“The Party has taught you all to be cunning, and whoever becomes too cunning loses all decency.”—Arthur Koestler in Darkness at Noon
I suspect most of my readers share my repugnance for the now repulsively-named Republican Party, no longer a political party per se but rather a secular religion that might as well go ahead and acronymnize its name to MAGA. If you can take nothing else of satisfaction from the past month, know this: Donald Trump and Elon Musk are almost daily exposing the cynicism and duplicity of Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig, Attorney General Brenna Bird and other Iowa MAGAns. Allow me to connect the dots for you.
Otherwise known as Captain VolCon (Voluntary Conservation), Naig, who along with his handlers at Farm Bureau and the Agribusiness Association of Iowa, has long been force feeding us the dogma of “regulation won’t work” when it comes to reducing farm-driven water pollution. This is not to say that farmers voluntarily adopting conservation measures is intrinsically bad, only that there is zero evidence that it’s a reasonable solution for the colossal, continental scale problem of nutrient pollution in our streams, lakes and aquifers.
Over the years VolCon and his predecessor Bill Northey have had plenty of help walking their voluntary-only dogma from the ag advocacy organizations, Iowa State University, and a few in the NGO world who love this dogma breed because it means money for them. But for the sake of argument, let’s say ‘voluntary only’ is the way to go. What did Beavis (Trump) and Butthead (Musk) just do? Well, they sicced their DOGE on the very employees tasked by USDA to deliver the services (and money) that inspire farmers to voluntarily adopt conservation practices in the first place, and fired a bunch of them. This along with Beavis’ cutoff of resources from USDA has caused partnering organizations like the Conservation Districts of Iowa to lay off their staffs (1). Practical Farmers of Iowa, perhaps the leading Iowa NGO when it comes to conservation delivery and technical services for farmers, reports more than half of their federal funding has been frozen. USDA is also firing Farm Service Agency loan officers, jeopardizing operation loans that farmers without the necessary cash need to buy seed, fertilizer and chemical. What type of farmer is that usually? Well, the smaller scale ones of course, so yet one more nudge toward consolidation.
So many USDA programs, especially conservation and climate programs, rely on the voluntary partnership between farmers and their community institutions. These recent actions betray the trust of farmers and serve to strengthen those who want to destroy conservation programs altogether. Our farmers and our conservation partners deserve better.
Aaron Lehman, President, Iowa Farmers’ Union
Also this week, 17 Republicans in the Iowa Senate sponsored a constitutional amendment to repeal the Natural Resources and Outdoor and Recreation Trust Fund, created by a yea vote of 63% of the voters in 2010. The legislature has refused to fund the trust ever since, as this would require an increase in the sales tax. But lo and behold, Rs now want to lower property taxes by raising the sales tax (which shifts the tax burden to lower income people) and they don’t want environmental projects gobbling up any of that money. So these mental giants assert that the nearly 2/3 of Iowans that voted for the fund were wrong and didn’t know what they were doing. By the way, one of them is Tom Shipley. Never mind that the trust fund would have supported VOLUNTARY conservation actions by farmers to improve water quality. During the hearing, Senator Mike Bousselot of Ankeny even went so far as to assign our water pollution to the long-discredited idea that lawns and golf courses are responsible, quite the statement considering Ankeny is pretty much ground zero for fanatical and chemically intense lawn care. Maybe Bousselot does actually know something and that something is that he is one of those guys that generously fertilizes his sidewalk and driveway so the border grass is green? Some people are saying.
And speaking of the trust fund, let’s wander over a couple of blocks from the capitol to the Iowa Attorney General’s office at east 13th and Walnut. Last October Iowa AG Brenna Bird, along with 24 other red state Attorneys General, filed an Amicus Brief (friend of the court) urging the U.S. Supreme Court to “Protect Farmers and Cities” from what she disparaged as “woke green activists” acting in their lawful capacity as plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit aimed to end a polluter’s non compliance with Clean Water Act regulations. In a clear refutation of long-time Republican dogma, Bird argues that the government needs protection from such citizens, and not vice versa. You could say Brenna just dunked on Thomas Jefferson. If government needs protection from the citizens, maybe all those guns out there in the hands of the populace are starting to scare even the Rs.
In other words, Bird says we can eliminate the citizen right to sue BECAUSE IOWA HAS A NATURAL RESOURCES TRUST FUND!!! Yes, the same unfunded trust fund that the 17 Republican clods in legislature want to repeal with a new constitutional amendment. The word hypocrisy no longer has meaning for these people as they brazenly spread misinformation to 3 million Iowans, blanketing our state with bullshit like so many crop dusters carpet bombing us with poisonous bioactive chemicals.
