Rob Hansen

Landon, 1929. St Anselm's, 1942. Bullis, 1930. St Stephens and St Agnes, 1924. Barrie, 1932… I could go on (DC has a lot of private schools), but around here pre-Brown institutions outnumber post-Brown ones by about 3:1. It's just not true private schools are a racist response to Brown.

No, they didn't. I live in DC, so let me pick out DC private schools: Gonzaga, 1821. Sidwell Friends, 1883. Madeira, 1906. Georgetown Day School, 1945. Rochambeau, 1955 (Brown was 1954; Rochambeau was being built before Brown was decided). Holton-Arms, 1901. Maret, 1911. St Alban's, 1909…

You adore that song. With good reason, I add.

But you need to remember "Iowa farmers I hold in contempt because they voted for Trump" are no less self-destructive, *and no less deserving of compassion*.

And I think you know this.

One of your favorite songs has, as a lyric, "Jesus loves the drunkards and the whores and the queers." I adore that line. The people in that song are involved in self-destructive behaviors like alcohol abuse, using meth to get through a shift, and more.

As Jon Stewart once opined, if you don't follow your principles even when it's tough, you don't have principles — you have hobbies.

Is kindness a principle, or a hobby?

"So, tell me why I should have sympathy for the farmers who voted for this mess finally realizing that Trump Eventually Fucks Over Everybody?"

Because they're human beings in suffering.

You can espouse kindness towards the human race, *even the ones who frustrate you*, or you can advocate withholding sympathy from people you have decided are somehow undeserving of it.

One of them is the path of the Carpenter.

The other is the path of Trump.

Choose wisely, friend.

On the one hand you keep talking about how important it is to be kind, be kind, please, just *be kind*. And on the other, nah, withhold sympathy from people until completely unrelated people publish a news story about other completely unrelated people. Withholding sympathy is A-OK.

Finally? "I'll have sympathy for the farmers when the NYT runs a similar piece on the nursing shortage."

So, you think my family, and other Iowa farm families, deserve no sympathy until the NYT, which has nothing to do with us, decides on their own to run a similar piece on an unrelated field.

But you don't have to engage in character assassination, either.

Especially when you're assassinating my family.

If you want to say "they voted for Trump and I don't care about their bleating," well, okay, I get that. I share in the feeling most days. They voted for Trump, they're getting what they asked for, they're getting it good and hard, that's on them.

But, you know, we can't upset the narrative about those awful rural Trump voters are all a bunch of millionaire white men and that's the only reason the NYT cares about them.

That narrative just isn't true. And you know this.

(Why the Subway? Because teenagers who detassel need to get fed, and Subway caters large crowds of hungry teenagers at lunch. The local Casey's does good business then, too.)

If farmers are getting hurt, a whole lot of other people are getting hurt, too.

Again: you know this.

In Iowa Falls the three biggest employers are Walmart, the concrete mix plant, and the dozens of farms around town. Virtually everyone in that town is dependent on one of the three for their livelihoods: the fertilizer dealer, the seed dealer, the John Deere repair tech… all the way to the Subway.

The wealth and financial stability you assert we have, we *don't* have, and you know it.

Second, yes, only 5% of the rural population are farmers, but rural America is overwhelmingly driven by the farm economy. If the farm economy catches a cold the local economy gets plague.

So you want to compare us to a nurse making $95k/year? A ton of farm kids are running like hell to STEM jobs because we know there's no financial safety in our family plots. I made that jump myself and I'm glad I did. I have a long line of kids I grew up with who did likewise.

First, gross revenues don't matter. If we make $X and run up expenses of $Y, if Y is greater than X we're in the hole. We're not pocketing a million bucks a year, not even close. There have been many years where our net profits _for the year_ were sub-$1000, and we were damn happy to have made it.

Ken, this is hateful. Just hateful.

As someone whose family operates an Iowa farm in Hardin County, please take note of the following realities which I know you know but are choosing not to remember because it spoils your hateful narrative:

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Proverbs 27:17 all the day long, brother.

("As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.")

I can't be here. Not even to read my friends. My own friends are driving me away.

I'm sorry but this place cheapens people, turns good people into funhouse mirrors of virtue.

I am leaving all social media, even for reading, before it happens to me.

Goodbye. I'm sorry.

So far I've seen a friend whose personal mantra is "be kind" brim with bile as he blamed Charlie Kirk for his own murder. Another old friend mocked an eighty year old man (Trump) for not being able to walk up a staircase.

It's barely 7:30am and my own friends have given me enough hate for the day.

I thought if I just dialed down my social media presence I'd be better. Healthier. I got rid of every MAGA glorifier. I limited myself to reading just a few accounts. And even that doesn't work.

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At risk of pointing out the obvious, he's almost eighty years old. People with mobility issues find long staircases difficult.

This is an easy thing to mock him about, but it's also callous to his medical health. I would like it if we didn't mock the disabled for being disabled.

Ken, you're blaming a murder victim for his own murder. This is no different than saying a rape victim was raped because she dressed like a slut.

This is genuinely hateful.

Please be kind.

I've now read three independent news stories covering this, and checked out the Hennepin County attorney's statement, and read the charging document. None of them allege the perpetrator is Christian. They only describe the victims as such.

Ken, I must be missing something, but where in this news story is it alleged the perpetrator was Christian? The news story makes it appear the Christians were *victims*.

Ken, this is embarrassing.

Originalism clearly agrees that the original intent was for the Constitution to be amended as future generations needed, and the Apportionment Clause was overhauled in the Fourteenth Amendment.

The RA of 1929 is solidly Constitutional and originalist.

If you're going to abjure "not all Muslims are Muslim terrorists" in favor of "terrorists represent an extreme and distorted view of Islam" (and you should!), then you should give Christianity the exact same formulation for the exact same reasons.

"Not all Christians are Christian terrorists."

No, my point is that Christian terrorists are an extraordinarily minute fraction of the Christian community.

Further, it's hypocritical to expect us to remember this about our Muslim brothers if you're going to forget this about us.

I don't mind if you condemn Christian extremism — I do it myself and I welcome every voice that condemns it — but could we please not do it to the extent that it implies every white Christian from a law-enforcement family that grew up around guns is a terrorist waiting to happen?