In slashing two national monuments, The Donald said the people of Utah know best how to care for “their” land. And what of Arizona and the Grand Canyon, California’s Yosemite, Wyoming’s Yellowstone or South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore to name just a few? He further claims that public lands will once again be for public use, code speak for opening these treasured lands to private interests for mining, logging and oil. One wonders if they ever listen to themselves, for by co-incident one of the sites targeted happens to sit on a very large coal reserve. How convenient for public use, an open pit mine and betting ya’ll can’t wait till your next coal train ride through the park.
Anti-central government sentiment has been around since the framing of our Constitution, then led by fears of a new kingship emerging. Some fifty years later it was states rights over slavery culminating in open sedition and war, followed by a new challenge from the rising capitalists. It appeared again in the late 1980s as government is the problem, sowing today’s atmosphere of distrust and the quest to dismantle that authority from within, all the while coinciding neatly with the great accumulation of wealth in so few hands that we see.
So what’s the point? Just remember when something sounds too good to be true it, .well you know the rest. At least you should by now, evidenced by the promises made compared with the actions taken and the results of these past few decades.
Dennis Doolittle
Arlington
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