I woke up this morning to the joy of raging schadenfreude. I live in a scarlet part of the state, where despite having a vivid blue island in the middle of it (the university), the whole region happily turned out to vote for Trump. They didn’t care that he was a grifter, or that he’d bankrupted all of his businesses, or that he was a rapist, all they cared about was that he’d be sticking it to the libs and all those non-heterosexual and non-white people. They didn’t care until they discovered that he was also going to stick it to them.
I opened my internet feed this morning to discover all the MAGAs whining that that their cattle farms are going broke and that they have to sell their beef wholesale on TikTok, and all my fellow blues chortling and confronting them with the brutal question, “who did you vote for?”
Farming is important, and we should support agriculture, but we’re at this point in history where if you were a rancher, you were almost definitely a Republican and most often a hardcore far right freak. It’s an occupation that typically required only capital, and often inherited capital at that, and minimal education. And now they’ve helped elect a president who doesn’t understand basic economics and will take the farmers’ support for granted.
Dairy farmers aren’t much better. My county is about to get a massive influx of cows, to produce an excess of milk, and no one is asking who benefits. It won’t be us. We get to deal with the stench and the flies and the depleted aquifers, while someone reaps the profits.
At least I still get to chortle a little bit, since I’m a vegetarian and am not in the market for dead animal parts. We don’t drink milk at my house, only a little almond milk. I feel like my dietary habits have become an assault on Nazis.
I’m about to go to the store this morning to buy vegetables and beans…FOR GREAT JUSTICE!
Heard a phrase that upsets MAGA: “May you have the day you voted for.”
“May you have the day you voted for.”
5 million people in Saxony-Anhalt in Germany are about to FAFO, by electing the first fascist state government in that country since WWII. May the leopard come for them.
And they will happily vote for Trump III because the demoncrats are gonna take their gunz, and let the massed hordes cross the borders where they will be paid to vote for the democrat candidates and drive around in cadillacs, and let kindergartners self-identify as cats. Or something.
… and minimal education.
Minimal book-larnin’, perhaps, but a whole lot of practical skills from mechanicking to meteorology, animal care to commodities markets, budgeting to barn maintenance – all under ceaseless time pressure.
… a little almond milk.
Most, maybe all, of which comes from a water-intensive crop raised in a water-scarce region. I haven’t done a real data dig, but at least one source reports that almond milk requires over 15 times as much water as dairy milk, for significantly less protein. I have not so far found reliable-looking comparisons of the “water footprint” of soy/oat/hemp/etc milks (one guide has it that soy milk uses approximately 1/3 the water of cow milk; another asserts “…one liter of soy would require a land use of approximately 1 square mile per year.”).
I blame my wife. She’s the one who drinks almond milk. I just drink water.
Yes, farming is a demanding job that requires business skills. It doesn’t require the kind of education that broadens the mind.
“and all my fellow blues chortling and confronting them with the brutal question, “who did you vote for?”
A few days/weeks ago I read a piece thta advised how to talk to MAGAs. It recommended if they were complaining about the economy (or related stuff) you should ask who they votwed for. If they said Trump or the republicans, you should respond, then you got what you voted for.
I had a hankering for some Trump Steak, so, while reading Trump Magazine, I booked a flight with GoTrump.com, flying Trump Air to Atlantic City before I enrolling in Trump University. I decided to Slot in some time at all the Trump Casinos before my stay at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. Unfortunately I, in a Trumpian moment, encountered some financial challenges and ended up drowning my sorrows in Trump Vodka after my declaration of bankruptcy.
How could I have done such a thing? My shame is inconsolable. The disgust I have brought to my otherwise good name is not repairable. I am unable to sleep or look at people eye to eye. As long as I am alive I will have to live with what I have done, there is no repairing my reputation. I have become an outcast, worse than a black sheep.
I’m struggling with how I could possibly have done something so heinous and have to accept that there is no rehabilitation for me. I am undeserving of any sympathy.
