America's family farmers were astonished last year to get a jolly tweet from the president of the United States: "Have fun!" exclaimed The Donald.

Fun? The farm economy is in the ditch, with crop prices at depression levels and bankruptcies surging. Plus, Trump Inc. has been rigging the law to give agribusiness monopolies more power to run roughshod over farmers and rural communities.

Well, yes, say the billionaire "geniuses" and partisan hacks who've seized control of farm and food policies, but our phantasmagoric laissez-fairyland ideology will open up new agricultural markets here at home, so see? Fun!

Those ideologues, however, can't make chicken salad out of chicken manure, and that's what their promises are. While Brooke Rollins, President Donald Trump's corporatized ag secretary, babbles about "new" markets, she actually shut down a nationwide market last year that provided a billion dollars a year to family farmers who produce for local schools, food pantries, etc. In reality, Rollins' goal is an industrialized, globalized food economy, so she coldly dismissed these local sales as "nonessential." Of course, that says to all of the people involved that her government considers them nonessential.

Combining arrogance with ignorance, Trump's aloof plutocrats carelessly wiped out this market right at spring planting time! Each farm family had already taken out thousands of dollars in bank loans to buy seeds and other essential supplies to make this year's crop, but — WHAMMO! — Trump & Co. slammed the door on the family's most reliable market, shoving them to the brink of broke ... and beyond.

This is what happens when clueless billionaires are brought in to make our public programs "efficient." Corporate rule is never efficient — and it sure ain't fun.

TRUE "WOKEISM" IS A CORE AMERICAN VALUE — STAND UP FOR IT!

As Scottish literary giant Robert Burns wrote, "The best-laid schemes of mice and men/Go oft awry."

His 1785 poem, titled "To a Mouse," could be directed today at the right-wing sloganeers who've been scheming so furiously to turn their hokey "woke" snobbery into a winning political stratagem. "Your local librarian is woke!" they screech. "So is Disney, Inc.! Some of your churches, too, plus all Democrats and — OMG — even Bud Light!!!" Creeping Wokeism is the new Red Scare, Welfare Queen and Willy Horton political bugaboos rolled into one, forming the main "issue" of Republicans now running for president, Congress and dogcatcher.

But rather than getting defensive, insisting you are NOT woke, consider firing back by saying, "Of course I'm woke!" For the great majority of Americans, being woke is a very positive characteristic, meaning you're awake, attentive to what's going on. Indeed, in Black communities, "stay woke" has long meant staying alert to racial and social injustices. But even some Republicans must consider it bizarrely self-defeating for their party's top candidates to be urging voters to go to sleep.

GOP leaders explain that anti-woke means crusading against D.E.I. (diversity, equity and inclusion). But wait — that means they're opposing America itself, for we are a nation united under the essential principle of e pluribus unum. As affirmed by the egalitarian principles of the Declaration of Independence, the 14th Amendment, the Statue of Liberty — and our kindergarten teachings of sharing and fairness — ours is a country rooted in constant diversification, expanding equality and the democratic idea that every voice ought to be included. Our country needs more of all three!

This is Jim Hightower saying ... America is way short of achieving these historic ideals, but shame on those revisionist political elites now demanding we abandon even striving for them. Confront the charlatans!

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Sebastian Schuster at Unsplash