I Know Exactly What They Are Doing
Rural foresight. By Jess Piper
I hear people all around me saying, “They are going to crash the economy. Surely they don’t mean to crash the economy.”
I beg to differ. This is curated failure.
Let me start off by saying that I am not an economist — I don’t even have a finance or accounting degree and I’m really bad at math in the first place.
But I do pay attention. I notice things and I am quick to see a pattern. I observe the world and the people in charge of it. I listen to the words they say and then measure those words against their actions.
You don’t need to be an economist to look around and see that the Trump administration is going to cause economic disaster — a recession or a depression. And it is by design. It is a feature, not a bug.
I live under a GOP Supermajority. I have lived under their boot for two decades. They have economically damaged my state and it wasn’t by accident. They did it to sell off the state and workers and land to the wealthy. They created a desperate situation in Missouri and that desperation equates to bounty for the oligarchs.
The new Gilded Age. Make America desperate again.
I’ve spent my life in rural parts of rural states. I am uniquely qualified to speak on this issue. I have seen it first-hand. You have heard of Project 2025. Missouri has been running the pilot project for almost two decades.
Many Missourians are now poor and sick and abused and desperate.
The wealthy have thrown shit at the walls in red states to see what sticks. They found the winning formula, wrote it into a plan called Project 2025, and now bring it nationwide.
They have installed the wealthiest man in the world to dismantle the country for himself and his fellow oligarchs. They plan to burn the country down to pay rock-bottom prices for the ashes.
The plan is to make the US a version of Missouri. And just over 40 days in, we can see that the plan is working.
Let me show you: the small rural American farmer is almost non-existent. He was wiped out decades ago.
In 1988, 32% of the nation's hog production came from family or small operations that produced fewer than 1,000 hogs per year. By 2000, that same size category only produced 2% of the nation's hogs.
Now, almost every pork product eaten in the US is produced on a factory farm. Wealthy corporations moved in and created a monopoly in the market. That monopoly is neither more healthy for Americans nor better for local economies.
Wealthy corporations put most family hog operations out of business and that means farming folks had to go to town for work…for a corporation. They depend on the availability of jobs in town instead of their own farm to pay the bills. When those town jobs dry up, the desperation ensues.
And now we have a trade war, so if your family farm happened to survive the last few decades, Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico — and their retaliatory tariffs — will devastate your family farm. Guess where I found that exact plan? Project 2025.
Shrink American farmers’ access to foreign markets, restricting growth opportunities for producers.
The oligarchs wrote it in black and white.
But, as I have written, most rural folks aren’t farmers. So what other things have I noticed being burnt to the ground in rural America?
Missouri is 49th in the nation for educational funding. The state only supplies 32% of the funding schools need to open their doors, turn on the lights, and pay teachers. The rest of school funding must be found in decimated rural towns that often don’t have a stoplight, much less a grocery store or businesses that can make up the funding shortfall.
Because of that, over 30% of Missouri schools run a four-day week. Almost every four-day district is in rural Missouri. We run four-day weeks not for convenience or student achievement but to recruit and retain teachers.
Missouri pays starting teachers at the lowest rate in the country. That is by design.
This short week can also be a nightmare for folks trying to find daycare one day per week, especially hitting women hard. Several Missouri parents — overwhelmingly moms — are forced to work around the day off as childcare is not easy to find in our small communities.
It makes it difficult to make ends meet with one income and rural Missouri loses population each decade because most folks can’t live in an area without jobs and daycares and five-day school weeks.
Again, by design. Make folks desperate.
Missouri Republicans have defunded schools to hasten the hollowing out rural parts of the state. It’s working, but just to hurry the process along, these lawmakers pulled even more more state funding from defunded schools to siphon it to private religious schools.
Guess where I found the plan to destroy rural schools? Project 2025. The playbook my lawmakers have been following for two decades was written out nearly word for word.
That has been the plan all along. Empty out rural America.
Why in the world would anyone want to destroy rural America either by creating conditions to hurt small farmers or close rural schools? Because they want to sell off rural parts to the highest bidder. Because if they can drive people out of rural spaces, or make them so desperate that they’ll accept any job at any pay rate, they can bring in large corporate farms and there is no one to protest the environmental impacts or force them to pay their fair share in taxes.
This is what the oligarchs and the tech bros working for them envision for the entire country.
Curated failure. Carefully chosen and organized chaos to create the desired effect. They did it to enable the selling the country and workers and land to the wealthy.
I have witnessed it from the inside. I live in Missouri and no amount of letter writing has cured my state or persuaded my lawmakers, but one thing has slowed them down…organized action.
Showing up in numbers that can’t be hidden or explained away. Marching in the streets. Testifying by the hundreds. Making lawmakers accountable with constant contact. Letting them know we see them and we know.
They want us poor and sick and abused and desperate. They did it in red states and now want the same for the entire United States.
Refuse them. Throw sand in the gears. Take up space. Get in the way.
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