It's just the Roma in my soul

NSU's homecoming is called Gypsy Days,  When I first came to Northern to work, the administrators and some faculty used to dress up with the flowery shirts and sashes and embroidered vests on the Friday of homecoming, but the Gypsy motif has slipped away all but in name.  This year I was in the parade.  I got pressed into service to drive Ericka, the Junior Snow Queen, a lovely high school student from Groton, in a vintage Chrysler Le Baron Convertible that, like its driver of the day, has seen better days.  It was downright cold that day, but the switch for the heater was broken.  When Amy, the car's owner, turned it over to me, she said there was a jug of water on the back floor in case the car over-heated.  I could not quite imagine stopping in middle of a parade to put the hood up and quench a hot engine.  The only problem I had with the car was that it would intermittently emit great clouds of smoke through the exhaust.  At times Ericka, perched on the trunk, had to fan away the smoke, but the women from Curves marching right behind were occasionally obscured and overcome. I heard mutterings that were not ladylike.

Sitting in the chill, the smoke, and feeling great empathy for Ericka who was wearing her sleeveless queen's gown and shivering as she smiled and waved at the crowd,  I was obsessed with irony.  Here I was in the middle of the Gypsy Days parade and French President Nicolas Sarkozy had just expelled about 1,000 Gypsies from French soil.  Now the Gypsies think the word Gypsy is a pejorative, and prefer to be called Roma.  I was wondering if NSU would call its homecoming Roma Days next year.

Over my lifetime,  I have encountered Gypsies, or Roma, if you prefer, numerous times, but I find it hard to get a factual grasp of what comprises Gypsydom.  They inspire a kind of romantic sense of freedom and joy and they helped create flamenco music and dance, which is why they are revered at the NSU homecomings.  On the other hand, some people have said they pick pockets, kidnap babies, and do other things that ain't couth in western culture. 

My fondest memory of Gypsies came in regard to Sgt. Jody.  (That is not his real name, but it is close enough.)  Sgt. Jody was a young non-commissioned officer from the South who was  assigned to the launching platoon  of our missile battery in Germany.  We were never sure what function he was to serve, but he annoyed the hell out of the men because he insisted on marching them from the headquarters area to the launching area in formation and in cadence.  This was annoying because when the morning formation in the company street was dismissed, the men had all sorts of administrative tasks to attend in conjunction with maintaining the missiles.  Dismissal of the formation meant they would go to the orderly room, or the missile assembly and maintenance area, or the motor pool and pick up paper work and tools needed for what they had to do with the missiles that day.   They went about their business and just sort of sauntered down to the launching area with their materials.  Sgt. Jody thought this was very unsoldierly, so he marched them down, and then they had to walk back to the places they needed to go for their materials, and then saunter back down to the launchers when they had the necessary information and equipment.  Sgt. Jody was convinced that men sauntering around with clip boards, brief cases, and tool boxes in their hands were screwing off.   He was only half right, 

The men harassed Sgt. Jody.  While marching, they would chant  under their breath "Jo-dee,  Jo-dee, Jo-dee" in time with the marching cadence just below the hearing threshold.  Sgt. Jody would yell "halt." stop and listen,  and the chant would stop, then resume the march.  The men, of course, had no idea what he was talking about when he asked, "Who is saying that?"  He also revealed that he had witnessed ghosts, so the men were constantly plotting ways to give him spooky experiences.  I relate this to establish that Sgt. Jody was a bit flighty of mind.

Our missile site was at a remote military base on the Rhine River at a town called Germersheim.  To get to town from the post gate, there were two possibilities.  One could walk along the roads.  Or one could take a shortcut, a path that ran through some pine groves and ran along some vacant land.  That land was a place where Gypsy caravans camped at times.  When they were present, we looked at them with curiosity but kept to our business, which was with students at the women's college and cognac at the gasthouses. 

One night a group of us were returning to post via the short cut when someone checked his watch and said we were pushing the deadline.  Our off-duty passes automatically expired at midnight, when the gates were officially closed, and anyone trying to get on post after that would be taken into custody by the military police and held for disciplinary action.  We quickened our pace from a stroll to a jog to beat the deadline, and were jogging past the Gypsy encampment.  Ahead of us about a block, we saw Sgt. Jody walking.  He glanced back when he heard a bunch of men running and broke into a sprint.  We thought his running meant we must really be late, so we broke into a dead run.

