This morning was full of helicopters. Probably it was just one helicopter, but it passed so many times above the canyon that the dog was afraid to go outside. They were scanning the forest for additional fires after the lightning storm two days ago.
By afternoon, the noise of rotor engines had given way to the whine of mosquitos. I was digging a timber into the hillside when I spotted my neighbor and her poodle rounding the bend up the road. It's sometimes lonely up here, and the prospect of a conversation seemed nice, so I waved at them to come over.
At first, Maybel found my work gloves threatening, but she let me scratch behind her ears after I took them off. (Maybel is the poodle.)
My neighbor said I was smart to build a fire perimeter around the cabin, although she and her partner haven't yet done so. Our eyes turned to the bare hillside just down the road, where a few years ago, the Forest Service brought in a crew to cut down the trees that were too beetle-infested to survive. They felled all the pines except the smallest saplings. Then they sectioned the trunks into six-foot lengths and arranged them in pyres.
The crew was supposed to come back during the winter to burn the pyres, mimicking the process of a real wildfire, but they didn't show up. Now the Forest Service is being dismantled, and I don't think the crew is coming back.
The hillside looks awful, but my neighbor and I agreed the project probably made the canyon safer.
This post is part of a series:
Part 1: Smoke on the mountain
Part 2: Unmaking a forest
Part 3: When the water comes rushing in
At least this part of the forest isn't going to burn anytime soon, my neighbor and I agreed. We talked then about how more aspens are appearing in the newly cleared space.
"Your property has some nice aspens too." My neighbor pointed to the slope above my cabin, and I had to explain that my own aspen grove was the result of an inadvertent tree clearing almost six decades ago. The good old boys who originally built this place caused a fire on the hillside, and the flames raced to the top of the ridge.
As a child, I remember watching a small colony of aspens expand year over year into the burned area. Then the pine saplings matured and overtopped the aspens to claim more of the sunlight. Now the aspens are again being relegated to patches and pockets.
Over my life I've watched the forest on my side of the canyon regenerate from fire. Normally the other side of the canyon, which was cleared by the Forest Service, would recover too. It would merge with the larger forest that extends for miles to the north and east. But we're not living in "normally" anymore, and I'm doubtful the rest of the forest will still be there when this part grows back.
The new regime is trying to sell off and privatize the entirety of the nation's commons – everything from national forests to schools. Everything from healthcare to scientific research. Our inheritance and our legacy.
They're disposing of government assets, government departments, agencies, and functions – everything society needs in order to maintain itself. In cases where assets and services can't be sold, the regime is trying to destroy them, leaving opportunities for predatory tech companies to replace civic functions in a downgraded way.
It's all being sold off or destroyed. – medical research, trade relationships, an impartial legal system, a nonpartisan military, disaster response, disease prevention, schools, libraries, universities, rural hospitals, local governance, elections, journalism, wildlands and wilderness, climate progress, counterterrorism and counterintelligence, a stable currency, a functioning agriculture system. They're targeting everything that allows our society to sustain, govern, and protect itself. It's our civic infrastructure, and they're destroying it.
I have the impression that most people haven't considered how complete an un-making of our society the regime is engineering. It's difficult to wrap one's head around the scale of the destruction and the scope of the transformation the regime is working toward.
They're enacting societal destruction that's on the same scale as literal acts of war, and the death toll is going to be similarly warlike. This regime's actions are a far greater threat than was ever posed by Al-Qaeda. The threat is truly existential. They're stealing our future – mine, yours, your kids' future, the forest's future.
The fabric of the United States cannot withstand three more years of this assault. I don't think we can withstand even one more year.
And so, in the face of an existential threat, we have to acknowledge something. The destruction must be stopped, and therefore we must stop it. The regime that's dismantling our nation needs to be removed, and therefore we need to remove it. There's no getting around this hard truth. Denial and delay only lets them consolidate power more fully.
The way to save ourselves from this fascist mess is by making it the focus of our politics to put a stop to the destruction and to remove this regime. It's imperative that we find a way to make it happen quickly.
We can do this. We, the citizens of Daily Kos, are activists who know how to mobilize people. You can help build the coalition that will remove this regime by linking up with Citizens' Impeachment.
My next post will describe a nautical adventure.
