Here we are once again in the middle of a fire season, costing us millions of tax dollars, millions of prime forest acres burned, homes destroyed and human lives lost because liberals keep filing lawsuits to stop logging.
They say they want to save the forest, well, your forest is now burned up because no one can get in to manage the forest properly so we don’t have fires. They say the want to save animals that live there, well, where are these animals going to live, when there is no forest?
They say animals are important to them, do they ever think of these poor animals burning alive being tortured in pain? One fireman said he saw a grizzly bear running for his life in the middle of a fire completely engulfed in flames. Is this what you libs want? All the liberals talk about loving nature and animals, yet they are responsible for the forest being burned and destroyed with a great loss of animal life.
The firemen can no longer go deep into the forest to stop these fires, they have to keep pulling back their lines farther and farther away from the actual fire. Why? Because it has become too dangerous due to the immense amount of underbrush and over growth of trees that should not be there. Think before you want to file another lawsuit to stop logging. All you are causing is more forest to be destroyed, more human lives lost, more animal suffering and tax dollars wasted, and no more beauty to look at because you cannot think beyond your own selfishness. You are doing more harm than good.
No, logging does not destroy forest. They know how to manage a forest to keep it healthy for habitat, nature and humans to enjoy. You libs are the ones who should hang your heads in shame because you alone are responsible for animal suffering, loss of homes, forest and lives.
Dee Gibney
Hamilton
Bitterroot atheist says
Good response Richard. What I find interesting is that the same people that blame “liberals and environmentalists” for forest fires completely look the other way and live in denial when it comes to the effect that climate change has on our forests.
Richard T. Landry says
For over 10 years now, I have been suffering Mrs Gibney’s poorly contrived and constructed rants against all things liberal, or progressive. In this latest letter, affixing blame to liberals for the numerous wildland fires burning in this region, she has provided us a clear example of her severe affliction with the Dunning-Kruger syndrome, and the kind of woefully obsessed black and white understanding of the world she perceives.
Mrs Gibney is guilty of the same patterning of logical fallacy that President Trump relies upon, over & over. ( Currently we have his example of promoting a ‘false equivalency’ between the neo-Nazis and fascists in Charlottesville, and the portion of the crowd opposed to such unAmerican, anti-democratic ideals). In Trump’s case, I believe he knows he is utilizing logical fallacy, but counts on most of his followers not recognizing that. In Mrs Gibney’s case, I rather doubt she recognizes common fallacy, or how, of course, it always weakens, or destroys, one’s argument. The fallacy she has concocted in this letter is the highly-recognizable ‘strawman’ argument: by positing liberals as the source of blame for the lightning-caused wildland fires is a gross misrepresentation of the situation, and such a stretch it lapses into the realm of the utterly absurd. For example, several of the current fires were actually begun in remote areas that had already burned over ten or twenty years back. And the Lolo Peak fire has originated in rugged, inaccessible mountain slopes which have never been practical ( or cost-effective ) to perform logging practices on. In fact, it’s so rugged back in there it has proven a deterrent to fire management, with it proving to impractical and dangerous to place boots on the ground. Balloon or helicopter logging with skyline rigging might do the job, but it’s rarely good for the bottomline, and can easily create a flood of red ink. ( My brother-in law was one of the foremost experts and proponents of skyline logging, and I know firsthand the considerable obstacles of resorting to these techniques. ). But don’t take my word for it, see this fire analyst’s deconstruction of the Lolo fire to understand what is invloved here: https://bitterrootstar.com/2017/08/09/about-the-lolo-peak-fire/ .
Since Mrs Gibney persists in seeing published her rants and vitriol, politicizing even subjects such as this on a common disaster we must all live with, I am of the opinion she must receive encouragement to do so from some coterie of followers or acquaintances who like Gibney, suffer from a weak grasp of “the big picture”. I would like to suggest they all recognize that any argument which is founded or buttressed upon a logical fallacy, a logical sleight-of-hand, is a bad argument which cedes all ground as soon as the fallacy is made clear. Logical fallacies may drive many arguments, but they have one thing in common: using logical fallacy invalidates one’s argument.
If you cannot recognize these logical trespasses on your own, I would suggest you spend $14.00 and procure Michael Withey’s ‘Mastering Logical Fallacies’. It may also have the secondary impact of improving one’s own arguments, and benefit the reader by increasing their confidence.