11-21-2020, 05:32 PM
(11-20-2020, 11:30 AM)taramarie Wrote: I just found this interesting from a farm owner in the usa as i read so many messages from republican voters who vote that way partly due to farm profit, but then there is this. Wonder what they would think? Unfortunately i cant copy and paste a screenshot here it seems. Not on my phone. If someone could let me know how to fo that i have the screenshot. But otherwise, here is a copy and paste of her message.
"I'd just like point out something regarding "Trump's economy." I'm part owner in a family farm. These last several years under Trump have been devastating to family farmers. I can only really speak about corn and soybean prices, because that's what we grow, but an amazing thing has happened beginning on Nov 3rd. Soybean and corn prices have been steadily shooting up since that date. Especially soybean prices which have roared back and even topped prices we haven't seen since June of 2016 when Obama was president! I might actually turn a profit this year! So not only am I very happy, this is also telling me something...Trump was horrible for trade, and likely the entire economy. I wonder how much better those 401ks might have done if Trump had never been elected. It's possible, even better."
Thoughts?
That would explain why states with much reliance on farm income (Iowa is the definitive agribusiness state) that were hostile to Trump for his trade war as shown in polling (I recall seeing a poll in which Trump had 60% disapproval) could swing back toward him. Note well that as manufacturing declines in the Rust Belt, agriculture becomes relatively more important in such states as Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
From what I understand, Trump bought votes in rural areas with massive farm subsidies, which can explain the huge margins for him in the Great Plains and such a state as Indiana... and how he barely lost Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Trump recognizes something that few of us want to admit: that most of us care more about our economic position than about human kindness and dignity, war, healthy conditions for ourselves or the environment, human rights, or civil liberties. Nearly 250,000 people had died of COVID-19 due to the incompetence and insensitivity of that horrid man, and he still won more votes and even a larger share of the total vote in 2016.
I hate to say this, but a President could institute a pogrom, but so long as the economy is doing well enough he would get re-elected. Trump did authorize, informally and without documentation but the reality shows it, a veritable secret police that lacked only a name to harass political opponents.
We Americans were only 37 electoral votes away from a dictatorship, the sort in which people lose their private-sector jobs if they say things like I have posted here and elsewhere, in which activists and troublesome journalists 'disappear', in which people get beaten for protesting police brutality, in which strikers get mowed down... and most people are expected to know that things could be far worse if the Great and Glorious Leader so wanted and we are wise to be thankful that such is not so.
I doubt that Americans have learned that liberty is worth some "good trouble" as the late John Lewis put it and even some economic hardship. Anything that anyone gets by sacrificing liberty is something that one has at best a precarious hold upon. Basic rights become privileges that can vanish quickly. A teaching credential? If some kid wants to take revenge against you for correcting his grammar, then you ain't got no chance of teachin' skool next year or maybe like never. Religious ordination? You could lose it if you compare the Great and Glorious Leader to an idol with clay feet... and perhaps end up in a labor camp. Certified Public Accountant? Say something unflattering about the Fueh... excuse me, the President... while a bit sauced at the Christmas party, and you might lose your job and your CPA license because some subordinate who wants your job will report you. Blackmail, kickbacks, and poison-pen letters become normal parts of daily life. We aren't clearly better than the Germans under Hitler or the Russians under Stalin. Judeo-Christian heritage? We are approaching the end of the Presidency of someone whose behavior was a mockery of those. (I'm not knocking an atheist like my very distant cousin Bertrand Russell, whose morality simply abandons the prudery and superstition that don't make human goodness.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.