A wall of water floods our political anxieties

Morning breaks crisp as the soybeans come in. They’re shooting geese and dragging in docks. We’re not even a month out from a presidential election. Our politics is being reorganized, and it’s confusing. Liz Cheney is campaigning for Kamala Harris to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. A strange wind blows.

You hear low moans over corn prices. The farm bill is dead in the water. Rep. Randy Feenstra voted with those who preferred to shut down the government than continuing to fund it. Local hearings over a proposed pipeline propped up by government subsidy breed angst. The top gets the money, the bottom gets gas.

Employment is steady. Lopez Foods is finally ramping up in Cherokee. Supply chains are mending.

Things are okay. Stable. Are you better off? Sort of. Inflation rose 15% from 2019 to 2022, while median household income in Buena Vista County climbed 18%. Most of the income gain flowed to the top. Average net cash farm income for BV’s 775 operations grew by 86% from 2017 to 2022, according to the latest USDA numbers, to $335,000. Biden’s first two years saw record farm income. During the same time, packinghouse wages grew by about 20%. More housing opened but rents rose. It’s a decidedly mixed bag.

Young Latinos tell us they don’t feel that fat. They say they may vote for Trump or just stay home. Machismo demands someone who they think projects strength. They feel they had no say in selecting Harris, and the campaign doesn’t reach them because they are in Iowa, hopelessly lost on the elites. Local Democrats do what they can, but we live out here where you use an assault rifle to shoot coyotes.

Still, Harris trails in the Iowa Poll by just four percentage points. She could win if she asked for their votes, if they were organized, if they felt like anyone was talking to them but Trump. They hear him say he will deport them but they don’t really believe it and neither do you. Ohio is bound to roll with Trump and Vance despite the racist rage directed at Springfield. You wouldn’t think that half of us could be attracted by hate, but there you have it.

Climate should be the issue but gets short shrift. We got just .35 of an inch of rain in September. Harris backs fracking. So it is really not the issue with either campaign.

It’s too close for comfort in the swing states. Harris is positioned well in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Voter registration among young women is way up and enthusiasm is high. Not so much here, it would appear, for either side. Nationally, Harris has a slight edge. It’s all about turning out the base.

North Carolina and Georgia were toss-ups before the hurricane. Then came 30 inches of rain. Where does that leave things? The wall of water washes away political divisions. People up in the hills are on their own, together, despite heroic efforts of government employees to reach them. They depend on each other to survive. How they perceive what is happening may swing the election.

The people who get paid for fracking and carbon credits in pipelines underfoot will not be there for the community when the holes pumped full of CO2 leak, as they are starting to. Or when the well runs dry, as it is starting to underneath Storm Lake and Cherokee.

The debates are over. North Carolina got thoughts and prayers.  We’re on our own. We will pay to drill deeper for water to slake the growing number of livestock. Ironically, it was just a few months ago that the good people of Spencer got flooded out, lacking flood insurance, with a pittance from FEMA. Bankruptcies are coming. People are living in campers. Climate bankruptcies and climate campers. Amarillo is in trouble, it’s so dry.

Our concerns center around whether wind turbines kill geese, or if the spent blades are more of a liability than burning coal. Corn for ethanol stands in the way of solar in Iowa that could promote grazing.

Our politics is not set up for this. We are arguing left and right, but we are being reorganized top to bottom.

Spencer and Springfield are at the bottom. Asheville was said to be a haven from climate disaster. Not now. You have a hard time securing insurance in Iowa anymore. Nature is an equalizer.

We yawn for a different political conversation, less than 30 days from an election that is supposed to be monumental. Mill workers are on strike against Cargill, America’s largest private company, in Cedar Rapids. They grind your corn. It’s bottom versus top. That’s what a lot of people think as we are blown into November. Our politics is not up to the moment. Congress can’t even pass a farm bill. They get away with it because people are resigned to the fact that this is how things work in America. Until you can’t get a drink while drowning.