Ignorant leaders and rotting grain
The USAID debacle is one element of a broad attack on American values that we must not tolerate
It might as well stay on the stalk, because Donald Trump is destroying markets for American crops. (Photo by Benjamin Jopen on Unsplash)
When I was a kid running around my Uncle Eugene’s farm during lazy Indiana summers, I learned a saying about what farmers liked. “Plant fencerow to fencerow,” they said in those days: that is, use all your available land and produce as much corn, wheat or soybeans as you can, and what we can’t consume here at home we can sell abroad. Farmers hate the idea of wasting food.
In a world where nine million people still die annually from malnutrition, sharing America’s agricultural abundance remains a good idea. But just now, Bloomberg News reports, about 40,000 tons of U.S.-grown grain is sitting in a warehouse in the east African city of Djibouti, at risk of spoiling in the humid heat. And that’s just the edge of it. That grain is part of a stockpile of about $500 million worth of emergency food aid, all of it bought by American taxpayers and not a bushel of it now being distributed — lifesaving food that is likely to be ruined by the incredibly ignorant notion that using the U.S. Agency for International Development to feed hungry people and build stability in societies worldwide somehow puts the United States at risk.1
What actually puts America at risk these days is the sloppy immorality of cocky billionaires — that is, of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the men who now run our federal government. The chaotic shutdown of USAID, until now the world’s largest development fund, reveals both how cavalier Trump is about the great trust that the nation’s voters placed in him and how untroubled he is by the suffering that trails his careless stewardship of that role.
If it were true that the leaders of USAID are “radical lunatics” engaged in massive corruption, as the president has claimed, or that USAID is “evil” and a “criminal organization,” as Musk has said, then there would be justification for shifting the well-intentioned work that Congress authorized the agency to undertake to some other bureaucracy. But there is no evidence to support those libels. And so the $2 billion in taxpayer funds that USAID paid farmers to buy their crops last year is going to waste, along with the produce that money bought.
I’d like to think my late uncle, the Hoosier farmer, would be angry about that. But he was a devoted Republican, and these days vanishingly few in the party are willing to risk the bully’s wrath by calling out the mindless self-immolation of our government that Trump has sparked. The excesses of Trumpism are broad and deep enough that they aren’t going unnoticed by Republican officials, certainly; we can only infer, sadly, that fear of political ostracism has caused a numbness to reality to settle over the partisan ranks.
So the shameful silence that empowers Trump’s malfeasance likely will last until the buildup of offenses finally outrages a majority of voters or provokes a global conflict that cannot be ignored. Until then, we can only hope that the Constitution holds.
Looking toward the Midwest of my childhood from my home in the Northeast, it’s at first hard for me to imagine why there’s not already a ruckus about Trump’s wanton destruction of viable markets for American farm products. Of course, it’s not just the farmers who might find Trump’s moves aggravating; the trade war that he has provoked will hurt everyone. So where are the people I once knew?
The Washington-based Tax Foundation projects that the Trump-threatened tariffs on Mexico and Canada will produce scarcities caused by disrupted supply chains, as well as higher costs for U.S.-based businesses, the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and higher consumer prices. And the impact will be felt most heavily in red states: In the Midwest, gasoline at the pump is likely to surge by as much as 50 cents per gallon, and the price of a typical new car will probably rise by $3,000 on average. That will drag down the economy of such auto-producing red states as Mississippi and South Carolina, as well as the swing state of Michigan.2
You might explain the absence of an outcry about the closing off of America’s markets by the human tendency toward confirmation bias. That is, we see new information, whatever it may be, as simply confirming what we already believe. It’s hard for people who voted for Trump to think he would betray them so abruptly, so they’re more likely to believe that “radical lunatics” really did, in fact, somehow worm their way into the USAID bureaucracy, there to do bad deeds (yet unspecified) until they were uncovered by the relentless probing of those billionaire do-gooders, Trump and Musk.
But there’s also the Fox factor: People can’t know what’s really happening if they’re tuned to dishonest media outlets that don’t report the facts, which notably describes Fox News, the Trump administration’s major propaganda organ. Fox host Sean Hannity explained away any pesky complaints about Elon Musk’s sweep through Washington by saying, “They hate Musk because he’s exposing all of this misappropriation of your hard-earned tax dollars.”3
Yes, that must be it: Any of us who are complaining about the legally dubious destructiveness of an unelected right-wing radical — the guy, remember, who twice offered a Nazi salute at a Trump inauguration party, and who regularly elevates racist conspiracy theories and flamboyant lies on his social media site — must actually want to see our tax dollars misappropriated. Why else might we be unhappy?