When we got to the gate, an MP was standing outside the guard shack looking bewildered.  When we came up to the gate, he asked what was going on out there.  He said Sgt. Jody ran through the gate yelling that the Gypsies were after him.  When we got to the orderly room to sign in, Sgt. Jody was there trying to explain to the officer of the day that a bunch of Gypsies was chasing him and seemed about to attack the post.  We signed in and with suppressed snickers and chuckles went to our bunk rooms.

The next day those of who signed in from pass together were called in  to a meeting with the battery commander, the executive officer, and the first sergeant.  They asked what we knew about the events involving Sgt. Jody the previous night.  We explained how he took off running when we  came jogging up behind him.  The executive officer asked why we did not provide that information when we signed in, because Sgt. Jody's account caused a joint investigation  by the Army and the local authorities, and some tense and confusing moments with the Gypsy camp.

We were given a talking to about harassing Sgt. Jody.  The executive officer explained that Jody had been raised with stories about ghosts and Gypsies taking babies and the like, and he had run to the orderly room to alert the guard mount that there seemed to be an attack. Our Platoon Sgt. Bradley summarized point of the meeting in his succinct way:   "Don't f++k with Jody anymore."

Sgt. Jody was a good soldier.  But Sgt. Bradley (who had been raised in an orphanage) explained that he came from very poor circumstances and was working hard to better his lot and make a career in the military.   "Don't f++k with a good man you may have to depend on someday," Sgt. Bradley said.

The harassment of Jody stopped, but we still told the story of Jody's sprint and laughed.

My other encounters with Gypsies were not as funny, but were equally remote.  I  remember the caravans passing by our house when I was a small child.  Later when I worked in state parks, I came across them in campgrounds.  Their caravans at the parks consisted of Airstream trailers pulled by Cadillacs with Alabama plates on them. Of course, I knew that Gypsies were targeted victims of the Holocaust.  I am also aware that they have been the objects of suspicion, revilement, and persecution for centuries.  I have never understood exactly why.  They inspire some kind of ethnic animosity.

That's what was on my mind during the Gypsy Day parade.  The French were deporting Gypsies from their land.  Other countries in Europe have proposed measures to stop the immigration of Gypsies into their lands.  Part of the problem is that jobs are scarce in Europe, too, and Gypsies appear to illegal immigrants in their minds.  They can't find work, so they are accused of sopping up welfare money and instigating criminal activity.   But there we were on a chilly Saturday morning celebrating Gypsy Days while other places were condemning and expelling them,  much like we do the people who sneak across our Mexican border.

Across the world, there is a resurgence of conservative sentiments.  It is not the kind of conservatism that tries to restore the liberal principles of democracy; it is the kind of conservatism that fixes on dividing people into classes and wants the right for one class of people to suppress other classes.  In our own country, this has meant a revival of racist sentiment. Although there is much denial that the so-called tea party movement has racial objectives, the demonstrations and signage of the  movement have made racist expressions a prominent feature.  While there is not an overt racist agenda behind some of the conservative factions, it is difficult to escape the fact that appeals to racist attitudes are in part what is driving those factions.  To those of us who were sentient during the 1960s and 70s, the attitudes and arguments have a familiar ring.  We have our Mexican immigrants we'd like to drive from the land; the Europeans have their Gypsies.  And the  world has its Muslims.  The Muslim world has its infidels.  The world tries to provide everybody with someone to hate.  Status in the bourgeois mind is built  on how many people you can look down upon.

So, there I was in the Gypsy Day parade thinking about  Mexican illegals and mosques. About f**king with Sgt. Jody.  And just what America wants.  And what it will eventually get for itself.

Perhaps, the Gypsies who are not bound to a single country have the better idea.

Gypsies developed their own  breed of horses to pull their wagons.  They are revered for their endurance and their gentle temperament.  They are called Gypsy Vanners.  I never saw any in the Gypsy Day parade over the years.  I wonder if other horses tolerate them. 

