Prairie Propaganda

Driving across the great corn belt of America- eastern South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa- I decided to tune into some local radio. I found a station that was listing the recent funerals, birthdays and anniversaries for the region of small towns and isolated farm families scattered along the rolling, black dirt country. They mentioned all the surviving family members. There were only three birthdays and one silver anniversary. Really local radio.

Then it was time to reinforce ideological narratives so we heard from the "Farm Report" on the danger of foreign agricultural subsidies. How competitor countries prop up their farm economy giving them an unfair advantage, but maybe more importantly, hurting capitalism by not letting the weak fall by the wayside and letting the superior producers thrive through the miracle of the marketplace. Of course the "Farm Report" never mentioned the massive subsidies US agriculture has always received. There was also considerable irony in the fact I was driving through miles and miles of flooded farm land whose owners received billions in federal emergency aid.

Then came the ads for Round-up Ready herbicide, the modern "system" of weed control for industrial ag production. No mention of all those toxic chemicals being washed off the flooded fields out to the ocean where they create massive "dead-zones". Then came the "report" on how ethanol was making America energy independent and how the farmer selflessly fed America and on and on in this continuous ad for American capitalism. I wondered: who exactly produced all this propaganda? Who pays for it?

I stopped for breakfast at a diner in Iowa where I got to sit in front of the ubiquitous television tuned to FOX "news". Hannity had a panel of "experts" talking about the threat to our freedom and way of life posed by the radical leftists. Large farmers in over-alls and camo hats sat sipping coffee and joking with the large waitresses. Like their fields, they are thoroughly inundated with conservative messaging through a concerted, coordinated corporate propaganda program. pretty impressive if you think about it.