To the editor:

I’m not certain if the piece by Christopher Gibbs on the local farmer who “calls it like it is” is his personal story or if he penned it for someone else. In either event, he began with how the farmer voted for the current president and wants to be supportive of him, “But the president’s trade war, now being supported by hush money to keep agriculture sedated, is a bridge too far for me.”

Let me tell you how hard it is to garner any empathy for Mr. Farmer, who evidently, had no problem with a candidate who grabbed women’s most private body parts without permission because he’s rich; no problem with a candidate who mocked a disabled man; no problem with (Trump’s) calling white supremacists “good people too;” no problem with daily incessant lies; no problem with children being taken from their parents who were coming to the U.S. legally to apply for asylum; no problem with a two-hour private meeting with Putin or denial about what the greatest intelligence agencies in the world have proved regarding Russian hacking of our election — I could go on but I’ll just say etcetera. Nope, no problem until it affects Mr. Farmer.

And herein lies one of the problems in America: Mr. Farmer — like many Americans, maybe on both sides of the aisle but clearly for the 80 percent of Republicans who still support this presidency — think about no one but themselves. The interesting thing is that this scourge of self absorption is completely contradictory to what farmers of the past stood for. “Help thy neighbor” could have been their motto. Perhaps I misunderstood. Perhaps their “neighbor” really was where their goodness stopped.

I’ve always supported the hardworking American farmer and their families. I’ve supported federal aid when natural disasters struck. I’ve supported relief when individual farmers fell on hard times. To this $12 billion vote buying package, I say no. This is where I tell Mr. Farmer to reap what he has sown.

Mary Dargan

Hamilton, Montana