Spreading illiteracy

Writing on certain topics and expressing certain opinions on certain blogs is like kicking a hornets' nest or poking  a bear.  You know that there will be reactions.  And you know what those reactions will be.  You know this for the same reason that you know that Pavlov's dog will salivate at the sound of a bell.  The reactions are conditioned responses.  They are  not responses that involve cognition,  Rather, they trigger ingrained behavior that wells up from deep in the  reptilian cortex, behavior that can be triggered by verbal commands.  


If you are fleet of foot, it can be amusing to kick a hornets' nest.  You can zip off to a safe observation point and watch the creatures swarm and buzz in rage and frustration.  When humans are the critters teased into mindless  rage, it can be just as amusing, and potentially just as dangerous.  But watching humans in the throes of an uncontrollable  furor raises questions of morality of the "there but for the grace of god" variety,  Our mothers and fathers warned us harshly about tormenting dumb creatures.  But on occasion, we sort of  do it, and suppress our amusement.  But then, should we ever regard other humans as dumb creatures? 


I did it recently.  In the post previous to this one, I made fun of people for whom guns are at once a religious relic, a badge of virility, and perhaps the only source of personal power and influence that they can claim.  There are people who cannot be trusted to behave responsibly with firearms.  Madville Times chronicled a recent example. And the Watertown newspaper another. The advocates for a wide open Second Amendment never acknowledge the "well-regulated" modifier.  In the military, soldiers do not have discretionary use of their  weapons.  They have them in their possession only under direct order, such as a battle order, a guard mount, a parade, etc.  The rest of the time the firearms are locked in the armory.  To have a weapon without a direct order authorizing its possession is a court martial offense.  Generally, the only people on a military post who carry their weapons at all times are military police.  There are good, documented reasons for restrictions on when people should possess weapons.    There are people in both military and civilian life who should not be entrusted with lethal weapons without supervision.  The military understands this and, therefore, has stringent rules which stipulate the conditions under which armor is deployed.  

As an owner and user of firearms, I appreciate the Second Amendment.  Firearms were essential tools in my farm-oriented family, but were regarded with the same attitude as pitchforks and scoop shovels or tractors.   They were tools.  No more, no less.  And when people brandished firearms with an adolescent macho bluster, those people  called into question their fitness for handling firearms.  They called up the old "never give a baby a gun" adage.  My frivolous and frankly silly post on those who regard guns as symbols of their personhood was done knowing what I would be poking.  


The responses to that post on Keloland met expectations. None of them meet the basic requirements that I and many other bloggers use as the standards which permit publication.  Generally, comments are routinely deleted if:

1.  They do not address the point or points made in the post.
2.  They contain libelous statements.
3.  They are abusive.
4.  They are personally insulting.
5.  They are not literate, show a lack of comprehension, or are otherwise incoherent.
6.   They misrepresent statements in the post, comments, or other sources.

Of late, we have relaxed those rules to provide evidence of what has come to pass for political discourse on the Internet, and presumably among a significant portion of the populace.  Other than regarding the KELO comments with a dour bemusement, I have not given them serious attention.  Until, that is, that a colleague read them and remarked that South Dakota seems to have a serious illiteracy problem.  That brought me up short.  He was not using the term illiteracy as a dismissive reference to the ranting from the fringe: he was using it with its technical definition.  


The technical definition of an illiterate is someone who operates with a fourth grade level of speaking, reading, and writing, or less.  They are capable of sounding out words and the rudiments of spelling, punctuation, and grammar.  There are often many of those SPUG errors which may be a result of the haste and the graphic deficiencies of monitor screens, but they can also be indicative of more serious deficiencies of mind.   More defining is the level of reading comprehension and retention and whether the comments address the content of what they are in response to.


My colleague pointed out that none of the comments addressed the point of the satire, but went off into the maligning of the author.  That is the symptom of the fourth grade mentality. Disagreements at that level inevitably turn into ad hominem attacks,  the rituals of name-calling, insult, and abuse.  Illiteracy is also the inability to grasp a point, sometimes the inability to discern one.


Even those who possess the facades of a higher education show lapses into those dimensions of illiteracy.  Often when people wish to comment on something one says that rankles them, they extract a phrase to typify what offends them.  They ignore the sentence in which the phrases occurred, and therefore all the grammatical qualifiers that control the meaning.


It is not just the comments that contain examples of this kind of subreption.  Many bloggers never aspire to anything more than the most abject forms of fourth-grade malice.  I won't name them but they tend to stress their South Dakota identities in their blog titles.  

