Flatlining Democracy

By JIM VAN DER POL

Well, as I worried last month, we did indeed lose our local state representative. He fell in a pretty big way to big money and the big-time right-wing rage machine, after spending his three two-year terms in the state House supporting a decent level of funding for all schools, but especially rural ones, independent and public agricultural research at the University of Minnesota, health care for all, a respectable tax contribution from the top 2% of taxpayers leading to a reality based balanced state budget, and an increase in the minimum wage. This loss seems to be a very common story across grazing country, describing the fate of many a promising local/state candidate, incumbent or not. So a heads up, folks. We are going to talk politics this time.

This goes against the grain for rural folks. We learn to be careful of religion and politics. And I always chuckle when I hear urban/suburban folk — I was one of these for eight years in the ‘70s — smirk about “stultifying small towns where you can’t express an opinion.” Those of us in those towns and on those surrounding farms know very well that the discouragement of excess political talk springs out of a sure knowledge that each of us may one day desperately need the help of someone with whom we do not agree politically. We want to be careful of fouling the nest. Compare this to the cheap and sometimes loudly expressed opinions of an urban citizen who has managed to surround himself with people on the street, in the neighborhood or on the internet that think just as he does and whose livelihood in the anonymous city depends not at all on what anyone thinks of his politics!

Our democracy is flatlining. Representative government is in tough shape. We must talk. And to do that I need to lay out a ground rule. While I am myself a progressive, believing strongly in the issues in the first paragraph and some others having to do with government being useful to its citizens, I see that many graziers and other rural people are libertarian in orientation, based upon the fact they do not see that they have been particularly helped or looked out for by government, indeed that government is often found tilting the table to the benefit of the wrong side, especially in agriculture. The ground rule is that, for my purposes, the changes I would argue in favor of should be important to progressives and libertarians. While they disagree about the size of government, I assume that both groups are concerned that it be good government. I respect us graziers for our independence of mind and willingness to buck the trends and I want as many as possible with me at least part of the way I want to go politically!

I also want the argument between rival political groups to be open and honest and occurring in Congress as well as main street, not dirty and underhanded and consisting basically of televised character assassination. That is how good government is made. How to do this?

Get control of the money. Politics sponsored by money benefits only money and it destroys democracy. Representatives in a representative democracy ought to be representing the citizens only. There are several things that can be done. As I suggested last time, television advertising is the source of most of the problem, and that could be cured by a change in the way we the people allow our airwaves and cyberspace and cable to be used. Political advertising needs to be free and even handed, available to any opinion-not just two-that has a certain level of public support and it ought to be restricted to two weeks before the election only. This will help us take it seriously. Other nations do this. The current situation, where we allow rich communications empires to pollute and poison our political climate and our minds in return for huge amounts of cash, cannot continue. We offer them basically a license to print money each election cycle and it must stop.

For the remainder of the problem, things such as direct mailing, billboards, robocalls and the like, we could institute simple public financing of all elections. Even this right wing Supreme Court has left room for that. It could just be done by statute, though a constitutional amendment getting control of our corporations would be a positive good in itself for all of us. This fiction that a pile of money is somehow a person is degenerate and cheapens human life. And the idea that an individual can thrive in free and open competition with a multi billion dollar corporation is fantasy.

These are all straightforward suggestions. They would go far to getting our government and people back on a good course, where important issues of the day are seriously debated at all levels and where cheap smears do not always win the day. But they will not happen. Here is why:

We viewed the movie GMO OMG the other day. This movie, about the presence of genetically modified organisms in our food supply, opens with interviews of people who have no idea what GMO means or what it is. Genetic engineering is important to us on our farm as we are concerned about the health and reproductive capacity of our breeding stock and the health of our soil, but also because it is a growing concern for many of our customers, who hope it isn’t in their food. Genetically modified organisms, whether they are good or not have been quietly foisted on us by huge seed and chemical companies, the grain trade, in collusion with our universities, with plentiful help from Wall Street, and with no independent research into their long term safety either in the environment or in our bodies. It is difficult to believe that in this country, with large research Universities strewn about from coast to coast there is not one ongoing trial of the impact of genetically modified feed grains on livestock happening. This is certainly an important issue of the day.

The alarming thing about the people who knew nothing about genetic engineering and its products is that it takes no great imagination to see that more than a few of them would probably know the name of their local professional football team, where it plays and who the quarterback is. We as a people appear to know very much about things that matter very little, and very little about critical issues. This is not a recipe for a successful democracy which must be based on an active and aware (awake) citizenry. Consider the situation in agriculture. Any livestock farmer who has ever opened the gate to let his cows to grass and then tried to learn how to manage that grass knows the feeling. It seemed to me at the time I had moved into the zoo. People drove by slow on the road and gawked at me. I noticed a reluctance to talk casually with me in town, a certain standoffishness in the whole group of farmers. I found I needed to make a concerted effort to overcome this through participation in civic groups, partly, but also by taking a real interest in the kind of farming my neighbors are doing. You see, they are afraid. Not of me, but of the fact that I am thinking. We have learned this, we Americans. We honor and enjoy each other’s personality traits, but not focused and serious thinking. And we are afraid of talking to anyone who we suspect of thinking. There is a billboard advertising guidance systems on the other side of my town this fall. It is a photo of the view of a dozen or so corn rows through the curved glass of a combine cab. The legend reads: “Finally, hands free corn harvesting!” It is important to realize that this drastic language raises no concern in the crops farmer who reads it. He registers just one more tool to help him out. I see in it the logical end of independent crop agriculture. Perhaps I need to say that in town regularly.

We are losing our Republic. If the last election shows anything, that is it. The elites are taking it from us on their way to empire. Or maybe, we carelessly discarded it. Maybe both. The matter is now far beyond the ability of experts to fix and must be taken up by ordinary people in their everyday lives. This is an observation Alan Savory and Wendell Berry have both made ring in connection with desertification, agriculture, land and community destruction. I now add the recovery of our Republic to this list. We must support each other across political lines. We must be willing to learn, honor learning, and pay attention to serious matters. I am not optimistic, but I have hope.

Jim Van Der Pol farms near Kerkhoven, Minn. A collection of his columns, Conversations with the Land, was published by No Bull Press (nobullpressonline.com).

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2015

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