A letter in the Star Tribune by Chad Hagen from Cook cries out for response.
The Oct. 4. opinion piece by the Rev. Angela Denker, “Ghosts don’t vote, but haunted people do” (Strib Voices), is an affront to all rural Minnesota Republicans. Denker seems to characterize us as a bunch of dumb bumpkins who only support former President Donald Trump because we are haunted by our pain and suckers for wild theories about Haitian immigrants and pregnant women. She insinuates we are not smart enough to make informed decisions.
Seriously, if the foo shits, Chad.
I am not speaking for all rural Minnesotans [Obviously Chad, Ed.], but having spent most of my life in rural Minnesota, I have a pretty good idea why it is red, not blue. If she would have spent a few minutes talking to rural Minnesota conservatives, she would have learned the real reasons we support Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris. Economically, rural Minnesotans were better off under Trump than under President Joe Biden. Under the Biden administration, food costs are up, fuel prices are up and interest rates are up. We all have fewer dollars with which to buy necessities, which is particularly challenging for the elderly, families and our young adults. We believe Harris will bring more of the same.
Nostalgia is a seductive liar. Chad forgets that four years ago, we were reeling from the pandemic that Donald Trump virtually ignored, killing a half million people or more unnecessarily, including those “elderly, families, and young adults” that Chad wails about.
It’s really the “Trump inflation,” too, because his indifference to the pandemic was a principal cause of the economic contraction, employment, and supply chain problems that caused the inflation. Trump was, and is, a heartless and cruel self-absorbed bastard.
Trump walked away from a shitstorm. If he’d been re-elected in 2020, we’d have been better able to see that. Thank goodness we didn’t have that opportunity. And never mind the fact that the US has recovered from the pandemic better than any other advanced country.
When Trump left office, the economy had fewer jobs that it did when his term began.
They don’t grow soybeans around Cook, but they do in the southern part of the state, and Trump’s tariff tiff with China cost soybean farmers, including Minnesota soybean farmers, billions of dollars. The government bailed out the farmers to the tune of billions; that market has not recovered. Trump wants to apply his tariff miracle to the whole economy.
Moreover, Chad has been the beneficiary of urban largess for, probably, most of his life.
We are angry at what has been happening at our southern border under the current administration. There have been 10 million border encounters, double the population of Minnesota, and we are all paying for it. Didn’t Biden put Harris in charge of handling the border problem? What has she done to fix it?
The best and most direct response to Chad’s painful bloviating here is to point out that a comprehensive border bill was submarined in the US House by Chad’s flag carrier, Donald Trump, so that Chad could, well, bloviate about it at election time. It’s truculent assholery of the highest order.
Most of us are blue collar, and we don’t support college loan forgiveness. We have been raised to believe that if we borrow money we are responsible for repaying it. We see college loan forgiveness as a liberal ploy to buy votes.
We can assume that Chad is likewise incensed about all the pandemic paycheck protection program loans that were forgiven, including an $86,000 one to Republican Congressman Pete Stauber; Republican Stauber is not alone, by any means.
I paid my student loans — they weren’t that much, really, comparatively — but I understand that public higher education is a public good. The doctor who installs Chad’s new stents or heart valve or discovers a new treatment for Chad’s dementia, or perhaps the lawyer who defends Chad in a class action against predatory behavior by lenders likely went to school only by taking on crushing debt. It’s impossible to take a public service job when you are in debt peonage.
Chad is just another tight little ball of rural grievance and resentment.
Many of us are also Christians and are appalled by the abortion policies of liberals, including those in Minnesota supported by Gov. Tim Walz, in which a baby can be aborted at full term. We have grown up doing our best to keep every piglet and calf alive. The thought of letting a full-term infant human die is beyond our comprehension and viewed by many of us as murder. I would think Denker, as a pastor, might understand that.
In places like Texas and Georgia, women with pregnancies threatening to kill them and with fetuses that can’t survive must wait until they are nearly dead before getting the care they need because doctors are too afraid to act. Sometimes, they do die. If Chad believes women have late term abortions — and doctors provide them — for yuks on a whim, he’s truly ignorant.
We know that Trump is not perfect, but we also know we can’t support another four years of the ineffective leadership that Biden and Harris have given us.
Just a paragraph ago, Chad moralizes about abortion, now he says, ‘Sure, he’s an adjudged rapist and fraudster, and an abuser of women, but nobody’s perfect.” Jeepers, Chad, rapist and fraudster are just for starters; wait until we get to agent of espionage and a seditionist. Come to your senses, patriot.
Chad Hagen, Cook, Minn.
I’m not sure, but I’ll bet that Chad is one of the Gen X “Dads, Brads and Chads” that Taylor Swift referred to. Chad is probably triggered by Taylor Swift.
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I wrote this last evening and left it for today, hoping that some of the venom would leech out of it. It didn’t work. The gloriously self-unaware boobs like Chad will always be with us. You can despair about it, but that doesn’t do any good. You can ignore it, but that doesn’t do any good, either. All you can do is point it out; call it out. And hang Chad’s feeling of affront.
Maybe it’s only cathartic, but that’s something.
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