Bang the Drum Slowly

The title of our latest post has nothing to do with the wonderful 1973 baseball movie with Robert De Niro, or the beautiful song on Emmy Lou Harris's Red Dirt Girl album. Both are pleasant and pleasing entertainment meant for every man, woman, and child. Ours is a more insidious title attempting to shine sunlight on the greatest threat to the outdoor adventure world. Whether it is hunting, fishing, backpacking, birdwatching or floating and paddling a river, if you do any of these,  please take note to the threat to your recreation and lifestyle.

   A consistent drumbeat started an few years ago.  It wasn't loud - just consistent. Soon the drum beat was thought of as normal and it became accepted. This is exactly what has happened with the billionaires club in America who are pushing their agenda. It is an agenda that is designed to benefit them with the support from the everyday Joe and Mary, even if it is detrimental to Joe and  Mary. This very small group of people with a very large amount of resources who would like for  the EPA's Clean Water Act to go away. You know the EPA, founded by that ultra liberal Richard Nixon, has been responsible for regulating industry and keeping the bad players of the industrial world from making the Cuyahoga River burn again like it did in 1969. The plan to gut the EPA has brought this group to announce that the radical environmental groups such as........... Trout Unlimited, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, TRCP, the Isaak Walton League and Bull Moose Sportsmen are to be feared and not supported. Don't these groups just scare the living hell out of you! The conservation groups purpose is simple - give us a place to play that the water is pure and the air is clean. Ok, to do that you have to have a watchdog and the bogyman is the Environmental Protection Agency.
 
   The drumbeat continues.  Joe and Mary are now fully onboard and engaged with the club,(they might forget about it for a while if they take a float on the Buffalo National River).  They don't even mind a little pig shit in the water. It really doesn't affect them, and look at all the people Cargill is employing in their wonderful "Natural State".  I think about ten or so full time workers are employed at the river killing C&H CAFO.  Joe and Mary can now quote how the EPA is killing industry and job growth in America. Never mind that we are in the sixth year of a recovery.  Never mind that we have unemployment under seven percent.  Never mind that corporations are making more money now than ever in our industrial history.  Never mind that we are on the verge of the largest grain crop in history.  Never mind that there is more oil and natural gas available in the US than ever before.  Bang, Bang, Bang. These are rules and regs that keep the club from making more and the club says they have to go. And while you're at it, get rid of all those granola eating, hippy tree huggers at Trout Unlimited and their kind.

   So while the billionaires club bitches and complains, notice the paid spokesmen and women for them. They are now influenceing your local schoolboard, city council, state government, and swaying national elections to put their minions on your door and looking in your window, if they can see through the coal smudge on the glass.

  So where do we go from here? Maybe our fictional paddlers Joe and Mary can't stand the smell from C&H pig penitentiary and confinement camp anymore.  Maybe the people of Montana say enough to the billionaires drumbeat to get the US to sell the public lands to them and keep you off. YOUR public lands.  Maybe the 400,000 people in Toledo will say enough to the phosphate pollution of Lake Erie and be able to drink clean water again.  Maybe the fourth estate, "mainstream press" won't be bought and paid for and will actually point out the banging drum is still there. Maybe the water in the Great Rocky Mountains will someday be drinkable in many of the former mining towns again.  Maybe the American people will pull their head out of the billionaires ass and run the irresponsible ones out of town on a rail like the fictitious politician in the movie Brother Where Art Thou
.
  If you do anything today read this blog by Chad Love, http://mallardofdiscontent.blogspot.com/. It has some spicy language (which I like) and unlike this blog, is written by a professional outdoor writer. Send this or his blog to someone else, get involved, and help save  the things you care for. Support our conservation groups that are under siege. Support the corporations that are good stewards of our nation's resources. Piss on the users.  They are trying to piss on you.  They can pay for all the drummers in the world to push their subliminal and insipid message.  Remember
that the drum will continue to bang slowly - if we allow it.

   Bang, bang, bang.