Freedom and avocados

A Storm Lake Times Pilot editorial

The produce man in the grocery store smiled and nodded as the vendor walked past on Inauguration Day with the greeting: “Can’t you feel the freedom this morning?” We could mainly feel the lingering of biting cold. The produce guy was free to stack onions. If he were Mexican by heritage he might want to keep an eye out over his shoulder.

It was so cold they had to move the swearing-in indoors. Inside the Capitol where MAGA rioters killed and maimed police. After the oath, within hours Trump issued pardons to all the people who attacked the police that day. He said they had suffered enough, that they love America. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the president was looking forward.

As promised, Trump issued an executive order that he supposes will end birthright citizenship written into the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. People born here are not necessarily citizens. Take a deep breath if it has not been taken away by the sheer cold.

Immigration agents were ordered out across the country to find undocumented criminals. The governor ordered the state patrol to cooperate, which suggests that there will be raids in Iowa. Nothing yet to speak of. Deportation is the word, Trump promised. Hunt in churches and schools, the president ordered.

He denied new refugee asylum applications on his first day. Those who seek freedom from Venezuela will have to stay put. They feel the boot of Maduro and the threat of arrest, not freedom. He declared a national emergency at the border and ordered the military in. Pressure at the border as at an ebb, largely thanks to the cooperation of Mexico. The president of Mexico continued to urge Trump to moderate himself and think.

He might be listening. As president-elect, he was all about tariffs, certainly no free trader. As president, he is not so fulsome. He has backed off the threats with Mexico and Canada. His administration has heard about it. Agribusiness is nervous about exports. Prices have been bad enough. He is being careful with the Chinese. No rush on shutting down TikTok. Maybe Elon Musk or Larry Ellison could own it, Trump said. Or, maybe the Chinese could.

It was windy outside, too. Plenty of it for the turbines that power over half of Iowa’s needs. The president put a halt to plans for new installations. He wants studies done on birds killed. More birds are killed by avian flu than wind turbines by a country mile. He issued no orders about avian flu, eerily reminiscent of his first term. Vaccines are at hand but are not deployed, awaiting the green light from RFK2. Also of note: House cats kill more birds than turbines. We know that President Trump is concerned about cats, too, as he accused Haitians of eating them. They are not feeling so free in Springfield, Ohio.

Or Storm Lake. When will the big shoe drop? When will the raid come? It has happened here before. It doesn’t really matter if a raid ever comes so long as you can hold a town’s entire working class in fear. That is the point. Fear is control. Control is power, and power is freedom.

Nothing changed on Monday for the produce man. It’s always cold in January. The avocados came from Mexico no matter the weather or the politics.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this editorial 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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