It grievously saddens me that I, in a moment of total depravity, called Trump a pile of shit. How could I be so crass as to insult piles of shit in such a reprehensible, disgusting way.
A liar, a thief, a conman, a sleazebag, a philanderer, a pedo, a multiple bankrupt, a meteorologist with a sharpie, a misogynist, an Obama hater, a know it all, an “I don’t know him/her”, an “it wasn’t to pay employees for work done, an employer of porn stars for “piece” work, an evader of legal bills, a tax cheat, a secrets hoarder, a king and a snake oil salesman walk into a bar, not just any bar but the most wonderful, bigly bar, everybody says so.
The greeter tries to masquerade her 10 as a 2 to avoid the inevitable handshake between the legs. She meekly asks “a table for one?”
Shamefully, I have maligned the good name of DJT. Until I was corrected, I thought that Trump did not serve in the armed forces. How could I have been so wrong? It is true that he did not serve in the Army or Air Force, all his service was in the Navy, specifically in the “Silent Service” (submarines). He actually reached the rank of sub moron.
Trump asks a sheep farmer “do you have a sheep named “Off”? The farmer replies “NO”. The same scene was played out at a second sheep farm. At the third farm he asks the same question. The reply again is “NO”. The farmer asks Trump “why do you ask?”. Trump replies “well, Melania told me to bugger Off”.
Do you know why Washington DC property taxes will be going up? Shipping their garbage to Mar A Lago is very expensive.
I used to be very similar to Trump until Musk took over Twitter (X). We both had zero followers on T (X).
Trump found out the hard way that climate change is real. Just one Stormy night cost him $130,000.
Huh? What?
How do you buy beef on TikTok anyway?
I’ve always bought it at the grocery store like everyone I know.
(I stopped eating beef after someone I know died of a massive heart attack at age 56. I prefer chicken and turkey anyway.)
Obviously that milk isn’t going to be sold in Stevens county, population 10,000. It will most likely be made into cheese and other dairy products and sent all over the USA.
PS It isn’t just beef ranchers or dairy farmers that are losing money because of the Trump regime.
Soybean farmers are losing money because Trump destroyed one of their main outside markets by alienating China.
Corn and wheat farmers are losing because fertilizer prices are going up because a key fertilizer ingredient was made in the middle east and has to go through the now closed Strait of Hormuz.
Another key ingredient, potassium, comes from Canada.
“U.S. fertilizer prices have risen by roughly 28% to 30% this year due to supply chain disruptions from the conflict with Iran, “
I have yet to figure out why anyone voted for Trump.
I tried for a while and then gave up.
His support has declined but not by that much.
He is still wildly popular in MAGA land.
His illegal tacky coins sold out on the first day.
About the only data point that seems steady is that his voter base are almost all white racists.
They also skew heavily towards male. It was for men, 43% Harris to 55% Trump.
Honestly, with you retiring, I’d be considering getting as far away from that proposed cattle farm as possible. Of course, the housing market is still completely fucked up, so there’s also that.
These idiots can’t even remember that one of Trump’s first acts when he got into office the first time (aside from giving us the phrase “Muslim ban”) was starting a trade war with China that hurt US farmers so badly that they required a government bailout.
@rorschach
Be mindful that this isn’t because the AfD’s (the fascist party in question) ideas are extremely popular but because our resident large conservative party is being led by someone with all the charisma of a gnat and all the political acumen of a dirty puddle who can’t stop insulting and belittling the non-wealthy parts of the population. Angela Merkel, the previous leader of the conservative party had originally put that guy in the political fridge but because she never build up a successor the old guard decided to thaw him up for lack of alternatives.
Voting for the AfD is in part a way to show the federal government the middle finger.
Irony of course being that the AfD supports all the same rich-guy politics as our chancellor, so those people are just doing the usual nose-cutting, face-spiting ritual.