My colleague who stressed the matter of illiteracy as a defining component in the blog comments raised a more disturbing question for those of us who have been involved in education and in editing  discussion forums.  He stresses that the biggest threat to the First Amendment is from those who exercise it with ignorance, stupidity, and malice.  He suggests that the quality of the comments showing up on the Internet may indicate the failures of those of us to teach, write, and edit. 


The Internet may well be the instrument that makes stupidity a fashion of the age.  Those who think there is some value to education and accomplished expression have to devise a way to bring some standards of intelligence and thoughtful expression to the Internet to save it from illiteracy.  

A state's attorney looks at Kristi Noem's court record

This letter-to-the-editor appeared in today's Aberdeen American News:

In recent weeks, there has been much discussion about Kristi Noem's numerous speeding tickets including one at nearly 100 miles per hour. As a prosecutor of 15 years, I have other concerns as well.

What concerns me more are the multiple failures to appear in court. A failure to appear in court reflects disregard for law enforcement and the judicial system, one of our three branches of government. Warrants for failure to appear cost taxpayers money as well: the prosecutor, court reporter, clerk, judge and deputy who goes to serve the warrant are all paid salaries by taxpayers. A failure to appear increases the workload in the judicial system and wastes already scarce court docket time and resources.

It appears that this is not important to Kristi Noem - her time is much more valuable.

I urge the voters of South Dakota to support Stephanie Herseth Sandlin.

Victor B. Fischbach, Spink County State's Attorney

The demons of South Dakota: exorcism Oct. 16 in Rapid City

 For the vigilant Protectors of the Second Amendment, the season against road signs is never closed.  They patrol the highways and by-ways to keep the innocent safe from predatory roadsigns, which are one of the ways government sneaks into our daily lives to take away our freedoms. 

The Big Bad Obama Demon

Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.  That's why so many Protectors of the Second Amendment are sleep deprived.  They quake and sweat in their beds throughout the long nights hugging their firearms as they wait in fear for the Obama Ogre Brigade to sneak in the night to dispossess them of their toys.  The ogres want to take away their guns.  And by proxy, their manhood.  Or is it childhood?  As the Rifles and Other Lethal Devices for America Association says, ain't nothing more cranky and disturbed than a grown man who has been deprived of his toys. And gets up in the morning with wet, reeking skivvies. You can't well-regulate a militia that ain't got no toys.  Or lives in constant fear that creatures in the night will sneak in to take them.

The Gunnie Guards on watch for Obama ogres. 

The Spouses United for Sleep Deprived Older Children came up with a solution.  They made  teddy bears, known as Gunnie  Guards, which they said would keep any gun confiscators from coming in the night to steal the toys  if the frightened children hugged them and sobbed  into their furry little fuzz, and then the threatened ones could sleep peacefully at nights.  So could the whole damned family.

It worked for a time, until the Rifles and Other Lethal Devices for America Association heard from Rush Limbaugh about that bitch that Obama is allied with, Nancy Pelosi.  There are also Pelosi Ogres out there who will come in the night and take both the Gunnie Guards and the guns.


Dayamn. 

Pelosi martials her ogres.

Herseth Sandlin caught in the act.

A major Pelosi Ogre is Stephanie Herseth Sandlin,  who heads up the Obama-Pelosi cartel in the Dakotas, although members of Rifles and Other Lethal Devices for America Association members insist that she actually lives in Texas. She sneaks up to South Dakota, where she is known to maintain a friendly relationship with road signs, especially the ones with speed limits.  The Association has charged her with giving aid and comfort to and emboldening road signs.  She leads a band of demons that sneak into houses and terrorizes mostly male occupants by brazenly taking their toys. 





The Protectors of the Second Amendment and the Rifles and Other Lethal Devices for America Association are organizing an inspirational rally and exorcism for their members on Oct. 16 at the Rushmore Civic Plaza in Rapid City. 

"Suck on the one in my left hand."

The exorcism will feature spiritual leader and inspirational speaker Ted Nugent, who recently composed a new national anthem, which includes the lyrics:  

‘Hey Obama, you might wanna suck on one of these you punk.' ... Obama, he's a piece of shit, I told him to suck on my machine gun. , ‘Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch.' ... She might want to suck on my machine gun.'

