Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
I recently answered another Quora question that has received pretty strong positive response. This question related to farmers who are now facing foreclosures and loss of their farms due to Trumpian policies. The kicker, of course, is that Trump swept most rural communities in his 2024 election victory.
My answer is pretty harsh against a community of professionals I once had great respect for. Such is the life in Trump’s America.
Background
I mostly grew up in a Long Island suburb of New York City. The summer I turned eight, my family and I went on a two-week vacation renting a cabin on a dairy farm in upstate New York. It was a wonderful vacation, probably the best family vacation I had while growing up. I still remember going into the dairy barn in the mornings and evenings, watching the farm family milking the cows. This family also had some acreage used for growing wheat, and I still remember tasting some of the raw wheat kernels, picked right off the stalks.
That vacation left me with profound respect for farmers.
The summer I turned sixteen, we moved from suburban Long Island to the rural mid-Hudson Valley region. It was, and still is, a region dominated by small farms and trappings of rural American life. During the two years I lived here, before leaving home for the navy, I learned a lot about farming and small family farms. Some of my school friends were members of farming families.
I also worked several part-time after-school jobs for men who had lived their entire lives in that area. I saw they were good people. Honest people who believed in fair play and hard work. My experiences with these people added to my profound respect for farmers and rural life. I honestly believed these people represented the best of “heartland” American values.
The Dark Side
But, later in life I started seeing a darker side to rural America and farming life. For one, several years after leaving home the Ku Klux Klan became very publictly active in my rural hometown. I later learned they had been active, although mostly underground, for decades. Learning that was a shock, shattering my image of farmers as the heartland of American values. There were more shocks to come.
While in the navy I hung around a lot of people who had grown up in rural America. I did meet a few people who were openly friendly and interested in life outside their small hometown. But not most. After a while, I developed serious resentments towards rural Americans claiming to “own” American values. I lost count of the many times I’d hear “You’re from New York City? I feel sorry for you. How can you live like that?” From this, I increasingly developed serious disgust from being mocked as a New Yorker. Sometimes that mockery was subtle, other times pretty blatant. It was always gratuitous, and seemed like these folks asserted their own values by mocking mine.
I started seeing common traits with the people making them. These folks were insular, holding a narrow world-view that excluded everyone else as “Real Americans.” As I gradually learned about racism, I could see these folks were exhibit “A” examples of “casual racism.” And these people were loud and proud Republicans.
Enter Republicanism
Their gratuitous mockery of my New York values extended to gratuitous mockery of my liberal democratic values. My early navy years happened long before Rush Limbaugh was polluting the radio airwaves with his brand of hatefulness. I can now say, Limbaugh and his later wanna-bees didn’t create the hatefulness towards Democrats that now exist in rural America. He plowed fertile ground and nurtured that hatefulness to what it’s become today.
So, Trump’s sweeping 2024 election victory of as much as seventy-eight percent across most of rural America is the end game years in the making. I still respect family farmers as honest hard-working people. But I also see their narrow worldview has a serious dark side. Their dark side has led too many rural Americans into embracing the worst aspects of republicanism and now Trump.
I’m not making excuses for these people.
Now Today
Where are American farmers today? Small family farms are hurting bad. Nebraska agriculture is collapsing in just the few months of Trump 2.0. One-third of Arkansas farmers are facing bankruptcy and begging Trump for financial relief. Generally, Trump’s cuts to food programs across the country are putting America’s health and economy at risk.
The Quora Question
So, a few days ago I answered a Quora question “Why are farmers no longer wearing red MAGA hats, and should we care that they are now reaping what they so energetically sowed?” My answer:
Farmers are no longer wearing MAGA hats because they’ve discovered Trump seriously does not give two shits about them. Trump has pissed off countries we were exporting products to so badly, they’ve cancelled all their contracts. These farmers were all selling to export markets, now have no customers for their product. And, they do know who is at fault, even if they continue to publicly profess their undying love for Donald J Trump.
Which is why I refuse to care about these farmers. They voted for Trump in 2016, and Trump screwed them over. Then these farmers voted for Trump again in 2020. Biden put a lot of effort into creating polices and programs to help rural areas, including these farmers. And Biden did this despite every fucking congressional Republican opposing him.
Then, these farmers voted for Trump again in 2024. By huge margins. So, fuck these farmers. They deserve the economy they voted for – three times. Now, after screaming “SOCIALISM BAD!” every time Democrats try helping people, these farmers want government handouts to compensate for supporting Trump.
So, fuck these farmers again. I hope every Trump-supporting farmer loses their farm, and has the pleasure of living on the measly government support Republicans still allow.
Final Commentary
I do not feel any sympathy for any Trump supporter now being gored by Trump’s grasping power-mad actions. None.
We have American troops occupying two American cities, ordered there by Trump and his vassals. We have masked thugs snatching people off the streets, out of courtrooms and schools and shopping center parking lots and even out of their homes because of Trump and his vassals. Our economy is collapsing, our former allies are shunning us and former enemies are mocking us. Our former professional cadre of federal government workers are already hollowed out and conditions for those remaining are worse every day.
And, it is becoming increasingly clear that Trump was once a key player in a massive international child sex-trafficking scheme with Jeffrey Epstein. Who also happily participated in regularly raping girls as young as thirteen. Along with being compromised by and doing the biddings of Russia’s rabid dictator Putin.
I didn’t vote for any of this. But I’m living the results. The people who voted for this deserve what is happening to them.
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