I would love to move to some place bluer, and more culturally vibrant, and closer to my grandchildren. The reality is that academic life has not left me with much of a cushion, and Trump policies are wrecking the economy so thoroughly, that I think I’ve dug myself into a hole.
On the bright side, more milk means more ice cream. And more cheese.
Farmers?
In Sweden, the Center Party -a movement centered on good social safety nets and blue-collar worker families- started off as Bondeförbundet (The Farmer’s Union) and was in coalition with the Social Democrats for twenty years as the foundations for the welfare state were built.
It is a ‘folkrörelse’ (grassroots) movement, from the very start focused on good education even for rural and low-income people.
.
Our historical traditions are quite different from USA. Moose hunting season is still a big thing but the hunters are no ammosexual freaks with a dozen guns each.
PZ, if your pension permits it, can you move north of the border? At least the health care is good, and I hear there are singing lumberjacks.
I don’t think the issue of veganism is water use. Yes, you can care (also, or instead) about water use, it’s a serious issue. But it is not the same. IME if I were to do an informal survey of the omnivores and carnivores I know? I doubt many of would have given a single thought about the water use of the food they eat.
Rural living seems to engender an attitude of militant hyper-individualism. Where population and resources are scarce, those who can hack it in the boonies eventually come to think they don’t need anyone while looking down on those who do. They didn’t need any fancy education or welfare handouts like those weak and lazy city folk, and woe be upon anyone who expects them to contribute to the commonweal. They made it by the sweat of their brow, why can’t they?
Throw in racism and religious fundamentalism, which reinforces these attitudes, and you know why these hicks keep voting for fascists.
Prairie farmers were an integral part of the movement which lead to universal health care in Canada. See Tommy Douglas, etc.
@rorschach
Go fuck yourself. Saxony-Anhalt has only 2.1 million inhabitants anyway and less than half voted for the AfD, which will likely not get a majority. So a less than 1 million votes for the fascists in any case.
Blame it on Mittelklasse-Merz.
seachange @17: Omnivore here: I’m starting to get concerned about water use, but I’m low on information.
Akira:
That is very USA-specific.
Basically, cultural best as I can tell.
cf. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23997/w23997.pdf
(Frontier Culture: The Roots and Persistence of “Rugged Individualism” in the United States)
I lived for quite some time in rural Australia, and my experience was quite different; people help each other out and are fairly social.
@18: Rural living doesn’t engender hyper individualism, it’s been sold the lie of it. Since the 1950s there’s been an active campaign of selling the myth of the tough, rugged, All-American Cowboy, who’s a fierce individualist that hates government interference and needs no help from anyone. It’s totally fictional but it was effective at convincing rural people to vote against their own interests and let corporate Republicans dismantle FDR’s New Deal.
@Akira – it’s not the rural living that does it. Traditionally farmers and ranchers were some of the most socialist folks around. They formed insurance co-ops, were known for supporting and depending on neighbours, and here in Canada were responsible for the start of the most left wing party in our political spectrum (NDP – famous for Tommy Douglas and the creation of universal health-care in Canada). Farmers are often the first to note environmental problems due to their exposure to weather and natural environment.
as pointed out in 22 & 23, it’s not rural living – it is American culture and a deliberate lie. Manufactured culture wars have been used for years to get rural Americans (and Canadians) to vote against their best interests. Support for monopolies/cartels in the food industry and policies encouraging corporatization of agriculture and food production have been particularly harmful.
Only 57 days to November 3, voting day. Are you ready!?
When I first moved here, I was surprised by all the old farmers who showed up at the county fair, where I was holding down a booth, who were openly and proudly socialist.
The younger farmers, you know, 50 year olds, were hypercapitaliist assholes who wanted a bigger truck.
