Somehow Trump manages to drag everyone into his alternative universe, even the President of Finland. While in California, Trump brought up his latest reason for the raging wildfires. We don't rake our forests like they do in Finland. The White House has come up with a number of prevention tips but this one had everyone scratching their heads.
This follows up on earlier comments Trump made that California doesn't properly manage its forests, oblivious to the fact that the vast majority of forest lands fall under the jurisdiction of Ryan Zinke's Department of Interior. Hence, Zinke felt the need to defend himself, blaming the fires on environmental regulations.
The most popular prevention tip is logging. This is the one Zinke is promoting in an effort to open up more National Forest Service lands for exploitation. Currently, spotted owls are stopping him from making wide tracts of old growth forests available to logging companies, but it goes much deeper than this.
Trees form dense canopies for a reason. It allows them to better retain moisture, which they store in their roots and then spread to particularly dry portions of the forest during drought years. Selective cutting would break the canopy and the vast underground network that trees use for their own forest management. This was one of many interesting observations Peter Wohlleben made in his more than 30 years of studies as a forest ranger in Germany. His book The Hidden Life of Trees is an international bestseller. Don't expect Trump or Zinke to read it. They prefer to work with popular myths, which have been perpetuated for decades largely to promote the logging industry.
Of course, the Maga crowd has fallen for the logging myth as it does all the crap flowing out of the White House. If it wasn't for all those damn tree huggers trying to protect the spotted owls there would be no wildfires like we have seen raging in California. Loggers would have long ago fixed the problem by clearing huge swathes of these old forests so that fires couldn't spread from one end of the state to the other. Not like they care about California to begin with.
It was funny seeing Trump stand alongside Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom as they surveyed the damage in Paradise, California, which he mistakenly referred to as Pleasure. It must have been a pretty bitter pill for Trump to have to be with two ardent liberals, but he swallowed it just the same.
The fires are just the latest and most severe in an ongoing maelstrom that has ravaged the state over the last two years. Scientists attribute the fires to global warning, as the state has suffered severe droughts and its forest lands are extremely vulnerable. Trump, who feels he has a "natural instinct" for science, begs to differ. He says "a lot of factors" are to blame for the fires, including the lack of raking, which he apparently picked up from the Finnish President in a WH meeting a week ago.
It doesn't matter that his comments drew almost universal condemnation from scientists, firefighters, survivors and even the Queen of England, who felt the need to write him a pointed letter on the subject. Trump had initially threatened to withhold federal aid from California because he felt this was the state's problem. When the fires spread wildly out of control and resulted in at least 80 deaths and 1000 persons still missing, Trump was forced to respond in a more proper, dignified manner, which the Queen laid out in her letter. All he had to do was repeat it to the public. I'm sure she wouldn't have minded.
This disaster like so many others we have seen the last two years underscores our President's inability to show any compassion. He blamed Puerto Rico's woes in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria on its corrupt government. He sees each mass shooting as something that could have been avoided if people had more guns. He views the humanitarian crisis in Yemen as something it brought upon itself. He only responds to a crisis when forced to do so, and then in the most superficial way. Essentially, he is a psychopath.
What he said about the wildfires in California should give everyone pause because many of those 1000 missing persons are no doubt charred beyond any recognition. For him to so glibly dismiss these fires as a management problem and then offer such inane remedies like raking leaves only serves to underscore his complete lack of humanity.
It wasn't any easier for outgoing and incoming Governors Brown and Newsom to stand beside this empty shell of a man and be forced to offer thanks to a President who should have responded much earlier. After all, he felt the need to immediately mobilize troops to the border in defense of a caravan of migrants that he felt posed an imminent threat to the United States, yet allowed the California wildfires to rage for more than a week before responding with anything other than surly tweets.
I suppose in Trump's mind, it is better late than never. He will know doubt take credit for bringing the fires under control with the federal aid he has now pledged to the state, just like he took credit for belated relief efforts in Puerto Rico and Northwest Florida. What's done is done and now he will move on as he always does, hoping people will soon forget.
He doesn't take any responsibility for his words or actions. Given the frequency he repeats himself in his tweets it is safe to say he doesn't remember from one tweet to the next what he said before. Yet, Congressional Republicans and those in his cabinet that should know better continue to look the other way. They treat Trump like a dotardly old granddad you have to visit time to time in a nursing home, which is where he should be, not in the White House.
These fires are just the latest tragic reminder of how out of touch our President is with reality. As long as he makes appearances, federal and state officials will find a way to work around him. World leaders continue to pay deference to this blithering idiot just so they don't spoil their special relationship with the United States. It seems the sanctity of the White House is more important than the man who currently resides there.
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