Farmers keep going. So do soldiers. And us?
Lessons of the fall in a time of national distress.
There are days of hard work year-around on a farm. But that’s the cycle of nature. (Photo by Đại Lộc Nguyễn Hữu on Unsplash)
On a day when they weren’t busy tending to their chickens and pigs and harvesting vegetables this week, my friends on the farm over the hill were cleaning a huge box of garlic cloves that they will soon plant to yield next year’s crop. Farm work is never done, of course, since there will be no harvest next year without this year’s planting. I remarked that it seemed exhausting, and the response that came wasn’t really surprising: There’s comfort in that cycle of nature, I was reminded; human foibles seem less significant in light of nature’s sure relentlessness.
It was a hopeful message, and one I needed to hear, because these are tough times in America, and there’s a risk of being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of bad news that rolls our way each day. I’ve been involved in professional journalism in one form or another since I was a teenager, so I’m probably as eager a news consumer as anybody you know, yet I often hesitate to pick up my phone in the morning because I’m afraid of the jolt generated by that first glance at the headlines.
And then what I read often makes me feel guilty, because a lot of what’s most troubling in those headlines doesn’t directly affect me – at least, not as much as it does other people. I was born a straight American male in a middle-class white Christian family in the mid-20th century, arguably the luckiest circumstance in history. Heck, with a couple more wives and a conscience resection, I might qualify for a job in the Trump administration.
Probably because of my background in the news industry, I seem to be a regular receptor of complaints from people who say they’re unsettled by the flow of current events: A few say there’s just too much Trump-related stuff, but many complain that the news media isn’t adequately covering one story or another. To which I have to say, of course not, since there’s usually another development – a Trumpian offense or outrage, typically, in my friends’ views – that displaces yesterday’s big story. News is as relentless as the farmers’ crop cycle.
But it’s true that these days are different: Stories that in another time would have been huge, drawing our focus for days or weeks – forcing a cabinet member to quit in shame, or even pushing an earlier president from office – seem now to be displaced with each succeeding news cycle. It’s unsettling: We don’t know where to set our focus, or how to decide what’s most deserving of our attention – or our fear, concern or rage.
Even talking about it leaves us breathless. Imagine, for example, how we might have handled the conversation about the big news of these last few days:
YOU: What the hell? Trump is sending troops into the streets of American cities and he’s intentionally provoking unrest so he can claim he needs to crack down. But maybe it’s just show. I should probably worry more that the White House is manipulating the legal system by indicting Trump’s political opponents on, if you’ll pardon the expression, trumped-up charges.
ME: Heard that one before. I don’t know how to measure which is worse, but if you’re weighing consequences, consider the threat to the free press: ICE is attacking journalists, and the government just deported an Emmy-winning reporter from Central America who was living legally in Georgia. And what about the Pentagon asserting control over what journalists are allowed to cover? Not to mention the FCC’s attempts to bring TV networks under its thumb – which actually might be working.
YOU: Yes, but if your hope is getting out of this mess in the next election, you’ve got to focus on the economy – that’s what moves votes, after all. So Trump says he’s going to raise tariffs to 100 percent on Chinese goods, and just the threat of it tanked financial markets. But, you know, there’s TACO – Trump Always Chickens Out – so maybe he won’t really follow through and make the economy even more unstable.
ME: Speaking of unstable, does Trump strike you as even more unbolted from reality these days? Scares the hell out of me. That speech to the generals demanding that they fight an “invasion from within” and use cities as “training grounds” was ominous; so was that comment by Pete Hegseth that generals who can’t conform to his political worldview should “do the honorable thing and resign.” Combine that with the voter suppression that’s quietly happening in so many states, and the gerrymandering that’s taking power away from voters, and here’s what’s true: Authoritarianism isn’t a threat; it is in fact taking root in America. We can’t turn our eyes away from that, not for one day.
