At least move the stick

The other day, I was writing about an old Disney documentary as part of a column. I think it was “Animals are Beautiful People” or “White Wilderness” or maybe one of the dozens of others they produced.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about two particular segements in whichever film is was. In the first, you see an enactment of the famous theory that lemmings are so dumb that if the one in the front of the pack runs off a cliff to its death, all of the other lemmings will just follow their leader to a similar fate That’s kind of where we are, I think. Some people are so blinded by hate, bigotry, warped reality and such that they are willing to follow leaders who are leading them to their own self-destruction. We see it in today’s politics all the time now with these extremist and whacked-out conspiracists getting elected and re-elected to office by people who don’t care about reality, only that they get their way.

The second segment is the one that has stuck with me the most, even though it has been close to 40 years since I have seen it… and I don’t want to see it again.

The scene opens on what I believe is the African Savanna and it’s the dry season. There on the plains sits a large tree. The tree is home to hundreds, maybe thousands of birds who have build nests all in this tree.

Well, one of the filmmakers happened to notice that one of the straw sticks that one of the birds had used to build its nest was angled at just the right (or wrong) angle so as it was catching a direct beam of sunlight and super-focus-

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it on the rest of the nest.

There are rules, so they say, that nature documentarians are not supposed to interfere with the natural habitats and wildlife.

So in the course of several minutes, the stick begins to smoke. Then, suddenly, the nest catches fire. Within seconds, the whole tree is in flames, filled with hundreds of fledgling birds who can not yet fly.

Tragic, sure. But here’s the biggest tragedy. The lemmings thing? Staged. The producers, once they figured out the whole idea was untrue, simply chucked the lemmings off of a cliff and filmed it an an angle that suggested they were all committing suicide by stupidity. So much for not interfering with natural habitats or wildlife. And of course, once I learned that, I had to ask myself if those same producers actually saw that fire-inducing stick or did they stage it too?

If they didn’t, why couldn’t they have just moved the dang stick? Was it that important to get some cool footage for their documentary?

Here we are, America. We are the lemmings being thrown off the cliff by those in power who prosper off the myth that we are too stupid and we will allow them to do as they wish. We are also the birds, just trying to live our lives while these little problems blow up into big problems because those that could “move the stick” can’t stop fighting long enough to do anything about it and before long, we’re going to all catch fire and burn.

So please, our elected leadeers, if you can’t solve everything, at least move the stick.