Sunday, March 3, 2013

"The Sky is Falling"... and our part...



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.

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

No comments:

Post a Comment