YOU: This is too depressing. I didn’t come here to have you remind me of why I’m miserable.
If we had actually engaged in that conversation – which sounds to me like a plausible back-and-forth for these days – I would have eventually reminded you that we had overlooked a lot that deserves Americans’ attention. Like the ongoing government shutdown, with the healthcare for millions of Americans at stake. And the truce in Gaza, which thank God has come – but will it hold? And Ukraine: As winter nears, Russia has launched large-scale missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, and Vladimir Putin seems to be testing the West’s resolve by invading NATO airspace. Will we be resolute and save the embattled people of Ukraine?
We would be challenged to remember this, too: There’s suddenly very little talk about climate change, which some of us just a year ago were insisting was the overriding issue of our time. We also can’t focus enough on the challenge of making artificial intelligence a tool for human advancement rather than yielding humanity to its control. Nor are we paying much attention anymore to the continuing toll of addiction, except when it’s used as a political cudgel related to immigration, nor to the crisis confronting higher education, nor to racial injustice, nor to economic inequality, which drives so many of our divisions.
In short, we are overwhelmed by crises of our political system’s own making, to the point that we can’t help but neglect other vital goals, including endeavors that until recently we assumed would be priorities for building a better society and world. This isn’t just disheartening; it is often heartbreaking.
No wonder I don’t want to look at my phone in the morning. It’s a wonder that we’re willing to get out of bed.
But there’s something that we might consider that is surely well understood by every one of the stony-faced generals and admirals who had to absorb their civilian leaders’ embarrassing pitches for partisanship some days ago. In the military strategy training they all received, they learned about the value throughout history of a rear-guard action.
Those of us who don’t have military experience often fail to appreciate how battles can often shift between offensive and defensive postures, sometimes requiring a retreating army to carry out a defensive fight. That’s the classic definition of a rear-guard action.
An example was the 1940 Battle of Dunkirk, in which a hopelessly outnumbered British Expeditionary Force distracted the German army long enough to allow the evacuation of 338,000 surrounded Allied soldiers from the beaches and harbors of northern France, many on civilian pleasure craft and fishing boats. It was hardly an Allied victory – in a speech to Parliament, in fact, Winston Churchill called it “a colossal military disaster,” and indeed the BEF suffered 68,000 casualties during its defense of France. But in the same speech, Churchill famously lit the fuse of his nation’s resolve by vowing, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
The rear-guard action had saved the troops to fight another day. World War II was eventually won.
On mornings when the threat of overwhelmingly bad news tempts me to stay in bed, I’m rather perversely encouraged by remembering such awful moments of history. Humans have advanced notwithstanding terrible rulers that preceded Donald Trump and, in democracies, despite listless legislators like the cowardly Republicans who just now control Congress.
Hard times mark human history, and much of it was quite a bit more brutal than what we endure now. When we read in a history text that a city was “sacked,” it means that thousands or tens of thousands of people were murdered, their homes destroyed, their children’s futures lost. That is not our plight now, of course; we are simply being led by a buffoon who has persuaded many people to follow him – some of them ill-informed, others lacking a moral core. We can survive this, history instructs; it will require doing all that we can, but not giving up at the realization that we cannot expect to do any more than that.
For the farmer or gardener, after all, seasons turn – some requiring harder work than others, some with disappointing yields or crop failure, others with abundant produce arising from the right mixture of soil and moisture and sun. Even when the soil is parched or the seeds rot, there is hope in the cycle – as long as we stay at the task of tilling, planting, weeding and harvesting. That’s what the earth promises.
NEWSCLIPS FROM THE UPSTATES
Dispatches from our common ground *
Wherein we look around what we call the nation’s Upstates — those places just a bit removed from the center of things — to find illuminating news and intriguing viewpoints, which you might not otherwise see.
