It shouldn’t be a surprise that Tenacious D has cancelled the rest of their Australian tour after one half of the American comedy rock duo made a bad-taste onstage joke lamenting that the man who tried to kill Donald Trump missed.

Anyone old enough to remember the political controversy two decades ago involving the country trio the Dixie Chicks – since renamed the Chicks – knows what can happen when musicians manage to offend those engaged in nationalist, populist or identity politics.

Both were American musicians speaking derisively about their country’s politics while touring another. The Dixie Chicks were accused of treachery for the fact that they criticised home – which also happened to be the name of the album they were touring – from another shore.

But there’s an important difference between what Tenacious D’s Kyle Gass said as he blew out the candles on his birthday cake at Sunday night’s Sydney show and what the Dixie Chicks vocalist Natalie Maines said about then US president George W Bush in March 2003, just days before the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Gass was speaking just hours after the attempted assassination of one of the most powerful and polarising political figures in the world today.

“Don’t miss Trump next time,” he said when his actor-singer bandmate Jack Black asked if he had a birthday wish.

Gass wasn’t the only Trump critic who said that or similar when the news of the shooting broke, though most others were quieter. It’s not the done thing to wish a would-be assassin had been a better shot. There’s a good reason for that and it has nothing to do with politeness.

The circumstances around Maines’ comments were different but the consequences are instructive.

Back in 2003, her political commentary at the opening show of a world tour was, arguably, far less incendiary.

“Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all,” Maines told the audience at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire theatre in London. “We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas.”

Her bandmate Emily Strayer added quickly that they were nevertheless “behind the troops 100%”.

That caveat did not stop the band being deluged with hate nor radio stations with demands to stop playing their music. Many country stations blacklisted them, especially in the southern US. Their top-10 single, which told the sympathetic story of a Vietnam war soldier, plummeted down the charts. Dixie Chicks albums were destroyed at public protests and commercial sponsors started cancelling contracts.

Two days after the London show, Maines tried to put some context around her remarks. She issued a statement emphasising that she supported the troops but believed Bush was ignoring the views of many of his citizens. She also highlighted the great privilege of free speech that came with being American.

It didn’t help. Maines then issued another statement directly apologising to Bush for what she described as her disrespectful remark.

“I feel that whoever holds that office should be treated with the utmost respect,” Maines said. “We are currently in Europe and witnessing a huge anti-American sentiment as a result of the perceived rush to war. While war may remain a viable option, as a mother, I just want to see every possible alternative exhausted before children and American soldiers’ lives are lost. I love my country. I am a proud American.”

Asked about the controversy a month later, Bush said the Dixie Chicks were “free to speak their mind” but that “freedom is a two-way street” and they shouldn’t feel hurt when people chose not to buy their records as a result.

The band leaned into the criticism, posing naked for a magazine cover with their bodies plastered in messages they had received. They donated to a campaign to encourage young people to vote. They wore T-shirts bearing cryptic messages said to be aimed at key critics.

There were death threats and security upgrades. They were booed at an awards ceremony and ostracised from the country music community. Ticket sales plunged. They turned to the rock music community instead and joined other musicians fundraising for organisations opposing Bush’s re-election.

Two years after her apology, Maines rescinded it and said she didn’t believe Bush was owed any respect. In 2006, the band released an album of songs about the experience. A lyric from its first single “Not Ready to Make Nice” was used as the title for a documentary film: “Shut Up and Sing”. In 2020, the trio’s concerns about racism and slavery-era connotations in the word “Dixie” prompted them to drop it, further distancing themselves from the heritage of the south.

The backlash against Maines’ commentary and the band’s defiant response influenced musicians who came after. Taylor Swift has cited the Dixie Chicks as role models for “female rage” and political courage.

But it clearly also took its toll on the band.

That couldn’t have been lost on Jack Black, a Hollywood actor whose work and risk of professional backlash extend way beyond Tenacious D’s tour, when he took to social media on Tuesday to declare Gass had blindsided him with the Trump remark.

“I would never condone hate speech or encourage political violence in any form,” Black wrote. “After much reflection, I no longer feel it is appropriate to continue the Tenacious D tour, and all future creative plans are on hold. I am grateful to the fans for their support and understanding.”

That means everything the band is doing is suspended. It is rapidly exiting the spotlight to try to stop this snowballing. In 2003, there was no social media and Maines wasn’t wishing someone had been murdered – let alone someone who’s currently the frontrunner to re-take the world’s most powerful political job, and whose supporters led an armed insurrection on the heart of American democracy three years ago.

In the current political environment, Black can doubtless see the potential range of implications – social, political, security, creative, commercial – of Gass wishing what he did out loud. However much Trump’s opponents might mutter agreement under their breaths, few of those consequences would be good.

This isn’t just about whether people were offended or whether there might be a penalty for making a tasteless joke. When it comes to normalising and casualising extreme and violent responses to political disagreement, the old lines are blurring alarmingly. And that isn’t funny at all.

In his work The Second Coming, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote of fearing anarchy being loosed and innocence drowned. “Things fall apart,” he wrote. “The centre cannot hold.”

The real test of democratic civility is not being glad that our friends or favourites dodged an assassin’s bullet. It’s being glad our political enemies did.