This article was adapted from the Country Music Newsletter “Don’t Rock the Inbox” adapted and expanded.
I want to be honest, dear newsletter readers. It’s difficult to write a newsletter “normally” these days. Although, to be fair, you could say that about almost every day for the past almost ten years. Nashville is frozen outside my window. Somehow I still have electricity, even though half of the city doesn’t have it and many people have to try to stay warm in nighttime temperatures around four degrees.
Trees covered in ice lie everywhere, blocking roads. Lying on houses and cars. It’s disturbing that something so beautiful can be so destructive. That’s how I feel about a lot of things that seem beautiful today.
Concern for the city and country
I’m worried about my city and of course my country. On Saturday evening, we all again saw an innocent American killed on our television screens and cell phones. Veterans Affairs critical care nurse Alex Pretti, who was simply on the streets of Minneapolis exercising his right to free speech. Pretti was shot about 10 times by federal immigration agents. He died at the scene.
Two weeks earlier, Renee Good was killed doing the same job. Last September, Santos Edilberto Banegas Reyes was arrested by ICE on his way to work and died in custody less than a day later – one of 32 people who died in ICE custody last year alone.
I wish I could cover all of this in detail here, and my personal opinion is that these are moral issues, not political ones. Which is why the country music community should have spoken out as one long ago. But because Alex Pretti worked as a Veterans Affairs nurse, providing direct care to injured and sick veterans, I want to talk about why country music, which prides itself on serving and honoring soldiers, veterans and military families and has had close ties to the military for decades, remains largely silent.
Work for veterans
Pretti has worked as a critical care nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center for the past five years. He cared for seriously ill veterans and read them final military honors when they died.
“[Pretti] was patient. He answered all of our questions. “He was a genuine person and it was obvious that he really cared about what we were going through,” said Jean Trebus, whose father was a Vietnam War veteran and was cared for by Pretti.
All of this is exactly the kind of work that country music—despite mostly claiming to be “non-political,” which has changed under Trump 2.0—usually praises, and rightly so. Artists such as John Rich, Lee Greenwood, Jason Aldean, Kid Rock, Trace Adkins, Chris Janson and many others have made supporting veterans a central part of their public persona.
The genre also has a long history of songs about the humiliations and tragedies of war, from Loretta Lynn’s “Dear Uncle Sam” to the Chicks and “Travelin’ Soldier,” with many examples in between, some more tinged with pathos than others, particularly in the post-9/11 era.
Silence of the stars
One would think that those in country music who have made honoring the military their brand would be commenting on the death of a man who dedicated his life to caring for veterans and was then killed on America’s streets.
But that’s exactly what rarely happens. I’m not surprised by this silence, nor do I equate social media activism with actual activism. However, public dissent and pressure from celebrities with a wide reach have an impact, especially in an area that is supposedly particularly important to them and in which they could guide and educate their fans.
So what has John Rich been posting since Saturday? Aside from retweeting a demonstrably false tweet from the Department of Homeland Security, he mostly shares photos of icy trees. Jason Aldean posted pictures of sledding. Lee Greenwood continues to ride off the success of “God Bless the USA.” And Kid Rock – I have no idea what he’s doing. But he doesn’t talk about the killing of a man who was caring for veterans. None of them publicly support the Prettis family. Nobody initiates fundraisers or comments on the death.
Political instrumentalization
My grandfather was a veteran. The work that country music does is undoubtedly important. But I often think about how it is used politically or as branding for artists who have never served themselves. What’s striking is how readily they absorb the symbolism without putting actual veteran country musicians in the foreground. For example, Michael Trotter Jr. from The War and Treaty, who was in combat and still suffers from PTSD to this day. So if it’s not about politics but about veterans, wouldn’t country music have to say something about Pretti’s death to back that up?
And although I won’t go into it in detail here, Pretti was also a legal gun owner and exercised his Second Amendment rights. Also a central narrative for many of these country artists. However, today no one seems interested in posting about the right to own guns. Although that usually happens when children are killed in schools. At the same time, Trump is now apparently saying: “You can’t have guns”?
Waiting for attitude
Meanwhile, Chris Janson, who never misses an opportunity to talk about “American Heroes” and his work with veterans, posted a series of photos of himself in the hot tub on Monday. Must be beautiful.
If the country music genre wants to live up to its own claim of supporting veterans, shouldn’t it address the killing of Alex Pretti now and be loud enough to stop it from happening again? I think it should. Show us that all this flag-waving isn’t just part of your personal brand. We are waiting.
