A great amount of deliberation,
mostly on the computers of journalists & bloggers, and ink has been
dedicated to the sequestration and associated budget cuts that is now taking
place in the homeland (USA). Back-n-forth finger-pointing is even as trivial as who started it: “it was
your idea…” As memory serves, it was a suggestion of The President, which both
sides of our political equation bought into, and that neither would allow us to
go there. Wanna bet? In line with our continued impasse it is easier to play
the blame game than to try and tackle life’s basic issues: they are tough.
I recently read a social-media post
that asked about historical context for the situation that we face here. I
believe our national experience is too new: I wrote that we’re “cloistered at
the mall” because we don’t have the world-view necessary to deal with the “Big
Picture.” Like the Academy of Motion Pictures awarding Best Picture for
“Argo-F*#$-yourself” (over “Life of Pi,” “Lincoln,” or “Zero Dark Thirty”), our narcissism and self-love is in-depth and memories short. When one
of the “Argo” awardees thanked the Academy for honoring creative non-violent
solutions, I thought: “Yeah, we wouldn’t want to hail those that went into ‘Harm’s
Way’ for causes that they believe-in, oh I don’t know: like our own Civil War,
or the one on-going in Syria, and the struggles so many places.” Hollywood,
like our domestic political process, takes more-n-more strides away from being
relevant: not a good long-term marketing strategy.
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| Rocky Mtn. Nat'l Park hosts next IRF Congress |
The sun neither rises, nor sets, on
our national parks & protected areas (though literally it does both) as lynchpins of our national economy,
but they are a healthy component:
I’ve seen political leaders play
the “close the fire station” game: whenever facing austerity and budget cuts
they quickly close down the highest profile program, like fire, police or
parks. I caution those that use this strategy, as with all the money we owe China
we just might end up with their judicial system too (but, appears with their over-building and housing bubble [sound familiar] they need to take steps towards economic "correction.") Can’t happen that we drown in our own debt here? Please
keep reading…
No doubt that our national debt has
grown astronomically the past 4+ years, for a myriad of reasons, and as noted:
“we can’t tax or spend our way out of this.” Anyone saying we can is proposing
the practice of demagogical magic. We need leaders, and an electorate, that are
not only willing, but excited to meet the “undiscovered country” (future) with
broader horizons and perspectives. This past week our new Secretary of State
(John Kerry) stated that in the USA we have the right to be stupid, and
invented a new country in one of his talks. I’m just not sure how long we can
afford to be ignorant: the future is calling, and through study I’ve seen what
the dust-bin of history contains from over-expenditure (China’s dynastic cycles
and the Roman Empire come immediately to mind). Can anyone name a nation whose
political boundaries have remained unchanged the past 500-years (over twice as
long as USA has been a country? There have been some islands and empires, but
they’ve changed some too.
As a professional National Park
Ranger I heard some of my colleagues state that parks are “protected for
all-time” and that “conservation is a liberal platform issue.” Wrong on both
counts, like so many of my fellow citizens he forget how short our history is:
“Conservation is Conservative.” It says so right in the word-base, and parks
& protected areas need to be nourished and cared for by each-n-every
succeeding generation or they won’t last: I’m sure the pharaohs, and the
game-wardens that ranged-on-them thought their hunting preserves were for
all-time too. As I write, there is a young lady (Lisa) traveling from Santa Fe
to Grand Teton in what might be some small stride for the next generation as
she’ll be attending the Student Conservation Association’s National Park
Academy: go girl!
As for me, I’ll continue to work
for our, and encourage our colleagues worldwide and in the short-term root for
baseball “Biesbol, ben beery, berry gud tu me.” Go teams at the World Baseball
Classic: http://web.worldbaseballclassic.com/index.jsp
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