another reason I will never be president

Watching the Democrats debate yesterday afternoon out in Iowa and they’re all talking tough about protecting the family farmer, like it seems everyone always does just around this time of year every, oh, four years or so, and one of them, Richardson I think, lets slip that there’s only about 550,000 of them left. And I’m thinking,

Well…

Fuck the farmers, then.

Seriously.

550,000? There are more one-armed Filipino barbers in this country named Joe than there are family farmers. Why are we all bowing and scraping to these motherfuckers?

You’re going to say food, they give us the food, and I’m as big a fan of food as anyone else out there, but do they really do that? Doesn’t Beatrice or AgriGro or the Jolly Green Giant or someone actually do that nowadays? Is this just nostalgia? Some land-yearn we’re all having, some national memory/fantasy of the Joads? Do these 550,000 actually put the muffin on my plate or are they just sitting out there in Iowa going broke like the rest of us, only they’re doing it with a view?

If it's nostalgia, then shouldn’t we be fighting for the sheet music sellers and the icebox manufacturers and the organ-grinders? And their monkeys? What about those poor little monkeys?

Someone set me straight here. Don’t want to malign those hard-working farm folk, but what are they actually doing of vital national interest? And what’s up with those subsidies? Tell me it’s not true that you can make more money staring at a field than tilling it.

I remain,

Ignorant in Manhattan