Obama understands that his pastor's inflammatory comments are not only wrong but divisive "at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems that confront us all."
Or, I submit, the future of our public lands.
This attack on SUWA is both mean-spirited and misleading. A quick glance suggests that this is an official document of the Utah Legislature. That is exactly what the people who placed the ad want readers to think. In fact, this is an ad placed by a PR firm employed to tie environmentalists to terrorism and to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. Corporate interests are successfully exploiting traditional Westerners who fear change.
The attackers, led by Rep. Michael Noel, R-Kanab, think they hate environmentalists. They believe wilderness designation will destroy rural Utah's resource-based economy. They can't listen or ponder; they can only rant.
The cultural chasm between these attackers and those who support SUWA's vision of treating Utah's public lands with tenderness and restraint is nearly as wide as the distance between white and black America. To bridge that chasm, Noel and his supporters will need to come to grips with the changing West.
Extractive industry no longer forms the crucial core of the rural economy. Recreation and tourism - and retirees drawn to Utah's wild landscapes and moving to places like Kanab - form the new economic bedrock. We all live in this New West, and we need to figure out how to talk to each other across the fence - even when our angry neighbors keep building the fence higher and higher.
In turn, conservationists need to acknowledge the roots of Noel's anger. Rural Utahns react instinctively with suspicion to all new federal designations. They rightfully resent condescension. And yet both long-term residents and newcomers love this astonishing land. There is common ground here, if we can only find our way to acknowledge that emotional overlap.
Obama lays out our choice: "We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. If we do, nothing will change. Or, we can come together and say, 'Not this time.' Let us find that common stake we all have in one another."
We share the same common stake in America's Redrock Wilderness. Let's work from that center and reject the anger and hatred of these unproductive attacks.
---
* STEPHEN TRIMBLE a Salt Lake City writer and photographer, is a longtime member of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. His latest book, Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America, will appear in June.
