Roiling us into the new year
Former President Donald Trump at the Cy-Hawk football game Sept. 9, 2023. Photo by Daniel Jacobi II, Iowa State Daily.
With Donald Trump bellering about immigrants poisoning our blood, it is hard not to approach 2024 with a measure of fear and a dash of loathing.
The New Year rings in with the Iowa Caucuses just around the bend at Jan. 15. Trump holds a commanding lead. He grows stronger with every legal challenge because so many people think the whole game is rigged.
The US Supreme Court should have to decide before Jan. 15, one would think, whether Trump may remain on the Colorado ballot after courts found that he caused an insurrection in trying to overthrow the 2020 election. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is clear enough to the courtesy driver for the mechanic shop: If an “official” participates in an insurrection, as Trump did on Jan. 6, he is ineligible to run for president. He has survived so far by dragging things out. If he wins the caucuses by 20 points, it might not matter what the Supreme Court thinks. He already will be the presumptive nominee.
Trump pledges to be a dictator. Biden says this is all about saving democracy, just like 2020.
Young people are turned off. Older people think it doesn’t really matter, red or blue, because the the people who run things are gonna do what they are gonna do, you can’t fight city hall or Uncle Sam, and Iowa’s base wage is half what it was 50 years ago in real terms. Civil rights belong to those who can afford them.
It will be gut-wrenching to watch, if you can. People are tuning out from national news because they’re only presented problems that foster arguments without solutions.
Everything is cast against that backdrop.
The economy is cruising along with falling inflation, flattening interest rates and record-low unemployment. The auto workers just got a big pay raise, and so did the UPS driver.
Trump says the USA is going to Hell. Biden says there is nothing we cannot do if we put our shoulder to it. We butt heads for exercise because it feels so productive.
It makes you want to drown in drink on New Year’s Eve.
The legislature also convenes in January. It is positioned to gut income taxes and the Iowa Tuition Grant that keeps the Beavers working. A full abortion ban could take effect pending a ruling by the Iowa Supreme Court, just like Texas. (When did we become Texas without the money?) We’re still bound up in banning books.
However …
Voters roundly rejected the book banners and queer bashers in municipal and school elections across Iowa in November. Gov. Kim Reynolds, who transformed us from Iowa Nice to Nasty, is grinding on the body politic. Her endorsement of Ron DeSantis wasn’t worth a hill of beans. Wishful thinking in the capitol has it that she will not run for re-election in 2026. Democrats show signs of sparks in the ashes.
This being an election year could bail out Storm Lake. We have about $80 million in water system improvement needs. The system is failing. The tap nearly shut off last summer when RAGBRAI rolled through. If this system fails, it will be a catastrophe on many levels — for food security, workers and livestock producers. We are close. Last week USDA Iowa Rural Development Director Theresa Greenfield told me she wants to help find a solution. Storm Lake has been turned down for aid twice by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a grant. Greenfield has low-interest loans from USDA but not grants. Storm Lake doesn’t need a loan, we need cash. Let’s hope city hall can get working with her, because this is a regional and national issue that cannot wait until 2025. Without help, our water rates will go through the roof. The city and Tyson have their terms already set in contract, so we plebes are left to swallow the fee increases. Storm Lake is subsidizing cheap meat.
Also, the Buena Vista County Board Supervisors sounds open to some sort of settlement with the city over the misallocation of millions of dollars in tax increment financing. They have an election to be concerned about, too. They actually might get the Storm Lake Marina reopened.
We remain locked in a long drought, but it shows signs of relenting. Not a White Christmas, but a wet one and we’ll sure take it. Land prices are stable. Farm income is good. Lake Avenue is healthy. The Tornadoes have a sophomore baller who can jam that rock all day long. We’re getting new housing. Walleyes are fat. The Cobb is back in business — who’da thunk? Rock on. The school is full. Neighbors who have to live with each other tend to work things out. It sure could be worse.
It sure will get worse if we keep up the words and deeds of destroying people, throwing out their civil rights, and terrorizing Latinos who could make America greater if we let them. It could happen next year if we give up on decency. Somehow Iowa always manages to tap into its core and come back to its senses. Past is not always prologue, which is where the loathing roils.
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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Wow! So curmudgeon Cullen is actually a closet optimist? Who knew? But actually hard not to be if you truly love Iowa as he obviously does.
Start with decency, as Art wrote, and follow that 'do unto others' quote. We can be better. On other notes.... Art's aphorisms merit more attention. "He grows stronger with every legal challenge because so many people think the whole game is rigged." "Young people are turned off. Older people think it doesn’t really matter,.." . I have friends and relatives from young progressives to 60+ year conservative R's, and I hear that same drumbeat--the game is rigged. And this rigged trope benefits one wing of one party.
Another quote bears mention: "Civil rights belong to those who can afford them." I would add that the same friends and acquaintances are angry because health care is not free, nor is higher education, and housing is unaffordable. So, these same people get mad if others may make some progress on other rights, like civil rights.