The Cost of Letting Everything Burn

Cassie McClure
Sat, 17 Jan 2026 23:00:00 -0800
Lifestyle

Living in the desert teaches you a different respect for fire. Fire can clear land, restore balance, and make space for new growth. However, uncontrolled fire doesn't necessarily transform. It can just as quickly destroy what you poured your efforts into over time.

There is a fire growing from an anger at the injustices we see daily. It's starting to lean toward a notion that we burn it all down and that civility is a luxury we can no longer afford. I understand that impulse and share a similar burn growing inside me.

However, we need to be clearer about what we are willing to burn and for what purpose.
Updated: Sun Jan 18, 2026

Living in the desert teaches you a different respect for fire. Fire can clear land, restore balance, and make space for new growth. However, uncontrolled fire doesn't necessarily transform. It can just as quickly destroy what you poured your efforts into over time.

There is a fire growing from an anger at the injustices we see daily. It's starting to lean toward a notion that we burn it all down and that civility is a luxury we can no longer afford. I understand that impulse and share a similar burn growing inside me.

However, we need to be clearer about what we are willing to burn and for what purpose.

We are living in a political moment defined by urgency, anger, and a deep mistrust of institutions that have failed people in real and lasting ways, and in that context, decorum can feel like an insult, a request to lower your voice while harm continues.

History makes clear that there are moments when breaking norms is not only justified but necessary, and that real progress has often come from disruption that made people uncomfortable.

What history does not show is durable change built from chaos alone.

Over the past few years, I've seen how quickly agreement on an issue can fracture when disagreement over method turns the process into a betrayal, and when pressure stops being strategic and becomes personal. When that happens, the work shifts, no longer focused on forcing systems to respond but on forcing individuals to submit, and the circle of people willing to stay engaged grows smaller as the heat intensifies.

In the desert, fire is used carefully, with clear boundaries and watchful eyes, because everyone understands how quickly conditions can change. A sudden wind, a careless spark, and what was meant to restore becomes destructive, leaving nothing behind but ash and blame. The same is true in civic life.

This is where urgency enters the conversation, and rightly so. When harm is ongoing, slowness can feel immoral, and civility can sound like silence. But methodical work is not passive, and the process is not designed to protect the comfortable. It exists to contain pressure long enough for it to do something useful, translating disruption into outcomes that can survive backlash, lawsuits, elections, and time.

There is an important difference between challenging norms and erasing them entirely. Disruption can expose injustice and force attention, and it can open space for change. Destabilization corrodes trust, fractures coalitions, and leaves fewer people able or willing to stay involved. When advocacy crosses into intimidation, the system does not bend. It waits.

Decorum is not about politeness or tone. It is about maintaining enough structure for the work to continue tomorrow, and the day after that, and long after the initial surge of attention has passed. Anger is not the problem. Anger without discipline is. Pressure without containment burns hot and fast, and then it burns out, often taking credibility, relationships, and momentum with it.

The slower work of building alignment, documenting harm, and moving through the process can feel unbearable in moments of crisis, but it is what allows change to hold once the spotlight moves on. It is how damage is repaired rather than repeated.

A methodical approach is not a lack of courage. It is a refusal to let volatility decide who gets hurt along the way. Agreement on goals does not obligate anyone to tolerate behavior that makes the work unsafe or impossible to sustain.

And while we are living in a moment that rewards spectacle and punishes patience, where loudness is mistaken for power and relentlessness is mistaken for strength, that story ignores a quieter truth that desert communities have long understood: Fire can be a tool, but only if you respect its limits.

Civility is not the goal; effectiveness is. If the point is to change the system rather than scorch the ground beneath it, restraint is not a concession. It is part of the strategy, and sometimes it is the only thing standing between necessary heat and irreversible loss.