A Position Statement For The Benefit Of Public Land

 A Position Statement For The Benefit Of Public Land

Mike Grant 

When I made the cross country trip mentioned in the previous post, I was jazzed about the inspiration I got from it and started writing about it in my head.  I got involved in family activities when I got to Washington, and never got a chance to put any of it to paper… and then the election happened.  I’m sure it’s no surprising revelation that I’m no Trumper.  I hope it is equally obvious that I’m no wild-eyed liberal.  I think in one of my social media profiles I describe myself as immoderately moderate.  To many of you that will come across as a cop out. So be it.

On election day the outcome was obvious hours before many of us were willing to accept it.  Many, including myself, were disappointed and devastated, and it took a lot of reflection and soul searching to eventually come to grips with what had happened.  Before the election, when we naively believed the result would be different, I had decided in advance that if the Democrats did lose, to go ahead and be mad at everyone whom I knew had voted for Trump. I grappled with that, and came to a number of conclusions.  One is that I would have to be mad at a lot of people I really like. Another is that I suck at being mad for more than a couple of hours, and another is that it would be totally counterproductive.  I’m no Sun Tzu (The Art of War), but I can see that it is hard to make allies of people with whom you won’t communicate. 

It was actually only recently that I was able to come to this liberating realization.  I was saved from spending the next several years in bitterness and resentment by a short scene in the sci-fi series Silo.  The heroine is addressing a small group of people who are at one another’s throats when she chastises them for not realizing that they are all in the same boat.  They are all dealing with the same shit, and they should get their heads out, and go ahead and be mad with each other rather than at each other.

I mean, aside from foreign adversaries, who doesn’t want America to be great?  Ultimately it will be history that decides whether as a society we have made the right choices.  If following a demagogue with a team of ne’er-do-well nincompoops will lead us to a blissful civilization, I’m all for it. We will find out soon enough. 

In the meantime,  I’m looking to recruit people from across the political spectrum who will fight with me to preserve our access to, and the quality of, our public lands.  Let’s not sugar coat the reality here.  This group coming into public power doesn’t give a rat’s ass about any aspect of public land aside from the profits they might make from it. Their idea of conserving a special plot would be to buy it cheap, build a luxury resort, and to lock your poverty stricken ass out.  The rest of it they can just lease to ExxonMobil who will in turn lock you out, fuck it up, and send you the bill.  Don’t take my word for it.  Do a little research and see who they are going to put in charge, what their backgrounds are, and what they care about. It’s not whether you have a place to hunt, fish, hike, ride, or take part in any of the activities now available to you on public land.  I’ll provide a link here, but if you think the source is some bunch of Antifa lunatics, then you can just find your own sources.  Just make sure you know where the money is coming from. I for one can’t afford a country club or Mar-a-Lago membership, I suck at golf, and I’d rather be fishing on some public land.