"Ethanol reduces our dependence on foreign sources of oil and is an important weapon in the War on Terror. By investing in South Dakota's ethanol producers, we will strengthen our energy security and create new jobs"
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Patriotism is doing a lot of work here, and that is the point. Thune takes a parochial economic pitch - subsidize South Dakota ethanol - and launder it through the post-9/11 moral economy of “security.” By calling ethanol an “important weapon in the War on Terror,” he collapses a complex web of energy markets, agricultural policy, and Middle East geopolitics into a clean, emotionally legible story: buy local fuel, fight the enemy. It’s not an argument so much as a rebranding exercise, swapping the messy optics of farm-state carve-outs for the higher ground of national survival.
The subtext is transactional but carefully dressed. Ethanol policy has long been intertwined with corn politics and federal mandates; invoking “foreign sources of oil” sidesteps the fact that ethanol’s benefits are contested (from land use to food prices to marginal carbon gains). The line “investing in South Dakota’s ethanol producers” is a tell: this is constituency service, framed as strategy. The appeal to “new jobs” completes the tripod of persuasive American nouns - security, patriotism, employment - that can blunt skepticism and justify public support.
Context matters: in the 2000s, politicians routinely folded energy independence into counterterror rhetoric, turning consumer behavior and domestic production into civic virtue. Thune’s phrasing weaponizes that era’s anxieties, converting fear and solidarity into policy momentum for a home-state industry, while daring critics to sound soft on terror or indifferent to jobs.
The subtext is transactional but carefully dressed. Ethanol policy has long been intertwined with corn politics and federal mandates; invoking “foreign sources of oil” sidesteps the fact that ethanol’s benefits are contested (from land use to food prices to marginal carbon gains). The line “investing in South Dakota’s ethanol producers” is a tell: this is constituency service, framed as strategy. The appeal to “new jobs” completes the tripod of persuasive American nouns - security, patriotism, employment - that can blunt skepticism and justify public support.
Context matters: in the 2000s, politicians routinely folded energy independence into counterterror rhetoric, turning consumer behavior and domestic production into civic virtue. Thune’s phrasing weaponizes that era’s anxieties, converting fear and solidarity into policy momentum for a home-state industry, while daring critics to sound soft on terror or indifferent to jobs.
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| Topic | Investment |
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