An old friend of mine who is a rancher has been somewhat active in this year's election cycle. He is, of course, a far right Republican.
I say of course as just about every rancher and farmer in Wyoming over the age of 40, and quite a few over the age of 35, are diehard right wing full blown MAGA Republicans. Below the age of 40 things start to change a lot. Most are Republicans, but a lot aren't diehard. They're Republicans the same way everyone in Wyoming is a Republican, pretty much. Generally conservative.
But above 40, they're in lockstep with Donald Trump.
My friend, this cycle, had a big Chuck Gray up near the DOT fence. This wasn't too surprising as his grandson works for Gray.* **
Well, now, all of a sudden the noted friend is posting on the disaster of letting foreign beef into the country. So are a bunch of other ranchers I know.
The Republican Party has been pretty much screwing ranchers and farmers since 1929. It was the Democrats who save farmers and ranchers during the Great Depression. Most small and mid sized ranches would have been utterly destroyed but for the Taylor Grazing Act.
The Trump Administration, for its part, looks at farmers and ranchers the way the Democrats once looked at African Americans, people who could reliably be counted on to vote for the party no matter what. In recent election cycles African Americans proved they were no longer reliable. So far, people in Agriculture aren't showing any thought at all.
Indeed, they're showing cognitive disconnected.
This morning I've seen all sorts of complaints from ranchers about how they're getting killed in this economy, as noted.
And now Trump's bringing in below market cost foreign beef.
No shit. YOU VOTED FOR IT.
Inflation, particularly of fuel, caused by Donald Trump's pet illegal war. The same with fertilizer costs.
WAKE THE CRAP UP.
The GOP is not coming to save you. It's coming to screw you.
Indeed, trade talks just broke off with Canada.
Double digit inflation, caused by a massive rise in energy costs, is about to occur.
Footnotes:
Gray has more affection for Trump than Natalie Harp and Melanija Knavs combined.
The grandson is an interesting case in and of himself. He's undoubtedly the first member of his extended family to go to university. He's in law school right now. He's also a diehard MAGA, and indeed, maybe even beyond that. Now the question of how that happens is another matter.
The common myth, and it is a myth, about young people in conservative homes is that they go to college, where they lose all of their values, and their faith, emerging hardcore screaming liberals if not Bolsheviks. This is, it is believed, because they're indoctrinated in college by leftist professors.
It's largely bull and in the scientific disciplines definitely bull. Majors in geology, for example, aren't going to have time for liberal indoctrination.
For that matter, majors in English probably don't either.
So what's going on here.
Well, a person from a really conservative Protestant background may in fact find a lot of what they learn in college shocking. The Earth isn't 5,000 years old. Evolution isn't a fib. Conquering the West wasn't bringing enlightenment to an oppressed people and, in fact, some of those being conquered where already Christian. The US isn't bestowed by God with a new Israelite like mission, and for that matter, the modern state of Israel does some outright horrible things.
Faced with that onslaught, young people are in fact faced with the choice of accepting that Pastor Jim back at his own do it yourself Evangelical Church is flat out wrong on a lot of stuff, and Mom and Dad are ignorant, or concluding that everything they're being taught is a fib.
Most will conclude, to some degree, that Pastor Jim is wrong on a lot, and that Mom and Dad are ignorant on a lot of stuff.
Now, I'll note, this shouldn't impact member of the Apostolic faiths at all, but in the US some Apostolic Christians are heavily Protestantized and have bought in, through ignorance, to a lot of what the Evangelical far right believes.
Anyhow, a lot of this is about to collapse on an enormous scale, as we'll soon see.
**There was a good Republican candidate running against Gray, Christensen. He had worked for the BLM.
Well, we're getting instead a Californian who worked for his daddy's radio station.
