Looking around, not looking ahead
The Column: 05.04.26
Driving through northern Iowa last week, the flattest farmland in America, I thought of my Uncle Jim and the old Keillor farm I loved as a kid, the big barn and haymow, The cows he milked by hand twice a day, the horses Prince and Ned who pulled the hayrack, a magical place for a boy. My dad, who grew up on that farm, hated it because he saw it as perpetual poverty. He was eager to make a break and start over. He was not nostalgic. I am but I was only a visitor.
It was dramatic to drive for hundreds of miles and see no barns or silos, no windmill or grove around a farmhouse, the Grant Wood landscape of rural America, and see what corporate industrial agriculture looks like. It looks like Siberia. A place you send people as punishment.
A culture is slipping away that raised some fine self-reliant relatives of mine like my Aunt Eleanor who could handle a rifle, hitch up horses to a wagon, bake bread, plant a garden, throw a baseball, kill a chicken, sew clothing from a pattern, do basic repairs, and speak her mind in firm declarative sentences. The farm made her a strong woman and I say the world could use more like her.
Well, cultures are mortal, just as we are, and it’s a shame when the worthwhile peter out and the worst prosper, such as the culture of consultancy. Some of the stupidest managers I’ve encountered in my life now hang out their shingles as consultants prepared to advise on strategic planning and team building, who when I knew them were adept at strategic blather and creative imitation. I believe that AI will devastate their ranks and soon we’ll encounter them at drive-up windows, consulting on condiments and large vs. medium shakes.
AI is surely going to take on politics and government next. Farming is resistant to algorithms, but Iowa has 99 counties and as the state becomes hollowed out into large towns separated by miles of unpopulated prairie, the counties will devolve to a simple set of agencies. AI may be rough on the towns too as robodentistry and alt-education and crypto-Christianity take hold, but it is eager to take over politics and government. Big money is dominating our elections, the young and ambitious have a steep disadvantage against the complacent, and so Congress hasn’t been a deliberative body for decades and a computer the size of a refrigerator could easily replace it next week and public offices could become purely symbolic, like homecoming queens or college presidents.
The Artificial Congress could easily conclude that our political animosities are so deep and severe that the Union cannot be sustained. It lasted 250 years but podcasting has given a place to outright Nazism and racist hatred that once were unspeakable and so divorce is inevitable. Let the evangelicals own the South, Lutherans the Midwest, the Unitarians New England. Let China be No. 1. It’s a very successful state corporation and let them deal with the degradation of the planet and let us spend our days in dismay and derision, complaint and confusion.
This is an old man talking, you understand. When I was five and Mother was enormous with twins, I helped Dad work on our new house in a cornfield north of the city. I mixed mortar, I brought him 2x4s and nails and he showed me how to pound them in. Wham-wham-wham-wham-whack. When she was about to give birth, I was sent to the farm where I got to feed the chickens and collect the eggs and go up in the haymow and throw hay down to the cows. I believe I lived at the best time in human history. I worked summers hoeing corn and picking potatoes on truck farms. I was around when rock ’n’ roll was about cars, girls, and the beach, before it became enigmatic and weird and surrealistic. I did a show in Des Moines last week and the audience was mostly my age and when I sang, “You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain,” they all knew the words — retired teachers, Lutheran pastors, health professionals, all shouted, “Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire!” I grew up with storytellers and I got to enjoy the benefits of modern medicine that gave me a long string of bonus years and when I drive through desolate farmland and think about AI, I think, Not My Problem. Good luck, kids.
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99 counties and most have been losing population for decades. I’m a NYC kid married to an Iowan from farm country. Both her parents passed away recently and, looking back at land records, it’s fascinating to see how the Homestead Act of 1862 shaped Iowa’s growth way back when. It was a simple but brilliant decision that helped give life to the culture that once prevailed there. My wish is that, someday, people will tire of the political bickering that dominates the conversation today and turn to new ways to bring a healthy culture back to farm country. Thank you President Lincoln for the gift that was the Homestead Act of 1862.
I'm only 10 years behind you but feel extreme guilt that we have allowed all this to happen and firmly feel we still need to do what we can for as long as we draw breath. My joy is when I see young people stepping up to the challenge, but we should all be willing to help and support them. Like Dean Roy in Vermont. He's only 14, but is running for governor. It seems crazy, but maybe THAT'S the kind of CRAZY we need!