A plotter with ogres

 The exorcism is held to drive all the demons out of South Dakota.  They can be found plotting ways to shelter the poor, feed the hungry,  heal the sick, and help the unemployed.   They are known allies with road signs and Big Bad Govmint.  They want your toys, boys. Hold them tight at night.



 

Witch hunting is on the ballot this year

Almost everybody can understand an allusion to George Orwell's 1984.  The media contains constant references to current events as being "Orwellian."  Few people have actually read the novel.  And few that have understand WTF it's all about.  Those who have  some  grasp of its portent think it is kind of roman a clef.  That is a term used to describe novels that satirize and mock real people and situations in a fictional format.  When the novel first came out many people thought it was a polemic about the Soviet Union because Big Brother, the image of totalitarianism, was pictured as a guy with a big, bushy mustache, like Josef Stalin.  No doubt, Orwell used that parallel to make a point, but the novel goes much deeper than warning against the threats of Soviet communism.

A major theme of the novel is how intrusive the media becomes in people's lives.  It influences, shapes, and controls the way they think without their being aware of the fact that most of the thoughts they have are not their own, but thoughts implanted through saturation by the media.  In 1984, every residence has a television screen from which the occupants receive a constant barrage of contrived programs designed to manipulate them and control their thoughts.  There are also television cameras planted throughout neighborhoods to monitor the people.

One of the features broadcast over the television screens are the daily two minutes of hate sessions.  Everyday people gather in front of televisions at a certain time and participate in a state-conducted hate session.  The theory, which Orwell understands from many points in his own experience, is that hate is a tool for taking over the minds and controlling people.  Hatred is a means of inducing bigotry, and bigotry is a condition for utilizing hatred as a control mechanism.  The people of Oceania are led in the hatred of the country with whom they are in perpetual war.  Internally, they are led in the hatred of anyone or any group who criticizes and is a threat to the regime in power.

Big Brother knows that to maintain power, he must never allow the people to relax from the hate that keeps them under his command, so he has to create objects of hate and keep feeding the hate directed towards those objects.  One such object is a character in 1984 named Emmanuel Goldstein.  He is never actually seen in the novel, and may be a total creation of Big Brother.  But the hate sessions impart the information that Goldstein is the Number One Enemy of the People, who once was a  party member, but dissented into opposition and wrote a book against the party.  His speeches are flashed on the television screens and throw the people of Oceania into a collective rage through which they vent their hate against Goldstein.  He heads a subversive group called the Brotherhood that plots against the party and the good people of Oceania.

In many ways, 1984  is a thesis novel in which Orwell tests the principles of how language can be used as an instrument of operant conditioning to gain and maintain control of people's minds.  Orwell's study and knowledge of how language works puts him in the leading ranks of semanticists and linguists.  His own experience as a sympathizer to Marxism at one point in his life put him in a position to understand how language is used as a stimulus, a reward, and punishment to maintain humans in a state of abject obedience to commands, much like treats of food and command words keep attack dogs in a state of control.

Orwell's thesis in 1984 is how language and media can be used, through orchestrated hate, to keep the people in a state of mental enslavement and control.  What makes Winston, the protagonist, dangerous is that he at times questions the conditioning he is experiencing and is put through harsher modes of conditioning to restore him as a loyal, intellectually empty party member.

GOP: "Screw Bin Laden.  Lets get her instead."

The Republican Party does not read 1984 as a thesis of how a dystopia is created but as an operating manual for gaining and maintaining power.  Its campaign against Nancy Pelosi is a classic exercise in creating a hate object and using it to hold power and control over those people so given to mindless hatreds affections.

                                                                          

In order to keep its constituents in a state of rage in which they  can ignore actual issues, the Republican Party has decided to make Nancy Pelosi its Emmanuel Goldstein, its Number One Enemy of the People.

The main feature of the 2010 campaign for the GOP is a Fire Pelosi gimmick.  The party has mounted a Fire Pelosi web site for the purpose of raising funds and announcing anti-Pelosi events.  Part of the campaign will be a 48-state bus tour to conduct Fire Pelosi rallies throughout the country.  The question this campaign raises is what is the purpose of targeting an individual as the Number One Enemy of the The People.  The answer is in Orwell's portrayal of the tactics and purpose of the attacks on Emmanuel Goldstein.  If you don't have a program that withstand public scrutiny and discussion, you erect an enemy.  When people cannot be united in good, constructive purpose, they can be united in hate.