SOUTH DAKOTA
Farmers feeling (predictable) pain from Trump’s policies
There are 444 counties in the United States designated by the Agriculture Department as “farming-dependent,” and Donald Trump carried all but 11 of them in 2024, winning on average 77.7 percent of the vote in those places. Reporting in the Farm Belt suggests some of those voters are having second thoughts. Joshua Haiar reports in South Dakota Searchlight, a nonprofit newsroom, that Trump’s trade war has prompted China – which bought one-third of America’s soybean crop last year – to abruptly cancel all American soybean purchases, leading to a 20 percent drop in what South Dakota farmers are getting for their crops. Every $1 drop from the $11 a bushel average price last year costs South Dakota farmers $250 million, Haiar reports. Now China is buying soybeans from Argentina, a country with a troubled economy that Trump is bailing out with $20 billion in aid. Probably next in line for aid will be U.S. farmers, suggests Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who himself owns as much as $25 million of farmland in North Dakota. During Trump’s first term, the government provided $28 billion in farm support – really, turning farmers into reluctant welfare recipients – after his economic policies then similarly attacked his most loyal supporters.
NORTH CAROLINA
Hurricane took a toll, but seemingly taught no lessons
A year ago, Hurricane Helene struck Florida’s Big Bend region as one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the United States, devastating parts of Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas, claiming at least 227 lives and causing $80 billion in damages. This year’s Atlantic hurricane season has been relatively mild, but there are widespread concerns that the lessons of Helene have been lost, and systems haven’t been hardened to meet a future storm. Andrew R. Jones reports in the Ashville Watchdog, a nonprofit local news site in North Carolina, that nobody has fully explained why power outages lasted for weeks in the area, and the system is actually more vulnerable now than it was a year ago. Fixing the problem, Jones reported, will likely require either state or federal support that so far hasn’t materialized. “The business case alone does not support putting backup generators and providing backup connectivity to cell towers, especially in rural areas,” one expert said. The same is likely true in non-urban areas across the nation.
VERMONT
Republican governor isn’t afraid of Trump
In his last three campaigns for re-election, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a former champion stock car racer, has drawn more than two-thirds of the vote – remarkable support for a Republican, certainly, in a state that elects socialist Bernie Sanders to the U.S. Senate. Given his progressive stances on many issues, it’s perhaps no surprise that Scott recently declared that Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops in American cities violates the U.S. Constitution. In VTDigger, Vermont’s statewide nonprofit newsroom, Shaun Robinson reports that Scott told reporters he viewed Trump’s move as “unnecessary” and something that “further divides and threatens people.” Asked about Trump’s threat to jail Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker for “failing to protect” immigration agents in Chicago, Scott said he would be “on the forefront” of pushback if Trump tried to act. “I just think it’s wrong on many, many different levels,” the governor said.
WISCONSIN
Despite threats, Hispanic residents of Wisconsin celebrate
Door County is Wisconsin’s easternmost county, a peninsula sticking into Lake Michigan that is popular with tourists, and known as “Cape Cod of the Midwest” (by people who aren’t from the Midwest). Wisconsin’s population of Hispanic residents has been growing in recent years, and now numbers nearly a half-million. Last year for the first time there was a big public event in Door County to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. But as Emily Small reports in Door County Knock, a nonprofit news site in Sturgeon Bay, the county seat, the recent federal immigration crackdown targeting Hispanics had left people wondering if a festival this year would be a good idea. Organizers decided that it was, and hundreds showed up for an warm early-fall afternoon festival, including four newly-elected state legislators who have created a Wisconsin Legislative Hispanic Caucus. One organizer of the festival, who has lived in the community for 14 years, said, “If I can be celebrated just for being Hispanic, in a time where things are a little bit rough, you know, I’ll take it.”
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ENDNOTE
THANK YOU for reading The Upstate American, and for joining us in the conversation about our common ground, this great country. As we together navigate these challenging times, I hope you’ll join us again next week — or send me a message with ideas you’d like to see us address. I love to hear from readers.
-REX SMITH