Why don't we check in with those members of the Cabinet who aren't somehow tied in with knuckling the government of Ukraine, or spanning the globe to bring us a constant variety of lunatic conspiracy theories? For example, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue went out to Wisconsin and told a whole lot of dairy farmers that they were SOL as regards both their immediate and longterm futures. From the Washington Post:

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue told reporters following an appearance at the World Dairy Expo in Madison that it’s getting harder for farmers to get by on milking smaller herds. “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out,” Perdue said. “I don’t think in America we, for any small business, we have a guaranteed income or guaranteed profitability.”

It takes a rare fella to say so plainly that America is essentially a monopoly culture, and that the ultimate goal of a free market is to achieve the absolute minimal amount of actual competition—especially to an audience of people whose livelihoods are being destroyed by those very dynamics.

Perdue’s visit comes as Wisconsin dairy farmers are wrestling with a host of problems, including declining milk prices, rising suicide rates, the transition to larger farms with hundreds or thousands of animals and Trump’s international trade wars. Wisconsin, which touts itself as America’s Dairyland on its license plates, has lost 551 dairy farms in 2019 after losing 638 in 2018 and 465 in 2017, according to data from the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. The Legislature’s finance committee voted unanimously last month to spend an additional $200,000 to help struggling farmers deal with depression and mental health problems.

I'd like to think this will have some effect on the way people in the dairy counties of Wisconsin will vote a year from now, but voter depression is as dangerous to democracy as voter suppression, and some folks simply give up.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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