Well, maybe we’re upset by the economic impact of this scythe-wielding. Or it could be that we mourn the loss of global good will that will follow America’s betrayal of partners in society-building around the world — and the national security risk posed by that dynamic. That, after all, is only too familiar to nations that have been our disappointed allies over the years, because political ambition here often crushes hopes abroad. Ask Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine about that just now, as Trump and the TV host he installed to lead the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, abruptly switch sides in the war Russia started, and demand an end to the brave resistance mounted by Ukrainians. Or check in with the Afghanis who worked with U.S. troops and diplomats during our two decades of military involvement in their country. Because of Trump’s suspension of refugee programs last month, thousands of them are now denied entry to the U.S. and fearing Taliban retribution.
And then there’s the lethal risk facing those who are losing access to food and medicine because of the shutdown of USAID. Chemonics, an employee-owned U.S. firm that has a contract to carry out some of the work of USAID, has $240 million worth of medicine and health goods in the supply chain and another $150 million worth of material stranded in warehouses that could soon be unusable, Reuters reporting notes. Not administering those supplies, Chemonics said in a just-filed lawsuit, could lead to more than a half-million deaths.4
Yes, only “radical lunatics,” Mr. President, would worry about all that. Say what you will, then: Here we stand.
If Americans are truly the good people we have claimed to be throughout my lifetime — posturing as protectors of freedom and supporters of justice and peace here and abroad — we will be outraged by the harm being done in our name and the risk being created by the dismantling of our government. USAID is only one part of the deeply troubling early record of the 47th presidency, but it is indicative of the depth of depravity that characterizes so much of our government in this moment.
There is a sense of dismay and disbelief among millions of Americans — not yet a majority, it seems, but surely a rapidly growing number — at the chaos and damage that have swiftly accompanied the first weeks of the second Trump term. People who have suffered great personal loss recognize the feeling: that moment upon awakening in the morning, perhaps, when you abruptly recall that a loved one has died or a calamity has occurred. That sort of pain strikes many of us regularly these days, leading us sometimes to conclude that we ought to try to erase the reality of this Trump presidency from our consciousness, maybe by turning away from trying to do anything about it. It’s too depressing, even exhausting, to step into the fray.
This week a well-meaning friend advocated just that course. Standing in front of me and gesturing with her finger as though drawing a circle around herself, she said, “I can take care of this space right here, and that’s all.”
But how, then, might the harm be stopped? Attractive as apathy in service of self-preservation may seem, what does it say about our moral obligation to each other, which is a core teaching of every major religion?
Don’t expect congressional pushback, because Democrats aren’t empowered and the entire Republican majority has been cowed into submitting to Trump’s will. It’s unrealistic to await leadership from the business community, because fear that a punitive administration will seek revenge is silencing most of the commercial world (especially businesses that are subject to federal regulation). Yes, courts are moving forward with dozens of cases that were quickly filed by those who can point to damage they’ve suffered at Trump’s hand, but adjudication takes a lot of time, and there are growing signs that Trump may be eager to defy court orders, anyway, in order to provoke a constitutional crisis that he imagines will give him more power.
So that leaves us. The disappointment or anger or disbelief we feel at what’s coming out of Washington can’t end in itself; tut-tutting about Trump or shrugging like a helpless waif — “Oh, what can we do?” — is so feeble as to be inhumane when livelihoods and lives are at stake and the nation’s future is on the line. What has happened to USAID is a single element of a broad and disastrous attack on American values that we must not tolerate.
It’s time to stand up, to be ready to make noise and demand that we get our country back. Let’s embrace our outrage, and channel it into support for the causes and individuals who are battling the immoral excesses wrought by the manipulative billionaires in Washington. Each of us must do what we can — in our personal relationships, our neighborhoods and broader communities or on a broader scale, if that’s where our skills lie.
This is a much changed nation from the easygoing country of my childhood, and a different place from what it was just weeks ago. But the values enunciated by our founders — justice, equality, freedom and liberty for all — are worth fighting for. If we fail to stand up for them now, we will share responsibility for the betrayal of our heritage and the laying waste to our future that we are now witnessing at the highest levels of power in our land.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-13/usaid-freeze-costs-jobs-cuts-wasted-food-and-medical-supplies-add-up?srnd=homepage-americas&leadSource=uverify%20wall&embedded-checkout=true
https://www.cfr.org/article/what-trumps-trade-war-would-mean-nine-charts
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/WhctKLbVdbvQnHLBNLSRKRkJlfGnHXRKSnQsndZLvXXsmggDFfTCWNknwwxGfvwDXcxbXCl
https://www.reuters.com/legal/usaid-contractors-join-others-suing-trump-administration-over-dismantling-agency-2025-02-11/
WHAT’S YOUR VIEW?
This essay suggests that it’s time to shake off the shock of Donald Trump’s return and step up to activism that can counter his dismantling of government. What ideas to you have to add to the conversation? How should we respond to today’s challenges?
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MORE FROM THE UPSTATE AMERICAN
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-Rex Smith
Ignorant? Who wrote your headline, Rex? It is calculated, malignant and inhumane. But not ignorant.