National Review vs. Oliver Anthony

For those in the know, it would be repetitive that I say I try my best to be a good Republican. With rapacious Left wing predators fully in control of the apparatus, it is best we not work to undermine one another. Pity that those who fancy themselves our betters never seem to learn this lesson. For this reason I am inclined to give all the leeway in the world to conservatives who embody the warnings of Charles Murray’s 2012 book, Coming Apart. Their elitist bent and undisguised contempt for Republican Primary voters, is a comparatively smaller problem than the pathologies which attend to Democrat rule. Namely, open borders, drag queen story hour, or this Ukraine fiasco. Not that our more prominent Republican friends have done much to stop any of this. But today I read something in the National Review that so angered me I felt compelled to spill some ink. Executive Editor Mark Antonio Wright describes Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” as a “Fuzzy Lament” and goes on to repeat some very familiar platitudes about America being the land of opportunity. Like many conservatives, he commits a familiar error, if not a malicious choice to deceive, by acting as though he believes the options unique to Americans are somehow lost on Mr. Anthony. Of this, I have my doubts. Not every musician is necessarily well read, nor studied in the dismal science of economics, but I have heard Mr. Anthony described as an “off grid farmer”. Doubtless men like Mr. Wright think the term “farmer” to be synonymous with “idiot”, but to be a farmer of any sort, and much more so to be one absent the conveniences of connected society, is a task not only demanding of one’s willingness to sweat, but also one imposing tremendous technical burdens, and requiring of a great deal of planning. In short, it requires intellect. Mr. Anthony’s lyrics are not the idle musings of a drunkard. They are a keen observation of what other people are experiencing, even if not a letter for letter description of the actual state of affairs. Good art rarely is. Degenerate art, like pornography, discards all the subtlety and imagination that once defined the practice. Good art does not so much depict actual events as it sheds light upon them. It is by no means so fictional as what one might read in the New York Times, but it conveys a feeling about the events described, and relies, necessarily if foolishly, on journalists and historians to get the facts right. It has been observed elsewhere, notably, that nobody has to be “on the streets with nothing to eat” in America, precisely because we have a system that allows “the obese milking welfare”. One who wishes to be “5’3 and 300lbs” can easily find himself fully stocked on taxpayer financed “bags of fudge rounds”. Any American who wants that life is welcomed to it, and all the suffering it brings. Mr. Anthony has become so disgusted by it, that he doesn’t want to share an electrical outlet with that society. He is far from alone in this, and there are those less inclined to unplug, who are willing to take far more drastic measures than to put up some solar panels and live in the woods. Others had mocked the idea of poor and working people complaining about taxes, as goes the familiar conservative refrain, that the rich pay