In defense of wilderness, the protagonists burn billboards, sabotage bulldozers, and cut power lines. Abbey is best known for his books, Desert Solitaire-essays inspired by his work as a ranger in Arches National Park in the 1950s-and The Monkey Wrench Gang, a novel about a group of environmental activists who plan to blow up the Glen Canyon Dam.

Abbey was an author and activist whose writing blended anarchist politics with a deep love of the American Southwest. Wrenchedis director and producer ML Lincoln’s new film on Edward Abbey and his legacy in the American environmental movement. (thank God!), we are learning finally that the forestsĪnd mountains and desert canyons are holier than ourĬhurches. Shine, perishing republic.“An increasingly pagan and hedonistic people It was all foreseen nearly half a century ago by the most cold-eyed and clear-eyed of our national poets, on California’s shore, at the end of the open road. Idle speculations, feeble and hopeless protest. Dam the rivers, flood the canyons, drain the swamps, log the forests, strip-mine the hills, bulldoze the mountains, irrigate the deserts and improve the national parks into national parking lots. Overlay the nation with a finely reticulated network of communications, airlines and interstate autobahns. Divert attention from deep conflicts within the society by engaging in foreign wars make support of these wars a test of loyalty, thereby exposing and isolating potential opposition to the new order.

Nothing excels military training for creating in young men an attitude of prompt, cheerful obedience to officially constituted authority. Large masses of people are more easily manipulated and dominated than scattered individuals.

Encourage or at least fail to discourage population growth. Restrict the possession of firearms to the police and the regular military organizations. Such a policy is desirable because farmers, woodsmen, cowboys, Indians, fishermen and other relatively self-sufficient types are difficult to manage unless displaced from their natural environment. Mechanize agriculture to the highest degree of refinement, thus forcing most of the scattered farm and ranching population into the cities. Concentrate the populace in megalopolitan masses so that they can be kept under close surveillance and where, in case of trouble, they can be bombed, burned, gassed or machine-gunned with a minimum of expense and waste. “Suppose we were planning to impose a dictatorial regime upon the American people-the following preparations would be essential: 1.

Edward abbey desert