Neocons love to portray liberals as putting something they deem inconsequential before people.
I can smell the strategy now; Stephen Miller, Donald tRump, and Kristen Nielsen have selected the National Butterfly Center as the main battle front against ecologically sensitive areas of the border that they plan to destroy for no valid reason. Plus it is a proxy for how all the land rights fights will go. Allowing him an advantage in this first skirmish because it’s hard for “conservatives” to fight for butterflies stands to lose us substantial ground in the groundwork surrounding the war over this wall.
News reports show that heavy equipment has been staged on land adjacent to the Center, surveying has begun on Center property, and law enforcement officers have instructed Center staff to stay of the southern half of their own property.
It is surely no accident it is happening right now, just before the SOTU. I fully expect “liberals putting butterflies ahead of our national security “ to appear in his missive.
This also has all the hallmarks of the supreme shittiness of the way power is abused in such cases. Just like in the Water Protectors battle, the opposition wants to blitz the contested land with bulldozers to raze the very thing that is unique and irreplaceable about it. In this case, I am certain their plan is to raze the habitat for a right of way, then shrug and argue what’s wrong with erecting steel slats across some dirt? Butterflies can fly through it just fine.
The depredations to beautiful and crucial migratory habitat are very real. They serve tRump’s crappiness to a T. They are reminiscent of when he hired a crew to selectively demolish notable architectural details of the Bonwit Teller Building .
TRump loves destroying things that are important to other people. In this case, the butterflies are the purpose of the National Butterfly Center, but there are other hugely important stakes in this fight. He has chosen “butterflies” as the enemy of his wall. It is not for him to characterize the values we bring to the fight.
This is a land use issue. It is an eminent domain issue. It is a huge issue that he is already spending money on wall construction that has been denied him by Congress. It is important that he is violating the government’s half of a non-profit assignation. Those are reserved for organizations that act in the public’s interest. In this case, it is the land and the careful development, stewardship, and sharing of those benefits with the public that unite to form this benefit, and this wall makes huge negative impacts on all three fronts. Aside from the ecological sensitivity argument that has already been waived by the courts, doesn’t the government have an obligation to address the negative impacts on this social benefit they have already granted recognition to?
But there is also a bigger societal argument to be made.
I am beyond unhappy that “liberal causes” are secondary to “conservative” open use and development goals.
If some rich white dude buys a whole watershed so he and his rich cronies can hunt and fish in peace and run off poor democrats and republicans alike… they love that shit. If a group of concerned liberals want to buy sensitive ecological zones to protect them, the very same people get all jacked up at the chance to drive a bulldozer over it. They literally want to wreck the things we love, even more so when we own them.
Don’t we have the right to buy and protect the things we love? Don’t we get to own land for ecology minded reasons, and isn’t that purpose just as valid as any other reason for ownership? Why are “conservatives” so threatened by liberal causes that they must attack and destroy what others love and, yes, even own, to prevent some nebulous fear of limitations on themselves?
I’m done with that. This is private land being run by a group of concerned citizens. This battle to protect the Butterfly Center is one ALL Americans should understand and fight for. This is a divide and conquer strategy about our rights and his god forsaken wall. It is not about butterflies, he has just put them in the crosshairs as a way to get his base on his side against landowners.
We can’t let him win this fight, this battle, or this war.