H.L. Menkin: Let the farmer, so far as I am concerned, be damned forevermore. To Hell with him, and bad luck to him. He is a tedious fraud and ignoramus, a cheap rogue and hypocrite, the eternal Jack of the human pack. He deserves all that he ever suffers under our economic system, and more. Any city man, not insane, who sheds tears for him is shedding tears of the crocodile.

No more grasping, selfish and dishonest mammal, indeed, is known to students of the Anthropoidea. When the going is good for him he robs the rest of us up to the extreme limit of our endurance; when the going is bad he comes bawling for help out of the public till. Has anyone ever heard of a farmer making any sacrifice of his own interests, however slight, to the common good? Has anyone ever heard of a farmer practising or advocating any political idea that was not absolutely self-seeking — that was not, in fact, deliberately designed to loot the rest of us to his gain? Greenbackism, free silver, the government guarantee of prices, bonuses, all the complex fiscal imbecilities of the cow State John Baptists — these are the contributions of the virtuous husbandmen to American political theory. There has never been a time, in good seasons or bad, when his hands were not itching for more; there has never been a time when he was not ready to support any charlatan, however grotesque, who promised to get it for him. Only one issue ever fetches him, and that is the issue of his own profit. He must be promised something definite and valuable, to be paid to him alone, or he is off after some other mountebank. He simply cannot imagine himself as a citizen of a commonwealth, in duty bound to give as well as take; he can imagine himself only as getting all and giving nothing.

Yet we are asked to venerate this prehensile moron as the Ur-burgher, the citizen par excellence, the foundation-stone of the state! And why? Because he produces something that all of us must have — that we must get somehow on penalty of death. And how do we get it from him? By submitting helplessly to his unconscionable blackmailing by paying him, not under any rule of reason, but in proportion to his roguery and incompetence, and hence to the direness of our need. I doubt that the human race, as a whole, would submit to that sort of high-jacking, year in and year out, from any other necessary class of men. But the farmers carry it on incessantly, without challenge or reprisal, and the only thing that keeps them from reducing us, at intervals, to actual famine is their own imbecile knavery. They are all willing and eager to pillage us by starving us, but they can’t do it because they can’t resist attempts to swindle each other. Recall, for example, the case of the cottongrowers in the South. Back in the 1920s they agreed among themselves to cut down the cotton acreage in order to inflate the price — and instantly every party to the agreement began planting more cotton in order to profit by the abstinence of his neighbors. That abstinence being wholly imaginary, the price of cotton fell instead of going up — and then the entire pack of scoundrels began demanding assistance from the national treasury — in brief, began demanding that the rest of us indemnify them for the failure of their plot to blackmail us.

The same demand is made sempiternally by the wheat farmers of the Middle West. It is the theory of the zanies who perform at Washington that a grower of wheat devotes himself to that banal art in a philanthropic and patriotic spirit — that he plants and harvests his crop in order that the folks of the cities may not go without bread. It is the plain fact that he raises wheat because it takes less labor than any other crop — because it enables him, after working no more than sixty days a year, to loaf the rest of the twelve months. If wheat-raising could be taken out of the hands of such lazy fellahin and organized as the production of iron or cement is organized, the price might be reduced by two-thirds, and still leave a large profit for entrepreneurs. But what would become of the farmers? Well, what rational man gives a hoot? If wheat went to $10 a bushel tomorrow, and all the workmen of the cities became slaves in name as well as in fact, no farmer in this grand land of freedom would consent voluntarily to a reduction of as much as 1/8 of a cent a bushel. “The greatest wolves,” said E. W. Howe, a graduate of the farm, “are the farmers who bring produce to town to sell.” Wolves? Let us not insult Canis lupus. I move the substitution of Hyæna hyæna.

Meanwhile, how much truth is in the common theory that the husbandman is harassed and looted by our economic system, that the men of the cities prey upon him — specifically, that he is the chronic victim of such devices as the tariff, railroad regulation, and the banking system? So far as I can make out, there is none whatever. The net effect of our present banking system is that the money accumulated by the cities is used to finance the farmers, and that they employ it to blackmail the cities. As for the tariff, is it a fact that it damages the farmer, or benefits him? Let us turn for light to the worst tariff act ever heard of in human history: that of 1922. It put a duty of 30 cents a bushel on wheat, and so barred out Canadian wheat, and gave the American farmer a vast and unfair advantage. For months running the difference in the price of wheat on the two sides of the American-Canadian border — wheat raised on farms not a mile apart — ran from 25 to 30 cents a bushel. Danish butter was barred out by a duty of 8 cents a pound — and the American farmer pocketed the 8 cents. Potatoes carried a duty of 50 cents a hundredweight — and the potato-growers of Maine, eager to mop up, raised such an enormous crop that the market was glutted, and they went bankrupt, and began bawling out for government aid. High duties were put, too, upon meats, upon cheese, upon wool — in brief, upon practically everything that the farmer produced. But his profits were taken from him by even higher duties upon manufactured goods, and by high freight rates? Were they, indeed? There was, in fact, no duty at all upon many of the things he consumed. There was no duty, for example, upon shoes. The duty upon woolen goods gave a smaller advantage to the manufacturer than the duty on wool gave to the farmer. So with the duty on cotton goods. Automobiles were cheaper in the United States than anywhere else on earth. So were all agricultural implements. So were groceries. So were fertilizers.