There was a guy on the TV show Alone that said once that if he had his rifle and ammunition then he would happily live out in the wilderness away from society forever. Which is the whole point. You don’t get to live away from society while also enjoying it’s benefits. The gunpowder which is in the ammunition doesn’t just appear magically, it has to be manufactured. The chemistry to manufacture the powder comes from years of education. The steel and wood that make the rifle and the bullet casings have to be precision machined, and those machines have to be powered and maintained. The mining and forestry for the raw materials. All of these things = society (sorry to labour the point).
What your average hyper-individualist character doesn’t realise is that they have got it 180 degrees out of whack. It’s not that they can do without society; they can’t. It’s that society can do without them and whaddya know, we’re just starting to.
[related]
Back in his first term flailings, Trump appealed and won over the coal sector:
cf. https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2017/04/10/stereotyping-appalachians-feeds-only-the-coal-industry
Article opens thus:
Mind you, to this day he still has roughly 50% approval within that sector/demographic. Go figure.
(Well, I figure many people vote on emotion rather than pragmatics or even weal)
Diesel is currently at the highest price ever, which is just one of the factors currently crushing farmers.
Many US farmers were absolutely devastated when the Blue dog Dems forgot about the Farmer segment of the Democratic Farm and Labor party, and let US farm policy get monopolized by appx 100 corporate agro-businesses.
Corn and soybeans are heavily subsidized crops at the expense of all else. If your costs skyrocketed, and you can’t export your crop because numpty started a tariff trade war with China, you make negative profit.
Add to that the closure of many rural hospitals due to billionaires run amok, as they are often the largest employers in the region that pay a living wage.
I suspect those rural communities will be voting with their wallets.
@27: It’s the old joke about Libertarians and cats both believing themselves to be 100% self-sufficient and not needing anything from anyone… until they freak out because their dinner is later.
Leopards.
Faces.
Leopards.
Faces.
indianajones@27: “There was a guy on the TV show Alone that said once that if he had his rifle and ammunition then he would happily live out in the wilderness away from society forever.”
And the “Hillbilly Channel” (“Mountain Men) is just as bad. They normalize their cruel leg hold traps, and claim complete self-sufficiency while operating snow machines, trucks, heavy machinery, etc. with fuel and other liquids (oil, hydraulic fluids, etc.) large saw mill saw blades, chain saws, and of course guns with ammunition, while “living completely off the land”, all with a complete lack of irony or any self awareness. They are often being portrayed as “expert blacksmiths” while making mistakes that no non-beginner blacksmith would ever make. One even made a genuine Native American bow and arrows; the bow badly cracked on first use, and when he shot at a fake deer target the arrow energy was so low that it just barely pricked the target and the feathered end drooped to the ground. And he was among the most “authentic” on this obviously heavily scripted “TV reality” program. On another episode a “self-sufficient man” was down on his luck, not finding any game while hunting with his manufactured rifle, and also not having any traps. Then he just happens to find a barrel semi-buried in the snow, with the traps that he needed. He even left a note in the barrel saying that he took them (presumably also thanking the show producers).
@ ^ zetopan : Reality TV isn’t.
Farming while Beige is in this video! His Shorts on youtube are a ton of fun (he’s also one of those farmers that should be actively supported :P ).
Why do farmers (and ranchers) keep voting for Trump? Because most of them (the ones who are still left) aren’t poor, they’re millionaires and in some cases, billionaires and most wealthy people vote Republican so they aren’t required to share the wealth.
I’ve found the Farm To Taber channel pretty interesting. The creator has a bio degree and is an actual small farmer.
and the channel
https://www.youtube.com/@FarmToTaber
FYI, most family farms are in fact corporations. Yes, you can incorporate your farm(s) or ranches and a lot of wealthy farm families do exactly that. Shares in the farm(s) are passed down through the generations, thereby avoiding inheritance taxes. So if you are the P1 generation and have 4 kids, if you are financially savvy, you put your farm into a family trust or incorporate and those 4 kids each have a 25% share in the trust or corporation. If those F1 generation have kids, the F1 passes the shares down to the F2 generation and so on. If you are going “so? One eighth or one sixteenth of farm income amounts to what?” If you have a farm operation worth a billion, that means that the F1 has assets valued at 250 million and F2 (assume each F1 has 4 kids) has assets, that still means that each F2 has assets valued upwards of 60 million.
