Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few weeks, you’re aware that Central and Eastern Washington state are burning up … literally.

While the sarcastic, disrespectful side of me wants to put the blame solidly upon the people who voted the Progressive Inslee into the Governor’s mansion, thereby bringing God’s wrath down upon all of us, I think I’ll instead address the real issue. The Radical Environmentalists who have infected the government at most every level, but in particular the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the Washington State Department of Natural Resources.

Here’s what I believe happened. Some years ago, the Environmentalists put a stop the the practice of spraying the ditches and shoulders on all the rural, Forest Service/BLM/DNR and logging roads. What that did was permit weeds to grow unchecked. At the end of each season, the weeds go to seed and the winds, which are quite strong in the affected areas, blow seed into the forests. These germinate and in the following Spring/Summer, the forest floor becomes a tinderbox of dry weeds. This cycle repeats for several seasons until an untimely lightning strike, an errant ember from a campfire or a slash pile happens upon this fuel-rich environment and before long we have a wind-whipped wildfire consuming the countryside. This has been the rule, rather than the exception for many, many years now.

The Environmentalists will say that this is the natural order of things but, again, they are lying. The "natural" order would be for no one to have ever entered the forest in the first place. Under those conditions, many decades would elapse between large forest fires, and then, only dead/dying/diseased trees would be burned because the temperatures in such a fire are lower that those in these wind-whipped, weed-fueled monsters that we are contending with today.

Because Mankind has entered the forests, cutting roads and trails, and provided an environment conducive to excessive weed growth, the forests of today require management. That includes insuring that the weeds are controlled. Failing to provide this sort of management has been one of our most abject failures.

This is why these particular Central Washington fires have become so large. There are few "forests" in the familiar sense anymore. The forests of some 45 to 50-years ago have passed into memory only to be replaced by thousands of acres of weeds, grasslands and scrub brush. Wildfires looking for a time & place to happen.

So now, we have reached the crux of the matter. We, collectively as voters, have to accept responsibility for electing people into powerful government positions who have agendas not necessarily aligned with our own and furthermore, permitting them to surrender their Constitutional authority to literal armies of unelected bureaucrats and Progressive technocrats, accountable to no one, who work tirelessly advancing the cause of globalist’s control over all aspects of our lives and property, including the so-called public lands.

All of this just begs the question; "How do we regain control?"

An immense effort to reforest the areas of concern, along with concerted programs of weed abrogation, the "endangered" bugs be damned, would be the foundation of the effort. Changes to farming practices might also contribute. Crops requiring irrigation, planted on otherwise bare slopes could help control seasonal flooding and help water these areas, making them fire resistant. The process would have to continue and expand over several decades, involving everyone affected, not just government, which would be restrained by law from trying to save "bugs" anymore.

Our Progressive nitwit Governor proclaimed that these fires were going to only get worse and worse as the years pass. He blamed global warming, of course. A cowardly way to escape responsibility for his part in advancing the political and social philosophy which created the environment which contributes to fueling these fires.