Cow Tipping Is Real
Democracy ain't dead yet, but we gotta act now
A cow at Coyote Run Farm and her hours-old calf last September.
Doing chores in April 2018, I found one of our mamma cows bloated with all four hooves pointing up to the sky. With cattle, hooves down are good. Hooves up are generally major problems and even death.
This was the Friday of the week that I was finishing at the Drake University Agricultural Law Center and starting as the Executive Director of Iowa Interfaith Power and Light.
That was a big transition for me. I was leaving a 12 year position in agricultural leadership and starting a new one as an interfaith leader for climate action.
Home from work, I was on the four-wheeler doing a quick livestock check. My mind was sort of all over the place thinking about my life-change.
Horses and mules were good. I ran to the back pasture to check on the calves that we planned to butcher over the next two years. They were fine. I’d driven by the cows on my way to the back and they looked OK. I almost kept going on my way back to the barnyard since those cows had hay and I didn’t see any issues. But I decided I’d better at least walk through them.
I pulled around the bales, and that’s when I saw the cow with four legs in the air. She was blown up like an upside down balloon floating down the street at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
I was heartbroken. I was so excited in what was possible for me and my future and then boom, this devastating blow.
I was too late. Nothing I could do. I started walking to the cow to see which one it was. She’d gotten on her back. She was caught in a rut from the tractor tire caused from putting out hay when the ground had thawed and then froze again. That happens in the spring. I’ve heard of cows laying down and getting stuck in that kind of rut, unable to get up again, but it had never happened on our farm.
This takes me back to election day. I had anticipated that our nation was going in a hopeful direction. I knew that much was riding on the election, and I believed that the country would be OK. I was as surprised by the election last fall as I was by our bloated cow seven years ago.
I knew that social movements grounded in division can create their own feedback loop of negativity and devolve into the collapse of governments and the disintegration of democracy. I had studied these in other times and in other places, but I hadn’t lived through this in my own time and in my own nation. But here we are. It’s hooves up for our democracy.
Back with the cows, my lips were pinched with disappointment. I started to tally the cost of this loss. As I walked to the cow, I saw one back leg move just a little bit. I shifted from despair to action.
I ran to the cow, grabbed a front leg and started rocking her.
This wasn’t the first time I came across a cow in need of help. I must have been about 13 when I found a cow that had laid down in the wrong direction on a hill. I was at our south farm seven miles from home. No cell phones then. It was a hot summer day. If I went for help, I might be too late. I had to try something.
I figured I could try and help her get up. It worked. She wouldn’t have been able to get up on her own, but with a little help from my 120 lbs, she got her feet under her. At that moment, I leaned on my experience, realized that it was up to me, and gave thanks that that was enough.
Back to April 2018, with a little back and forth, I got old #8 turned onto her side. She got her feet under her. And with some additional help she stood up. A few minutes later, with air coming out both ends, she was deflated and walking around.
I’d shown up just in time. Maybe ten more minutes and I would have been too late. There was no time to go for help. I had enough knowledge about what was going on and enough experience to draw on to disrupt what was happening. That disruption was enough for a hopeful, life sustaining outcome.
Bloat is when a cow’s stomach becomes filled with too much gas. The pressure blocks any path for the gas to escape. There’s a tipping point. It’s a systematic problem. Once the bloat starts to happen, a feedback loop is created. If that loop is disrupted then the gas starts to escape and the pressure decreases. If it’s not, you’re looking at certain death from suffocation. The stomach expands so much that the animal can no longer breathe.
If you can interrupt the feedback loop, bloat isn’t a death sentence.
In 2024 Democrats raised and spent billions of dollars for the presidential and congressional races. Hundreds of millions of those dollars were spent telling voters that if Democrats didn’t win, it would be the end of democracy and the end of our nation.
Democrats lost. Much of what was predicted in those ads is happening. America right now is hooves up. Our democracy is in deep trouble. Republicans have laid our democracy down in a rut and unless we help get it back on its feet, the feedback loop will kill it.
Republicans are pardoning violent insurrectionists, confirming appointees who couldn’t pass a basic FBI background check, attacking public servants, punishing any and all dissent, and unleashing an intentional and strategic campaign of fear.
For example, how dangerous is the Republican’s Secretary of Defense? Senator Mitch McConnell rejected him. No one has done more than McConnell to create the governing foundation on which the MAGA movement is now dismantling bedrock assumptions about the rule of law and our systems of checks and balances. But even McConnell, who’s seen so much of his personal agenda advanced by the MAGA movement, couldn’t bring himself to vote yes.
He was joined by only two Republican Senators who voted against confirmation. The Vice President had to break the tie. The vote was that close. But Republicans stayed unified to get to yes.
My Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley embraced this nominee with a known history of leadership failures. Ernst went as far as playing a special role in rehabilitating his confirmation process. Laura Belin at Bleeding Heartland has a brilliantly researched story here about Ernst’s role in the confirmation of possibly the most unqualified and compromised Presidential Cabinet Member in our nation’s history.
With democracy crashing in front of us, a lot of our Democratic leaders, big donors, and consultants aren’t stopping to check the cows. They’re doing a drive by and saying things will be OK.
For those of us who are paying attention, we see the four hooves pointing to the sky. Some of us, lips pressed together, are trying to understand what’s next.
We see a back leg is still moving. We know it’s time to run to the cow with the confidence that we can get our democracy back on its feet.
There is no time to call the vet. No one else is going to do it. Republicans know the cow is there. They caused the rut that’s keeping that cow down. Senator Ernst knows the cost to any Republican who doesn’t fall in line to keep that cow down. You can listen to Laura Belin and Spencer Dirks discuss that here.
Republicans are actively working to distract Americans from pulling around the hay bale to see that democracy is struggling to breathe.
There were billions of dollars to tell us this was going to happen, but now that it has, the money seems to have dried up. Or as Robert Leonard of Deep Midwest explains here, $10 million is being burned in ways that do nothing to support those of us willing to tip the cow.
Those of us who realize there is still a window to act are the people that our nation needs right now. We must run to our democracy.
Post to your social media. Talk to your friends and family.
Support organizations defending our neighbors, co-workers, friends, and family that Republicans plan to attack with the full force of our nation’s military. That’s what the Republicans’ freshly sworn-in Secretary of Defense stands ready to do.
Volunteer with the groups who are building coalitions of resistance. Speak up to support the government workers who are being attacked for their commitment to serving the public.
Maybe most important of all, demand that Democratic leaders and wealthy donors stop planning for how they will come back when Republicans fail. They must start investing now to resource the Americans who are sprinting to get our democracy back on its feet.
Those who think there is time to call the vet, or time for the consultants and insiders to show up on their timeline and with their business plan, will be complicit when there is no longer a leg moving and enough breath for democracy to recover.
Draw on everything we know. Lean into the experience of our own, unique and beautiful lives. Trust that we are enough. Embrace that who we are is who the world needs. Believe that it’s possible to save our democracy if we act now.
The calf born in September 2018 and his mamma, old #8. Glad she was successfully tipped over, the bloating interrupted, and able to live a few more years at Coyote Run Farm. She had 3 more calves, one of them being the red cow at the top.
Just like any job one has, there are things that need immediate attention - right now it’s fighting for democracy. Thank you for your work and for your commitment.
Thank you, Matt. We need to keep reminding each other that one, democracy is hooves up right now, and that two, there's still life in the old girl, and three, that life can be saved, even when th odds suggest otherwise.