Like a
lot of folks, I got a kick out of the letter the Oregon Natural Resources
Council sent to Klamath Basin farmers, encouraging them to "take the money
and run."
In the letter, the ONRC lays out an eight-page argument for why
small-scale family farming is an ecologically, economically, politically,
socially, and culturally irresponsible way to make one’s living in the
Basin.
The heart of the letter is a proposal to transfer farmlands into
federal ownership, and to replace revenues from the indigenous farm
economy with what amounts to a system of state-sponsored economic
servitude. In short, the ONRC argues that the basin’s agricultural
communities have problems because they’re dependent on artificial
government supports, and then proposes to solve the problems with wildly
expensive, utterly unprecedented, and apparently endless artificial
government supports.
But what interests me is not the ONRC’s proposal itself, as
entertaining as it is, but the way they chose to put it forth.
Although the letter is signed by ONRC Conservation Director Jay Ward,
anyone who’s been around Oregon natural resource politics can see Andy
Kerr’s name glaring like a marquee across every paragraph, from the
opening threats all the way to the divide-and-conquer conclusion. After
several years watching the ONRC flounder in his absence, Andy Kerr has
recently rejoined the organization he and the Spotted Owl helped build.
Andy Kerr has often been a thorn in the side of resource-dependent
communities, but by familiarizing ourselves with his particular style of
advocacy, we can be better prepared for what we are sure to see from the
ONRC in the near future.
Nothing has had a greater influence on Andy’s advocacy than a document
called The Art of War, by a Chinese military strategist named Sun
Tzu. It was Sun Tzu who made the claim that "All war is deception," which
is telling in and of itself, considering Andy’s history. Andy rereads
The Art of War each and every year.
Sun Tzu, who lived around the fifth century B.C., argued that the key
to gaining advantage over one’s foe lays not so much in overpowering him
with brute force, but in out-maneuvering the opponent based on superior
knowledge of his strengths and weaknesses.
For example, Sun Tzu suggested that, "if your opponent is of choleric
temper, seek to irritate him," meaning that you can weaken your opponent
by causing him to surrender his self-control to anger. I thought of Sun
Tzu’s recommendation when I read some of the angry letters folks sent in
response to the ONRC’s proposal. Mind you, I don’t blame folks for being
angry, but I can see Andy leaning back in his easy chair, smiling as we
confirm for him the wisdom of his tactic.
Andy knows that we are, here in the basin, "of choleric temper" lately,
and Andy is trying to irritate us. This is why the ONRC letter begins by
writing off five generations of community history and agricultural
prosperity as "a century of mismanagement," which is then followed by
three pages of threats, followed by a flexing of largely nonexistent
political muscle, followed by the rather startling claim that the ONRC
represents the interests of farmers better than our own traditional
leadership.
Unlike other recent proposals, this letter is in no way intended to
propose meaningful solutions to actual problems. It is a rhetorical device
designed to weaken what the ONRC sees as its opponent in a battle for
control over the basin’s natural resources.
This letter is designed, first and foremost, to enrage farmers, whether
they are for or against a buyout. Then, once it has us all mad, it
attempts to isolate us, atomizing the agricultural community, appealing to
individual self-interest by offering mountains of cash that the ONRC knows
full well will never, ever materialize. Then, after isolating us, the
letter seeks to set us against each other, asserting some "silent
majority" of basin farmers who are being exploited by a tiny minority of
"agricultural elite."
Of course, there is nothing wrong with these tactics per se. In fact,
they are being used as we speak, and to good effect, by our own national
military in Iraq. But fortunately for us, these tactics only work on
people who don’t know they are, after all, just tactics. Indeed, it was
Sun Tzu himself who warned that "these devices must never be divulged
beforehand, or defeat is certain."
The best thing we can do on this end is laugh this one off, reminding
ourselves that the ONRC has no record of accomplishment with regard to
improving ecological conditions here in the Klamath Basin – a fact that
has not gone unnoticed among significant decision makers, who are watching
with the rest of us as a once-mighty organization gradually descends into
irrelevance.