Crazy days
Our heads are stuck someplace dark
It’s getting crazy out there. Scary storms overhead. You could drink. Or pull the covers over your head. You can’t escape it.
It’s hard to take the news:
Trump wants a casino at Gaza with condos. Honestly. Hamas can get a nice place somewhere else. Netanyahu laughed at his side. Is this really happening?
Fireballs routed Los Angeles and then mudslides. Iowa struck climate change from its school science standards, our heads stuck someplace dark.
A 25-year-old with a backpack and a racist point of view, sent in by Elon Musk to get the government codes, knows where you are and what you are up to, and he and The Boss might not like it. Honest. It sounds like a movie but it is not.
The attorney general is hunting down FBI agents for hunting down Jan. 6 traitors.
The president wants to end birthright citizenship — that means you, peckerwood.
The governor is threatening the Winneshiek County (Decorah) sheriff for saying he will not help ICE enforce immigration orders. The Census says there are about 500 Latinos in Winneshiek (pop. 20,070), and none reportedly are running fentanyl.
Guantanamo Bay is being refitted for 30,000 deportees. A black hole.
Iowa has a legislative higher education committee full of knotheads to instruct the professors what to teach. That should scare the hell out of Lady Liberty.
Legislators want to “reform” property taxes and will not say how. That should scare the hell out of you.
Legislators are advancing a bill to protect Bayer from lawsuits over Roundup. It will pass. Bayer insists its chemicals do not cause cancer. Juries have disagreed.
The National Institute of Health announced Friday night that it intends to cut billions of dollars in grants for medical research, into matters such as why Iowa has a growing problem with cancer, the worst in America.
Musk and minions will see to it that USAID is shut down. The federal agency created by Congress bought millions of bushels of grain. Eat it, Farmer Joe.
We will take the Panama Canal by force if we have to, we will buy Greenland, and Canada will volunteer to become the 51st state. The president has said this. What the hell are we talking about here?
The Beltway Democrats have responded so far with a stern lecture from Chuck Schumer, hamster for Wall Street. It’s about all they can do until the next election in 2026. In Iowa, Democrats whimper that someone took their relevance from them when they were not looking, and that is just not fair or right.
Let’s just do the Thorazine shuffle and hope that the courts can sort things out. Two federal judges ruled last week that Trump’s ideas to undo birthright citizenship are blatantly unconstitutional. Another judge told Musk’s youth brigade to return the codes to the government, for now. Yet another halted the shutdown of USAID, temporarily. And another stopped the outing of FBI agents on Trump’s hit list, time being.
The courts are hanging in there even if the Senate is littered with cowards.
The young folks say they are tuning out from the news because it’s such a bummer. You can move to a resort, someplace sunny like Gaza, while it all gets hashed through. It is too difficult to fathom the suffering we impose in Sudan by letting food rot in our ports. We are way past shame.
No, really, this is among the stupidest of times. It makes you want to look away. It is an assault on decency. It is hard to get rid of the sight of Elon Musk’s belly button when he was jumping up and down on stage like a maniac with Trump. Crazy like a fox who just breached the henhouse. His too-short tee shirt shirt says Occupy Mars. He is running our affairs.
We, as in Iowans, enthusiastically voted for chaos.
We knew that Musk, who lives off government contracts, had $250 million vested into this operation and can pay off all Trump’s debts to the women he assaulted. Trump promised to start trade wars, and Iowa is among the most export-sensitive states. He promised to deport all undocumented immigrants who milk our cows and cut our hogs and gather our eggs.
Iowa said “gimme sommadat.”
We asked for a moderated chaos, at least. Not that we would want to empty out the hoghouse or anything, where everyone is legal youbetcha and God protects those who work hard. Just enough chaos so you can’t see who is robbing you. He is 25, sleeps on a cot in a government building, and knows what you look at on your cellphone. He reports to Elon Musk. For realz.
Just wait, they say. It will all come crashing down. Musk and Steve Bannon will try to kill each other, and Rob Sand will mount a stallion to save Iowa education. Rob Sand, that’s right. You haven’t heard of him? Oh. He’s the state auditor who is not allowed to audit. We tuned out, that’s right. Pour another round. The Mexicans will pay for it, or maybe we can get a trade disaster check — a Trump bump, they called it.
Cheers. Now knock me out. When I wake up it might look different. It’s all too crazy by half.
Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.
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It’s up to us, and as usual, you are one of the brave ones, leading the charge, Art. We should all be right behind you, and thanking you. I am and I do.
I feel complicit by the complacency, what can I do? I can vote next year, hopefully. Election boards are under fire in small spaces everywhere, does Musk have enough bandwidth inside the building to make it possible to vote electronically? Making hacking a National Pastime in the process, The Mrs. and I will turn 67 this year and someday hope to call on Social Security for a little grocery money. My check ought to cover a dozen eggs, if the 25-year-old doesn't have a bad dream on his cot one night and shut off the Social Security payments.
Scared shitless Art, the Iowa Statehouse is no better. Glysophate is just as harmless as gasoline and strychnine. Just as long as it doesn't get out of the container and into the soil, water or air. Farmers have valid concerns that they won't be able to use RoundUp for weed protection. We've found ways to take corn production from a "record" in 1985 of 8.87 billion bushels to 15.3 (USDA figures) in 2023. Doubled in little more than a generation. Good thing too because we have a tendency to chew up tillable acres for growth. Better living through chemistry, but it ain't a whole lot better. Cancer rates continue to rise with Iowa striving to be #1 per capita; we're not there yet but hang in there.
It's not all due to agriculture, according to the Iowa Cancer Registry, Iowa ranks 4th nationally in Binge Drinking? What the hell, I mean I get it; you can't turn on the news without hearing something dreadful but keep the Black Velvet outta yer Corn Flakes. Probably shouldn't keep a bottle in the minivan either eh Gov?
I'm sick and tired of hearing the name Trump, but that's his M.O. Wear you out, turn you numb to the news, make you turn to Gilligan's Island reruns. I'm hopeful that the Judiciary will hold, Congress will flip in '26 and nature will catch up with DJT after a lifetime of KFC.
If not, Lovey and I are getting on the SS Minnow and heading to Winnipeg.
Thanks Art, thanks a helluva lot!