Iowa rarely makes the national news unless there’s a natural disaster or a mass shooting. When it does, you know the political season is upon us. I always had my misgivings about covering the political class’s highly orchestrated—and completely deadening—campaign choreography.

But with things unraveling across the country, and looking for a juxtaposition, I figured it might be worthwhile to check out the Iowa presidential shitshow, if only to see if any of the candidates had any clue as to what was really going on in real-life America.

A dozen Republican hopefuls and Hillary Clinton were invited to field questions from an agricultural magnate who’d struck it rich on corn and pork bellies.

I knew a couple things about national politicians. For one, they are primped and prissy, pampering themselves on the taxpayers’ dime, but go to great lengths to disguise this fact. (Even their haircuts and manicures are subsidized by the public, the senators’ barbershop requiring a half-million-dollar bailout.) That’s how it goes in Washington, where you can’t see your representative as he really exists.

On the campaign trail, however, he rolls up his sleeves, eats chicken on a stick, and tells you with feigned disgust that people like him should be tossed in the stockade.

Another thing I knew about national politics was that Iowa votes first in the presidential primaries, giving the agricultural Hawkeye State an unreasonable and oversized influence on the national election. Technically, Iowans hold a freak show known as a “caucus,” which means groups of white people standing around screaming at one another for hours before finally being allowed to vote.

Lewis Carroll described a similar scene in Alice in Wonderland. Alice and the animals meet at the riverbank of tears to discuss how best to dry off. The dodo bird suggests holding a caucus race whereby every creature begins runing in a circle until told to stop. This gives rise to no clear winner.

In Iowa, they simply gave us Senator Ted Cruz.