The video (check the 11:35 mark) points out that most farmers are millionaires. (Some are billionaires but not all, clearly.) Even at a mere million dollar farm, that still means that the hypothetical F2 from above still has assets valued at 60,000.00. If your incorporated farm or trust is worth 5 or 10 million, you are suddenly looking at 300,00 to 600,000 per F2.
Clearly you should choose your family carefully.
For those of you who are thinking “that’s the value of the assets, not actual income” that’s completely true!
But
If a billion dollar farm generates even a 1% return on the value of the farm (or ranch) that’s still 10,000,000… per year. Even for the lowly one million dollar farm, that’s still 10,000 and that’s only if there’s a 1% return on the value of the farm. If you get a 5 or 10% return, well, do the math.
But what if there is no profit? What if there’s a fire, storm, flood or other disaster?
Well that part is easy too.
You get to declare a loss, file for disaster aid, crop insurance will make you whole & so will that carryback tax return that your accountant is going to file for you. One of the comments in the above video is really telling, where the commenter pointed out that her father got paid whether the crops lived or died, he was not in any financial danger. Also, you don’t even have to farm, as the rest of us understand farming. You can water farm, where you own land the state or incorporated municipality, don’t actually farm anything and let the state or municipality pays YOU use all the water you would have used to farm for said state/municipality. Or, you can sell or lease mineral rights under the farm and still keep the farm and call yourself a farmer (with all the financial benefits that that implies.)
The farm subsidies are so generous, if you grow the right crops (the ones that the federal government wants you to grow–number 2 yellow corn, soy, wheat, beef, chicken, pork, etc.) then on average, you have already made 150% of your costs before the seed drill pokes the first seed into the soil thanks to farm subsidies and guarantees.
The people who are totally screwed are the people who are startup farmers or contract farmers (like chicken farmers for agribusinesses like Tyson or Perdue, where they have a contract with a mega corporation and have to buy all their stock, feed, supplies, etc. from said corporation. It’s a modern form of sharecropping and it sucks.)
The other reason farmers keep voting for Trump? It’s all the racist dogwhistles. Cheetolini has the same hatred and contempt for nonwhite people that they do. I found this interesting.
American farms are still mostly operated on slave labor, it’s just that the optics are different now. First it was actual slavery (the thing the US fought the US Civil War over, if you aren’t reading a Texas textbook), then it was prison chain gangs (same skin color, different clothes) rented out to farmers and other businesses and now it’s trafficked humans (different skin color but still mostly nonwhite).
This is kind of interesting too
So… you voted for the guy whose war of choice against Iran (in a true desperate attempt to get Epstein connections off the front page) jacked up the cost of fossil fuel AND made certain that there was no financially feasible way for farmers to wean themselves off of fossil fuel (and God forbid, not be completely under the bootheel of Big Fossil Fuel).
Have the day you voted for, assholes.
silvrhalide, hm.
You equivocate there; ‘farmers’ as the landowners vs ‘farmers’ as the people who actually work the land. Or ranchers.
An analogy would be [landowner:worker::factory owner::worker].
(But there is a word ‘farmer’, yet no equivalent word ‘factorier’, which confuses the concept)
@18 Well the sweat of someone else’s brow anyway
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/trafficked-in-america/
Around the 12 min mark “he promised that if someone was doing slavery on your farm that they wouldn’t prosecuted”
@14 I wouldn’t count on it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/02/americas-cows-milkfat/685881/
@30
Of the two, the cats are more likely to adapt and successfully hunt dinner. (I say this as the Better Half’s feral cat drags yet another rodent homicide into the driveway for their inspection and approval. We were able to trap and TNR 2 feral mother cats and their litters but the first litters that they showed up with were already too old be be adoptable or indoor cats. They all get fed 2X day but the only female in the litters apparently has some kind of personal grudge against rats.)
