The Wrong People Run The World

Tom Vilsack was a govenor of Iowa and is currently sec of ag in the Obama administration.  This interview with Ezra Klein is a sign that he isn't fit to fill either role. Vilsack argues that, among other things, that as  44% of our military comes from rural areas we have to continue to subsidize corporate farming or

we would have fewer people. There’s a value system there. Service is important for rural folks. Country is important, patriotism is important. And people grow up with that. I wish I could give you all the examples over the last two years as secretary of agriculture, where I hear people in rural America constantly being criticized, without any expression of appreciation for what they do do. When’s the last time we thanked a farmer for the fact that only 6 or 7 percent of our paycheck goes to food? We talk about innovation and these guys have been extraordinarily innovative. We talk about trade deficits and agriculture has a surplus.

It is one of the oddest examples of pure bullshit, in the Frankfurt sense of bullshit, I've run across. Klein, who I find superficial and boring, actually makes a whole series of good points, although he misses the obvious point that corporate farms aren't rural Americans, that make Vilsack look even dopier. Rural values don't define America because they don't exist as a coherent doctrine of one hundred percent Americanism in large measure because urban values, which don't exists as a coherent doctrine, offer a counter weight to the nonexistent rural values.