The Cowboy Way

“This Land – How Cowboys, Capitalism and Corruption are Ruining the American West,” by Christopher Ketcham, 2019

Ketcham is a reporter and backpacker who knows the western U.S., especially the ‘intermountain west,’ intimately well.  He lived in Escalante, Utah for a number of years near the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument that was recently decimated by Trump, and so is able to tell that story. This book tracks the continued raping of the public commons and nature in the west by ranchers and their cows and the government agencies, bureaucrats and politicians in league with the ranchers.  The Utah-based Mormon religion plays a role in proclaiming that man must dominate nature, as the majority of local politicians are Mormons like Orrin Hatch - which perhaps makes Utah a theocracy!  Timber, oil and gas-fracking companies have piled in with the ranchers and are rarely denied government permits.  Added to this are the collaborationist fake ‘Green’ groups that partner with the destroyers.   It’s not a pretty picture.

CONTINUING ENCLOSURE of the COMMONS

Marxists have understood for years that ‘the destruction of the commons’ in England (and other countries) was part of the way capital developed and still develops – by enclosing public agricultural and forest land as private, owned by landlords.  The operative word is ‘develops.’  What many don’t realize is that this process is still going on in the West.  There is a massive amount of federal land other than our national parks in the west: millions of acres set aside as wilderness; national forests, wildlife preserves; national monuments, far more than in the east or north.  All of this is protected by a large series of environmental laws passed between 1964 and 1976 – the Endangered Species Act being one of the most important. 

As part of the private enclosure movement, the exploits of the violent Bundy rancher clan and their ‘sovereign citizen’ views are well known.  These ‘sagebrush rebels’ deny any role for the federal government in the intermountain west and even deny the existence of public land.  Ketcham actually reveals that the FBI and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service allowed the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge invasion by Bundy’s militia to happen.  Not to mention the mistakes in prosecution by the US DOJ that allowed them to go free.  The Bundys are the poster-children for what is happening in the intermountain West but they are only the visible tip of the cowberg.

COWPOCALYPSE

I say ‘cowberg’ because cows grazing almost for free on public land are the key force destroying western nature.  They are an invasive species.  Their hooves, their shit,  their munching, their very profitable presence is the reason ranchers and the government kill wolves, cougars, grizzlies, coyotes, buffalo, gophers, wolverines, lynx and other animals while profitably locking up wild horses.  Over the 20^th century, tens of millions have been killed.  One whole federal agency, Wildlife Services, just kills animals for the ranching industry!  The delisting of grizzlies or wolves from the Endangered Species Act draws 95% opposition from the public, but goes on anyway for the benefit of the ranchers.  Science shows that top predators are necessary to reduce the numbers of deer and elk and for a healthy ecosystem, but instead they are shot. The crypto-biotic soil and the riparian creeks are damaged or destroyed, roads are built, habitats chopped up.  Desertification, deforestation, topsoil loss, species extinction – chock it up to cows.  This even though ranching in the intermountain west provides only 2% of the beef produced in the U.S. Beef itself, the SUV of foods, is unsustainable and carbon intensive anyway.  As Ketcham has found, the cowpocalypse has arrived.

CUTTING CARBON SINKS

Compounding this is the profitable and private ‘harvesting’ of public trees, subsidized by the Forest Service and the taxpayer.  Logging is actually right up there with coal in carbon emissions.  Trees are carbon sinks and ecologically necessary.  The massive road building, soil erosion and natural destruction that come from chopped-up habitats benefits only the likes of Boise Cascade.  Excuses that clear-cuts and ‘thinning’ are anti-fire strategies have been disproved by science – they are useful myths for the timber companies.  Fire is actually part of the natural cycle.  But as Ketcham makes very clear, science is no longer used by government agency top bureaucrats, and certainly not by the timber companies or stockmen.  Profit is the only marker.

Ketcham goes into great detail on these issues, interviewing many government and ex-government scientists, botanists and biologists, environmental activists, whistle-blowers and even one of the Bundys.  As the main philosophic argument puts it – are we ‘part’ of nature or are we ‘the lord’ of nature?  If the former, then killing nature is killing ourselves.  If the latter, the Biblical and Mormon reading of Genesis 1:27 coincides with the capitalist profit motive and the collaborationism of the fake Green groups – the Wilderness Society, the Nature Conservancy, some local groups along with some local Sierra Club chapters.  Eco-pragmatism is a recipe for destruction but it has been embraced by big-money liberals, who one activist hilariously describes as “milquetoast, sweet, upper-middle class numbnuts.”  

They Look Innocent, don't they?

‘SOVEREIGN’ CITIZENS

The ‘sovereign citizen’ idea claims the county is the only legal entity to be recognized – giving even the Republican idea of ‘states rights’ a run for its money.  These militia bozos carry around copies of the Constitution and cite one passage – A1,S8,C17 - they erroneously seem to think prohibits the federal government from owning land.  It does not.  Ultimately these people want to graze their cattle for free on public land while happily receiving millions in USDA government welfare monies.  You could not find better hypocrites. Western ranching actually needs to be shut down, like the plantations of old.    

GOVERNMENT CAPTURE

Government agencies key to the intermountain west like the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services and the Park Service have been captured by the corporations and businesses they are supposed to ‘regulate.’  As such, they no longer actually follow environmental laws.  This has happened under both Republican and Democratic Party administrations.  Over-tourism and overhunting are also part of the problem.  Ketcham takes particular aim at Obama’s ‘compromises’ with the ranching and extractive industries and the policy of the fake Green groups towards collaboration and ‘multiple use.’  The latter actually get PAID by the government to ‘consult’ on environmental issues, so their cash flow is dependent on not litigating and instead having beer with the bastards. 

As a prerequisite to saving the land and animals, the leading corrupt government bureaucrats have to be removed and scientists put back in charge.  This will only happen through a political revolution in the U.S. The government we get is a function of the struggle between classes.  If a government is mostly controlled by the wealthy and corporate entities, then that means they are winning the class struggle. 

Ketcham sees value in nature itself, going into rhapsodies over myriad birdlife, fragile vegetation, the sage-brush steppe, red-rock formations, clear streams that still have healthy trout and the last remaining bits of unspoiled forest and old-growth timber.  He makes fun of the cowboy myth which covers for ecological wrecking.  He at times sounds like a ‘deep ecology’ advocate.  But he also draws links between human social survival and preserving the intermountain west.  It seems he endorses eco-sabotage when necessary.  Beyond that, what we need is a mass socialist movement that is an implacable enemy of the capitalists, their government lackeys and their rancid politicians over the continuing enclosure of the commons, in the intermountain west and everywhere else.

Other reviews on this topic, use blog search box upper left with these terms: "Born Under a Bad Sky," "Red State Rebels," "Vanishing Face of Gaia," "Manny's Steakhouse," "Archaic Thanksgiving," "The Emotional Lives of Animals," "Green is the New Red," "Good News," "Hayduke Lives," "The Monkey Wrench Gang." (Last three by Edward Abbey.)

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

November 11, 2019