@33
I’m betting that a lot of other people would be happy if that guy went off to live in the wilderness forever with his guns, away from society. Especially the buzzards and other carrion feeders.
@38 Not in the US. The definition of farmer (or rancher) is strictly defined.
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p225
See Chapter 3
So to be clear, if you own a farm but never do any actual labor, congratulations! You are a farmer, with all the financial benefits that that implies/entails.
If you are one of the trafficked human beings that is actually doing the labor in all weather conditions, whether that’s cleaning CAFOs or picking strawberries in 120 degree F weather, you are not a farmer, you are an employee. (Regardless of whether or not you actually ever get paid.)
So, to be clear, if you own a blueberry farm and manage it, you have “materially participated” in farming, therefore, you are a farmer.
If you are the poor bastard picking the damn blueberries, you are not a farmer, you are a W-2 wage employee.
Apparently picking the berries, for which you are legally allowed to be paid below minimum wage, since farm workers are an exempt category of employee, like food workers/waitstaff/etc. are definitively NOT farmers.
Notably, most if not all of the employee positions that are exempt from minimum wage (and frequently, age) requirements are jobs that have traditionally been performed by black people or women. Not exactly a coincidence.
The introduction defines who is a farmer
owner or tenant
NOT laborer
Precisely. That was my very point.
BTW, easy to fact check your claims:
Fact: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/archive/2025/08-19-2025.php (most recent official data)
Also,
Indeed. That was my point earlier via analogising to the coal sector in Appalachia; most miners means most people who labour in the mining sector. Here, ‘most farmers’ is analogic.
Right? When people discuss “miners” in Appalachia, they are talking about the laborers who physically descend into the mines to extract coal rather than the legal entity that owns the mining lease.
Anyway. Sure. Not that many farmers, but many farm workers, who are not farmers. Got you.
Apparently a shared love of racism is stronger than what really amounts to a minor financial setback, barely a bump in the road as it were
https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/potential-implications-of-immigration-restrictions-on-the-u-s-agricultural-workforce/
Even increasingly expensive (and unaffordable) healthcare isn’t enough to make these assholes stop voting for Cheetolini.
https://kffhealthnews.org/health-care-costs/farmers-health-insurance-costs-aca-obamacare-subsidies/
Although given that thanks to Cheetolini’s canceling of Biden’s enhanced healthcare subsidies, rural hospitals are closing in greater numbers than urban/suburban hospitals because 27% of farmers/ranchers have to get their healthcare through… Obamacare!
https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/occupations-with-large-shares-of-workers-who-rely-on-individual-market-coverage/
Stupid is as stupid does.
At this point I’m wondering exactly what it would take for these clowns to stop voting for the orange manbaby and against their own interests.
https://www.cspi.org/cspi-news/tale-two-agendas-trumps-contradictory-approach-toward-small-farmers
It’s also worth noting a lot of small family farms aren’t farms that produce anything.
https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/blog/small-farms-big-differences
Apparently owning the libs is more important than owning anything with actual financial value. Although if they keep voting the way they have been, it’s going to be the only thing they own.
lasius@20,
43.8% for the AfD. 5.3% for the “red-brown” BSW, who like the AfD are anti-immigration (i.e. racist) and pro-Putin. Still just under 50%, I concede, but I’d have trouble voting for any of the parties I’ve heard of. SPD and Greens are both pro-genocide. I suppose I’d go with Die Linke, but they are dodgy both on Gaza/West Bank/Lebanon/etc. and on Ukraine. It will be grimly fascinating to see if the BSW support an AfD administration.