The Beach Boys are coming to Vina Robles on July 5! The amphitheater there will be filled with aging hippies like me. But really, is there anyone, anywhere who isn’t a Beach Boys fan?
Until a few days ago, there was: James G. Watt died the other day at the age of 86. Beach Boys fans everywhere will shed few tears for his passing. In a way, it was Watt’s public feud with the Beach Boys that finally resulted in his downfall after 33 months as Ronald Reagan’s most prominent—and most destructive—cabinet member.
It was almost 40 years ago that a crowd packed the Chumash Auditorium at Cal Poly to hear a debate featuring Reagan’s notorious, ferociously anti-environmental secretary of the interior, James G. Watt.
As chair of the local Sierra Club chapter, I had been invited to debate Secretary Watt on that February evening in 1984. Joining me was Dr. Royden Nakamura from the Cal Poly Biology faculty.
Together, Dr. Nakamura and I pointed out the outrageous reign of destruction that Watt had unleashed at Interior during his brief time there. A zealous champion of the Sagebrush Rebellion, Watt had advocated for the wholesale disposal of virtually all public lands and waters under his control. He tried valiantly to sacrifice these precious resources for development of strip mines, clear cuts, hotels, shopping malls—and offshore oil derricks, many proposed within sight of our coastline.
Watt had distinguished himself as the archenemy of environmentalists like me and anybody else who leaned left.
“I never use the words Democrats and Republicans,” he repeated in his stump speeches—he became one of the most popular speakers on the GOP rubber-chicken circuit after he left Interior. “It’s ‘liberals’ and Americans.”
Onstage at Cal Poly that evening, I denounced that early provocation of shameful partisanship—a forerunner of the divisive, hateful rhetoric that the far right continues to dish out even now on a regular basis. I threw Watt’s words back at him—gently, I might add—by quoting Robert Benchley: “There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.”
I know that it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead, but James Watt is different. I imagine that Watt met a lukewarm welcome at the pearly gates: In spite of his outward veneer of faux Christian fundamentalism, it’s far more likely that his dark soul is spending eternity smoldering in the deepest levels of Dante’s inferno, burning with an everlasting flow of “cheap” coal that he championed throughout his career.
After two years in the media spotlight, James Watt had shot himself in the foot so many times that even the “Teflon President” had begun to worry about Watt’s toxicity. Motivated by his concern that rock music was contaminating the minds of young people, Watt had moved to cancel the Beach Boys’ concert at the National Mall on Independence Day in 1983. (Watt was fine with oil spills but couldn’t stand hearing “California Girls” on his radio.)
To his credit, Reagan called him to the Oval Office to remind him that the biggest fans of that Southern California band were Ronald and Nancy Reagan. The president took the occasion to publicly grant a special trophy to Secretary Watt—a plaster cast of a human foot with a bullet hole in it.
Never let it be said that Reagan didn’t have a sense of humor. James Watt, who truly did not, was bounced from the cabinet by October.
Our own William P. Clark of Shandon, then the national security advisor in the White House, asked Reagan to name him to succeed Watt at Interior. When Clark took office, some sense of self-respect returned to the Interior Department. Bill Clark even restored the famous bison on the Interior Department emblem to its original position: Watt had redesigned the logo so that the bison had faced right—yes, that’s precisely the ideological field where Watt played.
Those goofball antics shouldn’t distract us from the serious damage that Watt wreaked upon our national soul. Yes, he changed the Interior Department logo, but Watt also issued a thinly veiled threat to shoot environmentalists: “If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or the ballot box,” he once said, “perhaps the cartridge box should be used.”
Watt lit the fuse for generations of armed zealots like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and all the other MAGA firebrands who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
As I write this, the nation is once again on edge awaiting another round of domestic terrorism. No city is more nervous than Miami, Florida: At high noon June 13, Donald J. Trump appeared in federal court, indicted on 37 counts of serious violations of the Espionage Act and other national security statutes.
Trump is calling for his supporters to protest “peacefully”—but he’s using the same “dog whistles” that James Watt had employed in suggesting the use of cartridge boxes against environmentalists.
When I debated James Watt at Cal Poly in 1983, I was a certified liberal and a card-carrying “environmental extremist.” I still am.
In 1983, I wanted to throw some cold water on Watt’s incendiary call for an Armageddon against environmentalists and liberals. But back then, I had little reason to fear that Watt’s gun-toting acolytes would reach into their cartridge boxes and put me in their crosshairs.
Today, after 40 years of insurgent domestic terrorism stoked by far-right figures like Donald Trump, I have ample reason to fear them. We all do.
But I’ll still be listening to “Good Vibrations” in a couple of weeks. See you at Vina Robles! Δ
John Ashbaugh would like everyone to know that he does NOT own a firearm … and he hasn’t yet made it a habit to wear a bullet-proof vest. Fire away, readers. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Winning Images 2023.
Agree Watt was a piece of work, but I’ll wait until Brian Wilson & Al Jardine tour. Not sure how Love can support Earth Day and Trump at the same time.
Watt was an evil piece of shit. I hope he suffered a long time before he died.
This article beginning on page 8 makes very clear the Reagan era roots of the likes of groups like the Proud Boys of Trump infamy. The cowardly hate speech filled with thinly veiled gun violence threats goes back to James Watt and others before him.
I am a bit dismayed the editors fail to take these threats seriously in their comments that John Ashbsaugh”…hasn’t yet made it a habit to wear a bullet-proof vest. Fire away readers.”
Most of us understand metaphor and satire, but we are living in age of total idiots taking the bait literally. James Watt used terms to incite violence, as did Trump. In the wake dead children, the Proud Boys, and the likes, it is clear America’s democracy is under severe threat from a large faction that’d rather kill than rely on civil discourse. And it’s clear which party provides them the means to commit mayhem while distorting the 2nd Amendment.
Jim Carlisle
Atascadero, CA
8057040491