Darkness at Noon (quote at the beginning), published in 1940, is near the top of many ‘All Time Greatest Novel’ lists and made author Arthur Koestler a household name back when novelists could still be important political figures. The story is a fictionalization of the late 1930s Soviet show trials that purged old Bolsheviks as Josef Stalin consolidated his power. That summary may not excite many potential readers, but it is a powerful book and you can’t help but think of Trump, Musk and the rest their goon entourage as you read it. The pace of it reminds me of Truman Capote’s masterpiece In Cold Blood and like that book, Darkness at Noon tempts you to pity people who have committed heinous crimes.
Over and over, Koestler forces the reader to confront the role of truth in politics. In the end, truth hardly matters at all:
“History tells us that often lies serve her better than the truth; for man is sluggish and has to be led through the desert.”
“We know that virtue does not matter to history, and that crimes remain unpunished.”
“History is a priori amoral; it has no conscience. To conduct history according to the maxims of the Sunday school means to leave everything as is.”
“The principle that the end justifies the means is and remains the only rule of political ethics; anything else is just vague chatter and melts away between one’s fingers.”
I could not read these lines without thinking about Trump and any number of Iowa Republicans, including Naig, Bird, Bousselot and whomever else you might want to name. The idea that they care about clean water or cancer or the environment is so far from reality that I wonder about their sense of decency when I hear such things. Naig especially would just as soon piss on your grave after you die of ag-induced cancer before agreeing that agriculture should be forced to change even one goddamn thing about the existing production system. Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong.
The callousness of today’s Republicans is on full display everywhere you look, from firing thousands of people ‘for cause’ to stomping on cancer research to letting hungry Africans fend for themselves to helping billionaires get richer at the expense of the rest of us.
Almost all democrats claim they have no power to stop this, because, without control of any branch of government, they say they have no ‘lever.’ I say hogwash to that—we, you and I, are the lever.
Rot flows from DM to DC as our own US Senators, designated by the founders to act as guardrails against corruption, instead act like Stalin lapdogs. Chuck Grassley would have us believe he’s a yeoman farmer and Joni Ernst a soldier loyal only to the Constitution, when in fact they’re nothing more than palace stooges taking deep breaths so they can be ready to blow smoke between Dear Leader’s butt cheeks as he and Butthead fleece the country and humiliate ordinary and hardworking Iowans.
When faced with the threat of a Trump-Musk Oligarchy putting ruinous pressures on farm programs and export markets, Grassley wilts and gazes at his own political shoes, while Ernst runs for cover. Naig, Bird, Reynolds, Grassley, Ernst and the rest of the Iowa Republicans could make it easier for their fellow Iowans by saying enough is enough to Trump. Maybe, just maybe, Trump and Musk and their billionaire minions will harm these office-holders’ core constituencies enough to inspire some resistance from these pathetic cowards. Count me as skeptical. I see no datapoints supporting that outcome.
Note on Koestler:
Arthur Koestler (1905-1983) lived a life filled with drama and tumult. Born in Austria-Hungary of Jewish parents, he narrowly evaded the Nazis in 1940 through the escape route made famous by the movie Casablanca: South of France to Morocco to Portugal to England. The manuscript of Darkness at Noon barely made it out of a France falling to the Nazis, this through the efforts of his female companion at the time, English sculptor Daphne Hardy, who translated Koestler’s native German. An original copy of the German manuscript was found in Switzerland in 2019, and it has been re-translated since. The book’s greatness is so profound that some attribute to it France’s 1946 rejection of communism. Koestler attempted suicide three times, the last being successful (along with his wife’s). He was posthumously exposed as a serial abuser of women, including French philosopher/writer Simone de Beauvoir. A fascinating account of Koestler and the book can found here.
1) Morning Ag Clips, February 20, 2025, USDA Firings and Program Cuts Undermine Conservation Efforts in Iowa.
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Arnold Garson: Second Thoughts, Okoboji and Sioux Falls
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Chris Gloninger: Weathering Climate Change, US
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Black Iowa News: Dana James, Iowa
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Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo
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Letters From Iowans
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Alison McGaughey: The Inquisitive Quad Citizen, Quad Cities
Kurtis Meyer: Showing Up, St. Ansgar
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Jeff Morrison: Between Two Rivers, Cedar Rapids
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Jane Nguyen: The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines
John Naughton: My Life in Color, Des Moines
Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines
Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politics Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.
Dave Price: Dave Price’s Perspective, Des Moines
Ty Rushing :Ty’s Take, Iowa City
Steve Semken: Ice Cube Press, LLC, North Liberty
Macey Shofroth: The Midwest Creative, Norwalk
Larry Stone: Listening to the Land, Elkader
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona
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Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County
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