A Fire To Stop The Fire

It was during one of those apocalyptic west coast wildfires – one that turned San Francisco orange for a few days – that I read about California firefighters intentionally burning enormous plots of land as a last-ditch strategy to slow and contain the raging fires sweeping over entire communities with speed that you can’t understand until you’ve seen it up close. 

Well that’s stupid, I thought. These harried fire departments, strapped for personnel and resources in the face of nonstop climate-collapse fires, are going to start other blazes in the original blaze’s path? They’re going to create more destruction and smoke and pollution in order to stop destruction and smoke and pollution? Stupid. Idiotic. Put me in charge.

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My ignorant east coast ass couldn’t begin to comprehend the strategy behind a backburn, used primarily when wildfires are burning in a highly unpredictable way and encroaching on densely populated areas that would be all but impossible to evacuate on time. Backburning – also known as back lining – is when fire crews use fire to fight fire. Yes, it’s destructive. No, it’s not ideal. It's certainly not the first option for stopping a wildfire. I’ll let the Western Fire Chiefs Association explain the strategy to the good and curious Bad Faith Times readers: 

Deliberately set fires are typically set along a man-made or natural firebreak in front of an active fire front. Once all the fuel is burned by the intentionally set fires the wildfire is no longer able to spread. The goal of back burning is to create a slow-moving and more controllable fire, but it can also be used in a predetermined area to create a controlled burn to aid in wildfire mitigation efforts. This technique allows firefighters to prevent the spread of wildfires and reduce the fire’s intensity, but the technique can only be utilized if conditions allow. Backburning also produces smoke, but because it’s done in a controlled way, people can handle it better and reduce its impact on air quality. The controlled release of smoke in backburning is different from the uncontrolled and usually more damaging smoke that comes from big wildfires.

Backburning is in the tradition of Indigenous people who have for centuries conducted controlled burns of the land as a regenerative process. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has shown the U.S. government that there is such a thing as a Good Fire. Fire, when used carefully, can be medicinal, healing. It can protect and sustain and stop the uncontrolled fire from feeding itself and swallowing everything. It's all so wonderfully counterintuitive.

That there is a political wildfire in the United States – volatile and unpredictable and hungry to burn hotter every day – is undeniable today. It grows all the time. Maybe you don’t realize how much the fire has spread until you watch videos of secret police working directly for the fascist president taking down signs and talking through their masks like Fox News hosts. Maybe the fire’s spread doesn’t hit you until you read about allies of the fascist president sending troops to crush politically unfriendly cities while sports fans in those cities cry out for freedom from the occupation of a hostile force operating more brutally than any foreign force would.

Hey look, you say to yourself over breakfast, the fire swallowed Washington, D.C.

This shit is burning and burning hot and burning fast. Mainstream media outlets don’t seem to notice or care. Wall Street doesn’t seem to notice or care. Entrenched Democratic politicians don’t seem to notice or care. That doesn't mean the fire isn’t spreading, lurching here and there depending on the president’s social media posts or Laura Loomer’s mood or Stephen Miller’s grievance on a particular day. This fire has consumed more than we know. It’s why we need a small-d democratic backburn, and we need it right fucking now. 

‘You Don’t Fight A Wildfire With A Prayer’

Those in the Do Nothing Caucus of the Democratic Party – and so-called moderates who provide intellectual cover for doing nothing in the face of rampant fascism – are begging Democratic governors not to redistrict their states to create more easy seats for Democrats. Fighting fire (Republican gerrymanders) with fire (Democratic gerrymanders) is no way to beat back the flames, they cry out, flames licking their heels, unbeknownst to them. 

If you are an American even moderately interested in keeping something resembling a democracy, you have to be supportive of gerrymandering the shit out of every blue state in the country. Maybe we once had a choice, but with the president’s goon squads patrolling the streets of Democratic cities, that choice is gone. We are being conquered. Only one remains. There should not be a single blue-state Republican member in the U.S. House of Representatives until the Republican Party is ready to talk about a gerrymandering ceasefire and agrees to nonpartisan electoral map making, a very popular proposal among political normies. Until then: War (via the most fucked up congressional maps you’ve ever seen). 

Stop Trying To Make Sense Of Trump’s Occupation Of D.C.

The goon squad has come to town. Beep beep.

Bad Faith TimesDenny Carter

Making it impossible – or nearly impossible – for Republicans to win House seats in blue states is just one part of a small-d democratic backburn the US will need if we’re going to one day have a stable democratic republic again. 

Tad Stoermer, an historian focused on resistance movements, talked last week on various social media platforms about the idea of a democratic backburn that could preserve American democracy in parts of the country still governed by elected leaders faithful to the constitutional order. This, Stoermer said, is how other nations besieged by authoritarian terror have held on to remnants of traditional democratic rule and re-established liberal democracy after the cultural and political convulsions necessary to unseat a tyrant (I'm not looking forward to our own convulsions, but they will happen, and they will be ugly).