Republicans have opposed everything the Democrats have attempted to do since 2008.  While they claim they have better ideas, when pressed they simply trot out the same old policies that created the international and economic problems in which we are currently mired.  Rather than simply recognize Nancy Pelosi as the Speaker of the House from the opposing party, they do the vilification routine, hoping that they can generate enough hate for her to make people forget their lack of substance and effort to deal with the problems we face.

Pelosi as the Wicked Witch of the West

The campaign conducted by John Dennis in Pelosi's home district is based upon just what the anti-Pelosi campaign is:  a witch hunt.  In a campaign ad, which tries to be funny, but gets embarrassing because it is such an obvious adolescent ploy, Pelosi is portrayed as the Wicked Witch of the West from the film  The Wizard of Oz.  One can dismiss it as an example of an attempt of wit by the witless, but it is part of the larger agenda.

In South Dakota, the Wicked Witch hunt takes the form of  trying to tie Stephanie Herseth Sandlin to Pelosi.  They are both Democrats.  They have some sharp policy differences, but they also work together.  The Republicans shame Herseth Sandlin because she does not go into an obstinate, petulant sulk and obstruct everything that  Nancy Pelosi proposes.  The Republicans think that the most devastating charge they can bring against Herseth Sandlin is that she acts like a rational, productive adult in her relationship with Nancy Pelosi.  In their anti-Pelosi obsession, the Republicans have pretty thoroughly defined themselves.

The Republicans are beset by the Palin-inspired Ignorant Pride movement.  Time was when people were uninformed or unable to grasp certain facts, they retreated from exposing their ignorance to the world.  However, Palin and her tea party disciples take great pride in putting on displays of ignorance power.

The prospect of people of this  mentality governing the country is obscene.  One longs for the late William Buckley and, even, Barry Goldwater.  It is disconcerting to see people in prominence who do not seem able to register facts, but instead depend upon a hateful furor as a basis for cohesion.

One should not dismiss witch hunts.  Periodically, our country has indulged in them.  This year, the country will be tested because witch hunting  is on the ballot.    George Orwell has provided us with the study guide.                        

The end of farming and what Kristi Noem proposes

Someone  named Dan suggests, among an array of the usual interactive, puerile insults,  that my apparent criticism of agricultural subsidies lacks conviction.  He/she is right.  I see  conflicting problems with the elaborate system of government subsidies.  However, my point in the post cited was not my objection to  agricultural welfare, but to people who assail big government spending but are the first in line to get their share of handouts.  Whether you call it farm welfare or subsidy, the semantic message is the same:  it's a handout.

For some time, I was the farm editor for a newspaper, the editor of a newsletter for agricultural journalists, and I have been reporting on agriculture ever since.  When I was a member of the working press and covered agriculture, most newspapers and broadcast stations had reporters assigned to the farm beat.  Hardly any do anymore, and that is because the audience for that kind of reporting is so small.  There is not enough interest for the general news media to cover agriculture, except on an occasional basis.  The journalism is left to media that serves the industry, and does not inform the general public.  The percentage of the population involved in farming is not large enough to warrant the coverage.

In 1930, 25 percent of the U.S. population lived on six million family farms, but today less than two percent of the population lives on 2 million farms.   However, the really significant statistic is that eight percent of farms account for 72 percent of farm product sales.  Ten percent of the farmers receive 74 percent of the subsidies. 

The raising of food and fiber is no longer farming;  it's agri-business.  For years we justified farm bills to keep family farms in business.  But very few families own farms, and those that do are mostly large family corporations.  Most of the agricultural subsidies bankroll big agricultural businesses, not independent family farmers, as the figures cited show.

Over the years, the rationale for farm programs has changed.  In the 1930s, the goal was to help out farms hit by the dust bowl years to insure that there was a food supply for the country.  Then the focus shifted to food as a wartime commodity.  During World War II, a diverse, stable supply of food and fiber was needed to sustain the war effort.  After the war, farm programs were geared to helping the international community recover from the war and to provide food assistance as part of the resistance to the spread of communism.  Then the focus of the programs was to help smaller farms from being integrated as components of corporate agri-business.  Today, the focus is very fuzzy.  The fact is that food production is under the control of a few large corporations, and small farms and farmers have been made all but irrelevant.

