,) don’t let the sun go down on your heels in (name of town.”) The signs implied a threat to "see how far you get down the road" for anyone planning an overnight stay without fitting into the homogenous norm of those who "take care of our own."
Sadly, when we forget such a history - or act defensive to it - we can perpetuate those mindsets even today. Years ago, I was sharing with a friend concerns about decades of poverty and economic division in our home city of Fresno, CA.“I love it here,” he responded, “I always tell people that Fresno’s a small town with great people who take care of each other" (note: this was his exact response, I didn't tweak that to parallel with the song.)
I reminded my friend that Fresno actually is a city of more than 500,000 people, not a small town. I also reminded him that, in large part due to racial redlining (historically forbidding people of certain races from purchasing land or living beyond a "red line" drawn on a map) some 350,000 of our citizens live in the southwestern parts of town and have life experiences far different than those who live on the northern end or in our northeastern white-flight suburb.
“I guess my view may be a little small,” my friend humbly concluded, admitting his "small town" mentality had caused blindness towards the plight of many of his fellow Fresnans. He is an example of how small town mindsets can insidiously affect a person who is not intentional about resisting it. And the melee in Alabama shows the impact of not.
It seems this all speaks to a need to remember our negative history, right alongside and as prevalent as that we view as glorious. It’s important that we don't forget what we're capable of doing when we become hard-hearted and closed down to the stories of others.
For many years, German children were required by law to learn about the holocaust and to visit a concentration camp memorial. The German people were heeding the warning attributed to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that “those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Yet, many in Europe worry this history is slipping away from younger generations as a growing number of Europeans no longer are aware of this history and a rising numbers of those on each side of the Atlantic who deny its occurrence altogether.
Similar lack of remembrance is happening here in America. I live a mere five blocks from a place where, by executive order, many American citizens were placed behind barbed wire simply for being of Japanese heritage. One of the barracks of that camp stood and was utilized by a local business until just about 15 years ago. Yet, many Americans don't know the history pictured in a small memorial on that plot of land (now a traffic filled business district) of American soldiers, home on leave, visiting their families in that camp - people imprisoned as if they were not "our own" even as their offspring risked their lives for our country.
With this in our history, I struggle to understand why those of us in the more comfortable racial, economic, and religious classes aren't more willing to remember and openly discuss our past; both the good and the bad. Such discussions could cause us to rise from our seats when we see children of color mistreated at the border or we read about travel bans for particular religious groups and say "we will not repeat our history" and instead demand solutions from our leaders that account for the humanity of all people - even those we see as not "us."
I believe it should be a priority for us, especially if we consider ourselves a great country, to do the work of resisting a small town mindset so we can avoid the blinding insulation of living in a blinding bubble. Would it not be truly honoring our past heritage to demand we be a better people going forward? Could it be that an ongoing, honest assessment of ourselves will make us self aware and result in us being humanity loving people who don't need to be defensive about our past?
And could the result keep us from any compulsion to repeat old habits of threatening those we don't consider part of our "small town?"
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.