Making America 1915 Again
Visitor centers at national parks to be closed by Trump.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, parks, summer camps for children, museums, and what they called the “Houses of Culture” were abandoned all over the former Soviet Union. Trekking through Birch-filled forests, it always intrigued me to come upon a summer camp or abandoned information center. There was a that Pompei-meets-Chernobyl effect. One minute, the places teemed with life, laughs, and dreams; the next, they were callously abandoned to the whims of nature — and politics in the case of Russia.
Something similar will begin to happen in the United States. If 1991 was the year the Soviet Union collapsed, then let’s name 2025 the year we collapsed. What people don’t understand is that a collapse isn’t only a receding from international obligations like the one taking place as we abandon Ukraine, NATO, and millions through the breaking of promises made by USAID. A national and cultural collapse also happens domestically in areas where people seldom visit — until they do, and then they ask things like, “What the hell happened here?”
The Trump administration is seeking to cancel the leases for 34 National Park Service buildings, including visitor centers, law enforcement offices and museums that house millions of artifacts.
“These closures will cripple the Park Service’s ability to operate parks safely and will mean millions of irreplaceable artifacts will be left vulnerable or worse, lost,” Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement. “Quite simply and astonishingly, this is dismantling the National Park Service as we know it, ranger by ranger and brick by brick (Trump Property Purge).”
The image below shows the visitor center for Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument in New Mexico, which includes the Abo Ruins. It will be closed, and no alternative site will be opened. The artifacts inside the center will likely be sold to some wealthy American who will put them around his pool, or maybe a miniature golf course for the “grandkiddies.”
Elon Musk doesn’t go to these national parks, and I doubt he does anything with his 11 kids. He fathered them, but he is not a “dad.” Donald Trump has never been to any of these places, either. His rotten children spent their childhoods growing up in his grotesque tower on 5th Avenue. There was never a foray into the heartland to learn more about the country he hates with every ounce of his soul. National parks, in the world of Musk and Trump, are places where suckers go — you know, people who serve in the military, the middle-class, the working-class.
People like these here: suckers. Look at that park ranger. Donald Trump thinks you are a dope.
There is no reason to close these visitor centers, like there is no reason to do most of what Trump is doing. There is no reason to abandon Ukraine. There is no reason to threaten trade wars with Canada and Mexico only to then back down less than a day later. Everything that Trump has done since January 20th has created chaos and pain. 77 million stupid Americans voted for this chaos and pain.
Also slated for closure is a visitor center in downtown Seattle that is dedicated to the Klondike Gold Rush of the 1890s, when tens of thousands of prospectors stopped over in Seattle before journeying north in search of gold. Roughly 60,000 people have visited the museum each year since 2006, when it moved inside the historic Cadillac Hotel.
“This is not just a visitor center; it’s a historic site in the heart of a downtown preservation district,” said Lisa Mighetto, an environmental historian and author of a book on the Klondike Gold Rush. “The building is a tangible reminder that the gold rush transformed Seattle. It’s the difference between reading about something in a book and actually being in the heart of it (Trump Property Purge).”
When the voters don’t understand history, they elect Donald Trump for a second time. When a nation buries and then erases its history, things like Russia happen. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are taking us down a path we don’t want to go.
What do the generals think of this nightmare?