Moloch

 The Trump administration is currently pursuing a battle in court over the fate of the "lesser prairie chicken." Predictably, the White House—along with the fossil fuel industry and big ranchers—want to eliminate the bird's protections under the Endangered Species Act. Biodiversity and environmental advocates want to preserve its habitat, and argue that the bird is one of countless species around the globe that are increasingly at risk of annihilation due to human activities. 

In one sense, the episode is tailor-made for a Fox News segment. The lesser prairie chicken sounds and looks silly. It's a perfect opportunity for conservatives to cast liberals as a bunch of out-of-touch tree-huggers whose hearts bleed so much for a rare type of chicken that they are willing to sacrifice cheap energy costs for the rest of us. (Conveniently left out is how Trump's climate policies are actively subsidizing dirty industries that aren't even the cheapest alternatives anymore.)

But let's lean into the role for a moment. Because in some sense, the lesser prairie chicken is a perfect synecdoche for the entire Trump era: the self-importance of a regime that arrogates to itself the right to bulldoze over the weak and disfavored. "Moloch"—as the poet Ralph Hodgson once called the trappers and hunters of his time who opposed conservation—after the Canaanite deity who devoured the young. The Trump administration wishes to pour the prairie chicken into Moloch's maw. 

In the poem, Hodgson impersonates the role of the advocates of the hunting trade that sought to block legislation that would save game birds in the English countryside. The speaker of the poem sounds a great deal like the typical Fox News commentator today—accusing Hodgson and his fellow conservationists of being "white-livered scum" and "meddlesome swine." Tree-huggers, in short. In the eyes of the speaker, a bird allowed to live is the same things as bird gone to "waste."

This attitude (which Hodgson was satirizing) is indeed the one the Trump administration still seems to hold today. Land preserved as habitat for a prairie chicken is the same thing as land wasted. Fossil fuel exploration is always more important than an animal's survival. Human claims to "delve and hew" (to borrow a phrase from G.M. Hopkins) will always trump the mere rights of a bird species to live. ("O if we but knew what we do/ When we delve or hew"—as Hopkins wisely lamented.)

In his great poem mourning biodiversity loss, "For a Coming Extinction," W.S. Merwin imagines all the extinct species—the generations of animals annihilated by human activity—meeting one another in some impossible other world. "Tell him" he ironically advises, "That it is we who are important." This is the attitude, the incredible hubris and arrogance of the Trump administration—the Molochs of the world. To the endangered species, they say: it is only we who are important.