Forest Grump

Their Big Ten memberships decline because people no longer believe the braggadocio that saturates their direct mail like the smell of urine in the bathroom of a biker bar. They whine and worry. The mainstream environmental groups are quickly becoming irrelevant.

Their Democratic lunch mates are out shopping for bubble wrap to protect the bone china on their trip back home, where these frightened little dems will wrap themselves in the flag, call for mandatory school prayer, and support concentration camps for anyone caught without papers. Endangered species will come to mean anyone who is white, riiale, with a “decent job” raping the Earth. Ollie North was a role model for these chumps—any sleazy thing it takes to get reelected.

So who needs them? Good-bye Tom Foley, you pathetic has-been. You’ve pimped too long for the salmon-shredding aluminum companies and big timber. Too bad you didn’t take Max Baucus with you. (Still helping that sheep over the fence, Max?) We are, however, a little bummed that we lost Dan Hamburg. Dan told us in Washington last year that although he supports the Headwaters bill, what he’s really like to see is Charles Hurwitz behind bars!

Sadly we retained the ultimate liberal scumbag, Pat Williams, who tried to give the Wild Rockies to his bosses in timber, mining, oil and grazing. He actually convinced the Montana Wilderness Association, the Sierra Club and Senator Conrad Bums that his bill was a pro-wilderness bill. It’s a good thing Conrad believed our corporate patsy, or else, with Bums’ support, the Williams bill could have become law.

It’s ironic that if Montana had selected another puke-spined liberal instead of Mr. Burns, we’d see Williams and his newly-minted succubus back in Congress with a new plan to transfer control of Montana’s last roadless areas to the criminals we call businessmen. With the “new bipartisanship,” the corpora-govemment swine will try to squeeze one more drop of blood from the planet before retiring to their condos in Maui.

What the Democrats are guilty of, and what the big national environmental groups are guilty of, is complacency in the face of serious crimes. In an outrageous example, they fear to say what they know is true about Option Nine. These plaintiffs are acting like they actually enjoy being walked all over! Bend over Sierra Club Legal Defense! While sucking up to forest health or ecosystem management they say cutting thousand-year-old trees is okay. It doesn’t pose any kind of moral, legal, or ecological problem. Like Eichmann, the big groups have suspended moral judgment and now collaborate with the exterminators of the forest. Read Hannah Arendt: the Nazis, like the US Forest Service, could not succeed without such support.

Fortunately the grassroots groups, with a few exceptions, are sticking to their guns. We don’t care who is in power in Washington, for whoever stands on the walls of Babylon will be a target for our arrows. When we raze the citadel, it will matter not who holds the keys to the corporate washroom, or who has reserved parking at National Airport, because we will be out trashing their limos and doing donuts on the greens of their racist country clubs. What we want is nothing short of a revolution.

Fuck that crap you read in Wild Earth or in Confessions of an Eco-Warrior. Monkeywrenching is more than just sabotage, and your goddamn right it’s revolutionary! This is jihad, pal. There are no innocent bystanders, because in these desperate hours, bystanders are not innocent. We’ll broaden our theater of conflict. What happens in Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Rio de Janeiro, in the frozen and radioactive waters of Siberia does matter—even if it’s not in our wilderness proposal.

Everything, every assumption, every institution, needs to be challenged. Now! Now, because it will reveal uncomfortable truths conveniently overlooked. Of course this may lead to a decrease in speaking fees or hurt your chance to buy that ranch in the Rockies. But since you’re confessin’, Dave, why do you still want to be buddies with the cheap suits who after two decades, are still policing the agenda in Washington DeeGee? Is it really in the movement’s interest to make sure the message sounds reasonable in Orange County and does not critique the capitalist abattoir?

It may also alienate some of our big shot new age businessmen whose hands are dripping with teak and petroleum, whose profits are wrapped in the flesh of ancient forests, and who think that just because they made a billion dollars they own it all and that their shit doesn’t stink.

Remember tree spiking? As I write this, I am looking up at the three-pound hammer that Spicer used to nail the Post Office Timber Sale in the Salmon-Selway’s green forests. Everyone knew these magnificent trees had to be spiked high and low. Why? Because it would save them? No! Because it was necessary to send a message to those butchers in green uniforms, those cowards with forestry degrees. Examine the posterior of the chief butcher himself, Jack Ward Thomas, and you’ll find the lingering labial impression of Dave Foreman, who abandoned Spicer and all monkey-wrenchers when he copped a plea and deserted his friends. Spicer, who alone stood up for what he did and what he knew was right. Dave dismissed Spicer’s selfless act as bad judgment. Read my book, he says, and next time don’t get caught.

Yeah, right. As the New Year comes in, I am saddened to find Confessions marked down from $20 to $2. Who says the public can’t recognize the truth? Spicer was right to spike the Post Office Timber Sale. If he had stayed home, ABC News would not have flown out to Cove/Mallard to take the struggle national.

And more spiking is needed to convey the urgency of the situation! Very little action is happening. Too many armchair eco-warriors walking around town in camo. Go out and get them suckers, fill ‘em full of steel, and I promise you this: you might get caught; you might do some time; your friends might abandon you. But you will never have to spike the same tree twice.

We are not afraid of Newt Gingrich or the wise use movement. We will not suck up to anyone. We will not miss the Democrats or the Sierra Club. As George Bush said once, “Don’t cry for me Argentina.”