In a state like South Dakota, whose dominant industry is agriculture, it is difficult to see and understand how the system of agriculture has moved into corporate hands.  The state has collected $4.26 billion in subsidies during the last 15 years, with ten percent of the farmers getting 61 percent of the payouts.  The state ranks 10th in the amount of money  paid  as farm subsidies.

However, the statistics do not show the forces that are forming in opposition to this system of subsidization.  We are currently struggling to come out of a recession that has dumped millions of people out of the economic middle class.  In the 1980s, the same kind of economic catastrophe hit the farming segment.  It came from the same sources as the current recession, except that it was triggered not by Wall Street banks but by regional banks that made recoverable investments in agricultural enterprises.  When the farm economy faltered, the  banks foreclosed on the farmers with overextended loans and they were driven off the land.    It made a big surge in eliminating small, independent farmers and consolidating agriculture under corporate control.  


An image comes to mind.  A congressman, a Republican from a Midwest farm state, was trying to come up with a position on a farm bill.  He remarked that Ronald Reagan had raised the image of the welfare queen who drives to the welfare office in her black Cadillac to pick up her welfare check.  The congressman said the person who troubled him was the big-hatted dude in cowboy boots who drove to the bank in his white Town Car to deposit his agricultural welfare check.    In South Dakota, it is hard to assess how that big-hat-no-cattle image is set in the minds of many and how many people of both political parties regard farm subsidies as the most abject corporate welfare.  That congressman has long since left office, but his idea still circulates.  He said, you want to dismantle big government?  Start with the farm programs.  


There are complicating factors that have developed in agriculture that get scant attention.  The shrinking land base devoted to agriculture is one of them.  Again, in South Dakota, it does not seem much of a problem that land is taken out of production and covered with concrete to accommodate urban expansion.  Nor does much of the country--and the world--pay attention to the fact that water is being diverted from agricultural areas for urban usage, and that the flooding we have experienced in the country diverts attention away from shrinking aquifers.  Nor do many people recognize that what they think of as a free agricultural market is actually under the control of a few corporations.  For example, four companies, Swift, Cargill, National Beef, and Tyson, control 80 percent of the meat market in the U.S.  The problems with salmonella and e coli recalls in our food system are just surface symptoms of health problems in food production.  The use of genetically modified, factory-produced food raises questions about nutrition and health issues that many people in agri-business are afraid to address.   Government intervention in checking the safety and quality of food is regarded as intrusive socialism, just as it is in finance and manufacturing.  We really have some evidence, and very strong suspicions, of the degree to which corporations have gained total control of agriculture.


In the 1960s, Agricultural economists were predicting that American farmers could get free of subsidies because they held the world bread basket and would be feeding the world.  What they did not take into account was that Norman Borlaug was leading the green revolution which would produce plant species and agricultural methods that would help developing countries feed themselves.  The big boom in American agricultural exports never came.  Instead what has kept American agriculture going is bigger, more elaborate, and more extensive and expensive farm programs.  


Part of the public's ignorance stems from the fact that there is no general coverage of agriculture in our media.  The Internet is continuing to reduce what the legacy media does, and The New York Times publisher announced recently that the newspaper plans to end the print edition in the near future.  That leaves the Internet, which portends ill for information journalism.  Further staff reductions are in the offing, and some areas of public interest will receive no coverage whatsoever.  It's already happened with farming.  People generally do not know where their food comes from. Or who controls its production.


I am one of those who was excited about the prospects of the Internet to make information more abundant, more accessible, and more immediate.  But the journalistic world did not anticipate how the medium would be overtaken by blogs and commentators that do little research, no fact-checking, and resolve largely into bickering and false accusations.   Conservatives have complained of a media bias and think that anything that does not constant vilify Obama or any other liberal is being unbalanced and unfair.  The country in general has not confronted what happens when people make stuff up, then believe in it, and then make or influence political decisions on the basis of hate information,  That is why I give democracy a likely chance to utterly fail in this country.  And it is why I see little chance for the agrarian democracy on which the country was formed to survive as a model for a farm economy or a principle of democracy. What we know about the production of food and fiber is presented to us on cable news, talk radio, internet blogs, and the political hacks who operate on those media.  These sources  are devoted to keeping the populace yammering, not looking at the facts of our essential economy.

