The Quagmire of Politics

Isn't it strange that a politician, in these days when we are so conservationally conscious and aware of the huge impacts even small changes to an eco-system can have, be elected to "drain the swamp"? In a rare example of consistency, pulling out of the Paris Agreement was at least in line with this oft quoted campaign message.

Bulldozers and chainsaws, though handy tools for clearing the environment to make way for golf clubs and hotels, tend to have a less than positive effect upon the natural order of things. While we humans don't entirely appreciate the beauty of a natural order, it would seem an essential quality of nature. As Mulder explains:

Food chain. If you alter one life form in an ecosystem, the rest is necessarily affected, either by an increase or decrease. So if an aquatic dinosaur's diet consisted primarily of frogs, then if those frogs suddenly became scarce, it would have to search for an alternative food source.

It matters not whether we share Scully's scepticism regarding 'Big Blue', Mulder's principle, as is his wont when it suits his purpose, is accurate enough. In so far as it applies to natural ecological systems. Less so in reference to the human ecological system, which isn't so dependent upon natural relationships.

Could a desire to "drain the swamp" be the claim of anyone other than one who has no consciousness of the world around him? It is indicative of our somewhat ambiguous attitude to the natural world.

Though fully aware that Nature is mother, she is seen as that type of mother who would keep her off-spring close to home, overly concerned with our keeping clean and out of mischief. She is a mother who must be opposed if we are to find our own way in the world and become who we should be rather than who mother wishes us to be.

It is a quandary which we are only just beginning to consider - how to live true to the Mother who gave us life and continues to sustain us in so many ways and still be free to build the world we want.

That the idea of draining the swamp could put someone into the White House is a reminder of the contempt with which we have historically treated our Mother and our reluctance to concede our way of life to her necessities. Just how much evidence would be needed to change the attitude voiced by Bailey, a representative of the US government's forestry service?

Regardless, your study remains inconclusive. Speculative at best. You've provided no concrete evidence that frog depopulation is the exclusive result of human impeachment.

Bailey, as with so much in the X Files is prophetic of a government that sees draining the swamp as an appropriate approach to dealing with the intricacies of the eco-system, whether natural or human.