On the road to Utopia, Texas, I turn on the radio to hear some country music. I’m not even certain I’ve got a country station at first. The songs sound just like all other songs now, pickled in the same studio brine.

When I was a kid living out here, country music was key to our sense of self. Who were we? Simple: we were “Amarillo by Morning,” the 1982 version by Texas native George Strait. Songs like that made us feel like Texans, but they also bonded us to every patch of flyover country from Tallahassee to Spokane. You’d never mistake them for another genre — just as, we felt, you’d never mistake us for people who hadn’t watched a farm animal give birth.

Today’s deracinated mass culture isn’t as useful for compressing endless formative experiences into a single token of identity. But a TRUMP 2024 sign can make up some of the difference.