Viewpoint: Beyond propaganda in the Gallatins

Joseph Scalia III

Can we move beyond propaganda in deciding the fate of the great mountain range to our south? Many Southwest Montanans have already and irreversibly made up their minds about whether to side with its “multiple use,” as espoused by the Gallatin Forest Partnership in an upbeat language that tries to sideline the abundant scientific reasons to keep the Gallatin Range wild.

My comments here do not address those folks. Nor are my thoughts solicited by those who are trying to protect Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem from the damaging effects of pretentious campaign behavior.

Instead, I speak here as a psychoanalyst who has made it his business to take a hard look at ideology, and the troubling picture of how people fall prey to the disingenuous yarns it can spin.

Always a combination of propaganda and uncritical thought makes a person or a group gullible to those who have the power and the money to “buy the election.” Any hope for a democratic problem-solving, in the sense of a democracy worthy of the name, lies in a critical consciousness at play in enough persons and groups. The ability to step back and firmly examine claims to truth, that ability is more rare than one might think.

Any concerned and responsible citizen must ask themselves whether or not their views are being unknowingly determined by the rhetoric of the "practical and realistic" defense of the Gallatin Forest Partnership's attempt to cut in half the Solomonic baby, thereby killing its ecosystemic viability.

The GFP lauds the idea that Wilderness designation can be acquired for a portion of the Range by removing the Wilderness Study Act protections of the rest of what is named the Hyalite-Porcupine-Buffalo Horn WSA. GFP spokespersons tiringly declare that the “released” areas will receive “permanent protection” under the auspices of designations such as “Wildlife” and Recreation Management Area “and other mind-bogglingly misleading terms whose deception becomes clear to anyone looking closely. In fact, if these lands are “released,” the consequent segmentation would be highly damaging to the Gallatins'; wildlife security.

In fact, the GFP's most striking indoctrination weapon has been its constant dodging of the overwhelming scientific data which indicates the great wildlife harm inherent in their proposal. An “unwilding” would be the order of the day, while the purported community-building of their “collaboration and compromise” would, in fact, construct a very different, a funereal, community.

The GFP'S censorship of an open and scientific discussion shines a harsh light on its profound, and pointed, language sleights of hand. Paradoxically, its member groups appear incredibly without guilt.

I am aware that my presentation here pulls no punches. I am aware that many Bozemanites want opposing environmentalists to "just get along." But getting along when their paths are incompatible could amount to nothing more than one group winning and another one losing. There simply and indisputably is a battle here. There will be no "getting along" after the Gallatins' fate is determined. Oh, some people will rationalize away the reality of the fallout; but most of us won't.

If you are on communal terms with GFP advocates - especially the employees of their member groups, and you decide in favor of ecological factors; or, even worse, if you have been a close colleague of those folks, and you dissent, you will experience the harshness that all dominant groups dish out against anyone who has “turned on” them. Or, if you are among the undecideds who are being enjoyably courted by the GFP, whose coffers give them the ability to make you very comfortable, and you decide in favor of the wild, you too will be frowned upon.

Can you critically think your way through this conundrum, and the social angst that has accompanied it for years now? Can you get beyond the "delivered wisdom" that will only ratchet up as we move toward a denouement for the Gallatins?

Joseph Scalia III, Psya.D. is a psychoanalyst and social critic who has been President of Montana Wilderness Association - now named Wild Montana, and of the Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Alliance. His most recent book, with Lynne S. Scalia, is Critical Consciousness: Beyond Impasses in Environmentalism, Psychoanalysis, and Education.