It's a predicament faced by pro-democracy forces anywhere fascist strongmen have come to power, Stoermer said: "How do you use the enemy's tactics without mirroring their monstrosity? Is there such thing as a moral high ground when you're fighting for your life? The short answer is I don't know. Every effective resistance movement in history has had to wrestle with that question."

While Stoermer doesn't name Gavin Newsom or J.B. Pritzker or other high-profile Democrats urging blue states to do whatever it takes to counter the fascists' blatant power grab, he does say there is value in using power as a means to an end. I think all of us, even those who might be queasy about adoption Republican tactics in saving the country from generations of authoritarian dominance, know this to be true.

"What I do know is that there is a strategic high ground occupied by those who have the discipline to target the levers of power, the infrastructure, the enforcers, the intelligence, while refusing to adopt the enemy's love for indiscriminate cruelty," Stoermer said. "You don't fight a wildfire with a prayer, you fight it with a backburn, you use the fire against itself, but you do it with a plan, with clear lines and with a single purpose: To stop the bigger blaze from consuming everything."

It has dawned on Americans, inch by inch, so slowly as to be physically painful for those paying attention, that democratic institutions are not, in fact, inherently self-reinforcing as democratic. They can be taken over in a democratic process and thrown directly into the wood chipper. It's happening in the US today. These were the stakes of the 2024 election – stakes which I don't believe people really understood.

The democratic backburn can't stop with redistricting, seizing congressional power, and wielding that power as a check against our mad king and the masked, armed goons working directly for his reactionary political movement. Democratic representatives in any state where Republican governors and lawmakers want to further fuck their electoral maps need to flee the state – as Texas Democrats have done – and seek shelter in the safety of blue states. This probably can't be a short-term arrangement because as soon as these Democratic legislators return to their home states, they will be arrested or forced back into the legislature to create the quorum necessary to pass new, even-more-gerrymandered maps into law. Democratic lawmakers need to pack a bag and sit tight in Illinois or California or Oregon or Washington state or New York or Maryland and wait for the threat to pass. That might be months or years. They're going to need resources to pull this off: Money, a place to live, help moving their families. Maybe these resources come from blue state budgets, maybe they come from democracy-curious billionaires willing to part with some of their bottomless cash reserves for a good cause.

Just look at what happened when Texas Democratic lawmakers returned to the state amid Republicans' push the squeeze out five extra House seats ahead of what should be a bloodbath in the 2026 midterms: These Democrats were escorted around the state capitol by police officers and were not allowed the leave the premises without securing permission from Republican officials. Democratic Rep. Nicole Collier refused her assigned escort and was locked in the house chamber overnight. This is why Democrats need to flee every Republican-dominated state legislature. This little game cannot and should not be played by those who want to save the country from those who hate it.

If you don't believe me, a humble blogger, consider the slightly more educated musings of researchers at European Democracy Hub, which documents re-democratization efforts in nations once held by authoritarian regimes like the one that took over the US in January. Democracy, the researchers say, is most resilient in countries where power is most spread out. Thankfully the US has that going for it, which is nice.

Institutions can limit backsliding by diffusing and constraining power or by strengthening the capacity of opponents to block measures that cause backsliding. ... The institutional and organizational factors of resilience include highly proportional electoral systems, multiple veto points that distribute power across different institutions, federalism and independent state or local governments, rules and professional associational networks that reinforce the independence of courts, vibrant and socially grounded opposition parties, independent media, and a legacy of mobilization against authoritarian rule.

And for those seeking a reason to stop dooming in these doomy times: "Democratic resilience should not simply enable the survival of or the return to a flawed status quo," the European Democracy Hub researchers wrote. "It should also provide the means to adapt to changing conditions and to innovate and improve democracy."

Democrats Might Finally Be Tired Of Losing

Hardball tactics have to be met with hardball tactics, no matter what the norms adorers say

Bad Faith TimesDenny Carter

All traditional legislating has to come to an end both on the federal and state levels until fascists agree to concessions or are booted from power, however that might look. Sand – a lot of sand – has to be thrown into gears that make the fascist machine go brrr. If a backburn is going to work, it has to be disciplined and it has to outlast the bad guys. There are no more half measures available to those who oppose fascism. These full measure don't constitute backsliding because there's nowhere else in which to slide. If a backburn results in temporary balkanization, so be it.

One of the country's two major political parties is completely radicalized against democratic norms and cannot be allowed to finish the job of dismantling the gains made over the past century of struggle. For an elected official to not do anything and everything in their power to resist and create an effective and carefully-planned backburn would be an outright betrayal of those who sacrificed everything to make the United States a little bit more fair, a little bit more free. I don't think people like Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi are capable of understanding this, and I'm grateful a few elected officials recognize the danger we face, the flames getting hotter and faster every day.

A real and lasting backburn during times of democratic decline headed by those who truly Get It is the only path forward for many resistance movements.

"It's dangerous and it's ugly and you will get burned," Stoermer said. "But the alternative is just standing there and watching the world turn to ash. The question historically isn't how do people stay pure in a firefight. They don't."

Follow Denny Carter on Bluesky at ‪@dennycarter.bsky.social‬.