{"id":39313,"date":"2018-10-18T06:17:17","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T11:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39313"},"modified":"2018-10-18T06:17:17","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T11:17:17","slug":"the-ten-big-lies-of-traditional-western-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39313","title":{"rendered":"The Ten Big Lies of Traditional Western Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ten Big Lies of Traditional Western Politics<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Photo Source DieselDemon | CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Public lands managed by the federal government loom large in western politics, a defining topic dictating the political debate. Corporate interests \u2013 logging, grazing, and mineral extraction most prominently \u2013 have often succeeded in dominating that debate through their good-old-boy network of legislators, county commissioners, lobby groups, and captive agencies. This powerful group largely controls the imaginary \u201ccustom and culture\u201d of the West, a myth which reflects an attitude of dominion over nature, an anti-regulation mindset, and an obsession with economic profit regardless of social or ecological consequences. But in reality, westerners in large numbers don\u2019t actually share these values. With the influx of tech companies and professional workers from other regions, this extraction-centric worldview is becoming a tinier and tinier minority viewpoint in a West that increasingly prizes unspoiled scenery, abundant wildlife, and recreational values above extractive uses of public lands.<\/p>\n

As they sense their deathgrip on the public debate slipping, those seeking to maximize exploitation and marginalize conservation on western public lands are becoming increasingly strident in their insistence on a variety of fictional assertions about the West. Here is a list of some of the most outrageous misinformation being peddled through the media and via political channels.<\/p>\n

1) Industrial oil and gas drilling is compatible with healthy wildlife populations<\/strong><\/p>\n

Big Oil has been trying for decades to sell America on the idea that it is not a dirty industry, and that whatever its latest environmental disaster happened to be, it was a rare occurrence that will never happen again. Drilling rigs, pipelines, and the spiderweb of dusty access roads can exist side-by-side with abundant native wildlife, they assert.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ten Big Lies of Traditional Western Politics Photo Source DieselDemon | CC BY 2.0 Public lands managed by the federal government loom large in western politics, a defining topic dictating the political debate. Corporate interests \u2013 logging, grazing, and mineral extraction most prominently \u2013 have often succeeded in dominating that debate through their good-old-boy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,6],"tags":[5493,22393,1224,655,4327,22394],"class_list":["post-39313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","category-liberty","tag-counterpunch","tag-erik-molvar","tag-exploitation","tag-propaganda","tag-public-lands","tag-western-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39314,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39313\/revisions\/39314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}