But here I come to the brink of an abyss of statistics, and had better haul up. The enlightened reader is invited to investigate them for himself; they will bring him, I believe, some surprises. They by no means exhaust the case against the consecrated husbandman. I have said that the only political idea he can grasp is one which promises him a direct profit. It is, alas, not quite true: he can also grasp one which has the sole effect of annoying and damaging his enemy, the city man. The same mountebanks who get to Washington by promising to augment his gains and make good his losses devote whatever time is left over from that enterprise to saddling the rest of us with oppressive and idiotic laws, all hatched on the farm. There, where the cows low through the still night, and the jug of Peruna stands behind the stove, and bathing begins, as at Biarritz, with the vernal equinox — there is the reservoir of all the nonsensical legislation which makes the United States a buffoon among the great nations. It was among country Methodists, practitioners of a theology degraded almost to the level of voodooism, that Prohibition was invented, and it was by country Methodists, nine-tenths of them actual followers of the plow, that it was fastened upon the rest of us, to the damage of our bank accounts, our dignity and our viscera. What lay under it, and under all the other crazy enactments of its category, was no more and no less than the yokel’s congenital and incurable hatred of the city man — his simian rage against everyone who, as he sees it, is having a better time than he is.

The same animus is visible in innumerable other moral statutes, all ardently supported by the peasantry. For example, the Mann Act. The aim of this amazing law, of course, is not to put down adultery; it is simply to put down that variety of adultery which is most agreeable. What got it upon the books was the constant gabble in the rural newspapers about the byzantine debaucheries of urban antinomians — rich stockbrokers who frequented Atlantic City from Friday to Monday, movie actors who traveled about the country with beautiful wenches, and so on. Such aphrodisiacal tales, read beside the kitchen-stove by hinds condemned to monogamous misery with stupid, unclean and ill-natured wives, naturally aroused in them a vast detestation of errant cockneys, and this detestation eventually rolled up enough force to attract the attention of the quacks who make laws at Washington. The result was the Mann Act. Since then a number of the cow States have passed Mann Acts of their own, usually forbidding the use of automobiles “for immoral purposes.” But there is nowhere a law forbidding the use of cow-stables, hay-ricks or other such familiar rustic ateliers of sin. That is to say, there is nowhere a law forbidding yokels to drag virgins into infamy by the crude technic practised since Tertiary times on the farms; there are only laws forbidding city youths to do it according to the refined technic of the great Babylons.

Such are the sweet-smelling and altruistic agronomists whose sorrows are the Leitmotiv of our politics, whose welfare is alleged to be the chief end of democratic statecraft, whose patriotism is the so-called bulwark of this so-called Republic.

Died doing what he loved the most: choking on gallons of his own cum.

Looks interesting, but I think I’ll be waiting for a sale.

Void War is an awesome game, been loving the quick iterative update cycle. New ship dropped in the beta branch today, I know what I’m doing after work!

Been playing some Rimworld recently, since Vanilla Expanded-Gravship Weapons dropped.

I have a game of EU4 running, Savoy just became Italy, and I think I’m on track to form the Roman Empire sooner than later.

OH GOOD GAWD THE CHILDREN

Dr Jared Cooney Horvath, a former teacher-turned-neuroscientist, told the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that even though Gen Z spent more time in school than those in the 20th century, their intelligence levels dropped considerably. He said the current methods of education that rely on technology have led to the generation losing out big time. He shared data that he says clearly shows that cognitive abilities started to decline around 2010.

Wow, is the article writer “Gen Z”, with no understanding of how quotations, or, how the English language is traditionally used?

For someone having the original thought of bemoaning a generational intelligence gap (first time ever! woaw!), they sure don’t understand how to write an article without giving the impression of a mental disability.

Tom Cotton has a REALLY FUNNY tit for tat response if he wants one…

Can’t let OP get away with pointing out racism

The facial hair thing started before they really let African people into the army as a way to ensure a good gas mask seal during WW1. I think it’s a dumb rule enforced only for some amorphous idea of “discipline” nowadays, though.

Does lemmy have an oldpeoplefacebook comm? We need an oldpeoplefacebook comm.

draws backlash from local Democrats

Bud it’s literally in the title hahaha

I would hate it so much if the left proved me wrong and actually did something, man, please don’t become politically relevant and improve the world, oh noooooo

You caught me, Kash Patel is paying me in whisky and hookers to mock leftwingers who don’t vote.

I did read the article. “Everything’s fucked, bury me!” would have been more succinct, and offers just as many solutions. Voting, unlike a magical revolution, actually exists, and actively refusing to exercise political power to create change makes you a moron.

Advocate against gaining political power

Have no political power

I encourage every leftist to actually go out and do something instead of waiting for the revolution to magically appear and fix everything.

So no? How’s refusing to exercise political power working out?

People like Mamdani and El-Sayed are possible when people actually get up off their ass.

I’m expecting people to organize and vote in the primaries instead of hopelessly bitching about an outcome they can help prevent. Exercise your political power, dammit!

Not voting led to Trump, who is objectively more harmful. Elections have consequences, vote, you muppet.

Voting is basic harm reduction, people advocating against voting are doing the GOP’s work for them and should be mocked.