Fred Read: To the Barricades

I like to read Fred Reed as he writes about seeming everything.  Fred has led a misspent life, which gives him an excellent, if cynical, perspective.  His take on the current civil war is contained in his post To The Barricades: We Will At Least Be Less Bored. Fred writes:

Half the country, led by New York, wants to control, and does control, everything of importance to the other half. Everything is decided remotely: what your children learn in school, what you can’t say to them because they might tell their teachers; who you have to hire, with whom you have to associate, what religious practices are permitted, whether you can have a Christmas tree in the town square or sing carols on the public streets, whether you can defend yourself and your family. New York versus the Deplorables. The city holds the high cards.

Bitter conflicts force the taking of sides, often with people one does not like. For example, I think Trump is a horse’s ass, dangerous, naive, uninformed, and a thoroughgoing damned fool. I detest the KKK (which barely exists, but never mind) and disagree with the Alt-Right on many things. Yet when I look at the other side, the armed bands, the censorship, thought control, indoctrination, the re-writing of history, their media arm, the identity politics, the push for control, control, control—I think,“I’ll take Trump—gack–and certainly the Deplorables.” And of course if violence comes, it’s one or the other. You can’t reason with a mob armed with lengths of rebar.

Precisely so. In the real world, where you are unlikely to find a true conservative candidate, much less find a republican with a spine, one has to take what one can get. Given a choice of, as Fred says, New York, or Trump, I'll take Trump. If I have to pick sides, I guess the Deplorables are closer to my thinking than the control freaks of the Left.