Somehow I'm not surprised that the music genre attributable to poor rural white folk is heavy on boot licking, especially considering how many voted for Trump.

I don't think it's propaganda. The music and the ads too are just trying to do a "fellow kids" move, and that's what they're seeing. Because that's what we've become.

It's like seeing a mirror and getting spooked by how disheveled the person in it looks.

As recently as the 90s you had mainstream country acts releasing songs like "Pass it on Down" and "We Shall Be Free"

And they got a ton of play on the radio. The former hit number 3 on the billboard country charts. The latter hit number 12 on the country charts.

Then again, the lackluster performance of "We Shall Be Free," particularly considering the megastardom of Garth Brooks at the time, was due to some stations boycotting it for the line "when we're free to love anyone we choose."

But even then, there wasn't a massive company that owned most of the radio dial back then, so boycotts had limited influence.