Just a Match Away
The Politics of Fire
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Sooner or later all big fires become political events.

Even before becalmed Santa Ana winds and mountain sleet quenched the blazes in southern California, politicians from both parties raced to exploit the charred landscape for their own advantage—a kind of political looting while the embers still glowed.

Republicans, naturally, pointed an incendiary finger at environmentalists, rehashing their tired mantra that restrictions on logging had provided the kindling for the inferno that consumed 3,600 homes (largely in Republican districts) and took twenty human lives (the non-human body count will never be tallied).

Not to be outdone, Democrats parroted a similar line, but in more bombastic tones. They tried to affix the blame on George W. Bush, alleging that our chainsaw president had rebuffed desperate pleas from Gray Davis for money to finance the logging off of beetle-nibbled forests in the parched San Bernadino Mountains.

So here the two parties converge once again, harmonized in their fatuous contention that more logging will prevent forest conflagrations. It didn’t take long for this unity, soldered by the flames of southern California, to find a way to express itself in Congress.

Link to con.