An established ecological principle is that stable and functional communities are built on a large base of producers of diverse varieties.   That base of primary producers sustains all the derivative and specialized life forms.  A sound economy is based upon basic producers and builders of goods that are essential for life.  America has seen drastic reductions in agricultural units and in manufacturing and production jobs. In our economy, the ecological pyramid has been turned upside down so that the farmers and production workers are a minority, while those who depend on production and derive their livings from the producers are the majority.  Hence, we have all the banking schemes like the overextended agricultural loans of the 1980s and the subprime mortgages and shaky derivatives of the 21st century.  An economy driven  by schemes instead of production just can't work.

We are in an economic crisis for which viable solutions are excluded by political partisanship.  For example, one can mount arguments against the measures taken by George W. Bush and Barack Obama to salvage the economy from total disaster.  Like many people, I think the bailouts of the financial and automobile industries rescued people who deserved to be put out of business.  If the market place worked, the incompetent, conniving, and dishonest would be displaced by the competent, the earnest, and the honest.  But if those major financial organizations were to have been allowed to meet their just ends, there would be no financial infrastructure on which to build a reformed industry.

The government efforts to save industries did not come from a desire to take them over.  They came from the realization that if those industries collapsed, we would have no system of essential industries on which to base a recovery.   That same recognition is the reason for farm programs.  The programs are mounted in a rather desperate attempt to preserve a broad-based production agriculture composed of yeoman farmers, as opposed to a system of serfs whose destiny is dictated to them from on high.  It makes no difference whether farms are collectivized under the Kremlin or the Monsanto corporate headquarters,  it is controlled by power-hungry bureaucracy, not by stewards of the land who attach their well-being and their future to a vital connection with the land.  


That gets us to the post which sparked the comments about my apprehension of farm subsidies.  It was a post about congressional candidate Kristi Noem.  I made fun of her driving record and the fact that the ranch in which she has an interest is one of the top ten collectors of agricultural handouts in South Dakota.  One respondent at Decorum Forum said that if traffic tickets was  all you had to contribute to a campaign, you have to go with them.  And he took exception to the fact that I used the name Snooki Scofflaw in reference to Noem.  Begin with what the traffic tickets really denote.  If a person who gets 20 tickets for driving offenses and then six more services because she blows off the tickets is not a scofflaw, I'd like to know just what the term means.  What is significant is not the multiple driving infractions (other candidates have them, too); the significance is the attitude and character displayed.    Other legislators and members of the press have encountered this characteristic in their daily work where Noem is involved.  


But a more revealing issue has been Noem's performance in debates, particularly on farm issues. I attended the debate at the Corn Palace in Mitchell.  I read Corey Heidelberger's debate coach summaries at Madville Times in which he assesses the responses of each candidate  on each of the eight questions asked at the State Fair.  At Mitchell, I noted that Noem was not prepared to answer the questions.  Instead, she tried to use the tactic of avoiding the question by bringing up spending issues or Nancy Pelosi.  Kristi Noem did not prepare for the debate.  She apparently thought preparation was something she could blow off and, instead, depend upon an evasive attack.  In my lifetime, journalists who did not prepare for assignments got fired.  Students got failed.  Noem did not prepare.  But that was not a one-time lapse.  By the time she  got to the State Fair, one would assume that she'd get a little information.   Instead, she resorted to the same ploy of evading and not answering the question.  Independent candidate Marking at least had the honesty to state that he could not answer the agricultural questions because he was not fully informed.  


The Republican tactic of performing an Orwellian portrayal of Nancy Pelosi as an enemy and then mounting an entire congressional campaign on their cheap ad hominem attempt to hide the real issues under a smear is put to work by Noem in South Dakota.


It is not a question of whose ideas are better for agriculture.  It is a matter of who has informed themselves about what the issues are and how they affect the state.  As she did with the traffic tickets, Noem has chosen to blow those issues off, too.  She does not present herself as one who knows what is taking place in agriculture or who really cares.  
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When it comes to conscientious effort, Noem has methodically disqualified herself from consideration.

That new-found maturity

 

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