Who will fight the fires?
Professionalization, communities, and our uncertain times
The whole town filed into the high school gymnasium. Nervously, we sat on wooden bleachers in the late August Montana evening. It was the year 2000, and we were here for a wildfire update.
Although we were facing nothing like the horrors that California has recently experienced, for the times, it was bleak. A few nights previously, we’d almost been forcibly evacuated, before the wind suddenly reversed.
After experts explained the situation, my friend K— stood up. “What can we do?” he asked. He wanted to help build fire line, although he admitted “it’s been several years since I swung a Pulaski.”
When I’d played volleyball with K—, he could barely bend his knees, thanks to a decades-old on-the-job injury that he didn’t like to talk about. When I’d hiked with him, and his knee flared up, he’d slowed down the whole party, and eventually exasperated me. I thought he’d be a terrible firefighter.
“This is my home,” K— continued. It meant everything to him. He would do anything to defend it. “I’m sure there’s lots of people here who would join me.”
He was right, I knew. This was leadership. If a middle-aged near-cripple like him marched off into the forest for a miserable day of hot physical labor, the rest of us would follow. We loved our home too.
But I dreaded that obligation. Chronic health issues made me as fragile as K—; I’d be worse at firefighting than he would.
The district ranger responded to K— as a friend: “I hear you. But there’s nothing you can do.” Professionals were on the job, and our most important duty would be to stay out of their way. The days were long gone when the Forest Service fought fires by recruiting bums off the streets of the nearest city.
My dread subsided; dilemma solved. But as I watched K— and many others in the gym, I realized that they had a different emotion, and that I shared a bit of it too. We had just been told that we were useless. Amid the biggest threat to our properties and lives that we had ever seen, we were being asked to stand down. Go sit on the couch. Stay informed if you want, or watch TV. The adults will take care of everything.
I’ve been thinking of this story since November’s election. I’ve wondered if making America great again is about trying to eliminate such tiny infantilizing moments. Shall I go to the grocery store? No, we’ll get DoorDash. Shall I change the oil? Just take it to Jiffy Lube. Shall I darn these socks? Good grief, just throw them away and buy new ones!
And at the community level: Shall I serve on the planning board? You’d just rubber-stamp the staff reports. Shall I umpire this game? Only if you’re certified. Can we improve these parks and trails? Depends on what the consultants say. How can I fight this pandemic? Stay home, do nothing.
Each individual decision may be justified, but the all-encompassing result feels wrong. Professionalization feels like a loss of autonomy and thus meaning. Granted, it hits harder for straight white males, because previously marginalized populations have had less personal sovereignty to lose. But every life deserves autonomy and meaning. MAGA voters saw, earlier than I did, how society was going in the wrong direction.
It's been a tough week in my community, as in many around the country. The Forest Service, one of our biggest and most dependable employers, has experienced mass firings. Amid the chaos and fear, good information is scarce. How many? What functions? Prevention? Who will fight the fires?
Fire science has made remarkable progress in the last 30 years. I fear that simultaneous research funding cuts will imperil its ability to continue making progress in the face of climate change. But more deeply, I fear that the nation is collectively having a crisis like my town had in that gymnasium.
These uncertain times aren’t really about budgets or ideologies or inflation or disparities in wealth or capitalists’ greed. We’re grappling with a world that requires professionalization, and thus gives most of us nothing to do in a crisis. That’s wrong! Let’s do something! Let’s tear it down.
In that gymnasium 25 years ago, I wrestled my way to an appreciation that even the grunts—especially the grunts—are experts. K— and I might be useless, but not because we were crippled or sick. Instead because even a task as sweaty as firefighting required expertise, and our expertise lay elsewhere.
This week, as trail crews, weed crews, and front-line workers in non-forestry occupations got fired from their federal jobs, I felt for them. Not only because they’re human beings who deserved better. Also because they’re trained, skilled, dedicated heroes whose work is required by today’s complex society.
The firings seem to have happened without a plan, without an anchor in either operational realities or political history. And I wonder: Who will fight the fires?
David and Lee, thanks for the thoughtful comments. I don't disagree, but I worry that it's not a productive direction. I wrote this story in part to explore the idea that voters were rational and wise. If you want to make money in business, you have to embrace some form of "the customer is always right"; to attract voters, Democrats need to believe that the voters are right, rather than easily manipulated by evil propaganda. I found that sense of rightness in my own tendencies toward anti-professionalism; I explored a potential solution in the form of insisting that *everybody* has a realm in which they have something to offer.
The local trails group met last night, in part to talk about how to respond to the firings. Do we organize lots of volunteer days to maintain Forest Service trails (if USFS would even let us), participating in our community by performing these essential now-eliminated functions? Or is that playing into the oligarchs' dastardly plan? The room was split. Which is to say, each of us in the room wanted to argue both sides of that question. I don't know who everyone in that room voted for, but I like to imagine that at least one of them was MAGA, having voted against professionalization and now puzzling over the consequences of how to dismantle it.
As alluded to by other comments, many MAGA voters are anti-professional, anti-education, anti-intellectualism and anti-science not because they understand those things are the roots of the problem. They aren’t. MAGA voters see those things as roots of the problem because Republicans, always defending the oligarchs and oligarch-wannabes, have been misleading and distracting Americans for decades. Distracting Americans from the real problems. Reaganomics, racism, misogyny, income inequality and neoliberalism. Effective propaganda campaigns, a willingness to blatantly lie, talk radio, Fox News, Citizens United and corporate media have been effective tools for Republicans. A generally timid Democratic Party has also been culpable. Regardless, things are going to burn, literally and figuratively.