04:51 PM PST (August 12, 2025) - N.S. EIC

BAKERSFIELD, CA — The announcement came on a Tuesday. Tuesdays are good for decisions that feel like they were made in a wet dream and signed off by someone who’s never seen a farm except from the window of a motorcade.

President Donald Trump, speaking from a golf course recently designated a federal emergency command post, declared that California’s farmland would be flooded. “Let the water pick the produce,” he said. No one laughed. They just nodded, as if the sentence made sense in a way they’d forgotten how to question.

A Plan Without Anchors

The Army Corps of Engineers, now functioning more as a suggestion box than a military agency, is expected to reroute rivers and submerge thousands of acres of crops. The logic is unclear. Maybe it’s not logic. Maybe it’s just momentum.

Water, Trump explained, “water doesn’t complain, doesn’t unionize, and doesn’t ask for breaks.” The statement was delivered with the same tone one might use to describe a vending machine.

No timeline was given. No budget was mentioned. Just the idea, drifting like a plastic bag in a windless room.

The People Who Still Live There

Farmers in the Central Valley have stopped asking questions. One man, who’s been growing tomatoes since before the first Trump presidency, said, “I guess the water’s in charge now.” He didn’t sound angry. Just tired.

Some have begun building levees out of old campaign signs. Others have started writing letters to their crops, apologizing in advance.

The Shape of the Absurd

This isn’t satire. It’s just what happens when a country forgets how to end a sentence. The policy isn’t real, but it’s real enough to be believed. And belief, these days, is more powerful than fact.

Trump has moved on to other ideas. The water remains. The produce waits.