Bad Democrat

In 1872, Yellowstone became the country and world’s first national park. The geologic features are one of a kind, as are its hydrothermal features (I’m borrowing from its website). We followed that with many great national parks all around the country–the ones out West are the ones we think about more, but they’re all over the place. Would we ever defund our national parks? No. That’s what I wanted to say about Trump’s first term, through the vantage point of his second term as well as the 4 years in between.

Defunding our national parks–aka: closing them–was one of the things they said could happen back then. Why? It was because the Trump administration began trying to remove barriers to drilling and mining on public lands, and it was really jolting to us when we heard it. The administration also laid off thousands of national park employees and implemented budget cuts.

But the national parks were never going to close like we feared they could. There are two things that happened recently that lead me to believe that what they wanted to do was not as big of a deal as it was to us at the time. One is a visual of foreign aid workers being laid off, as well as the mass layoffs at the Department of Education. The second thing is that I came to see oil companies more positively in the past year or so, and I don’t exactly remember why, but I think it was something everyone saw. Now I don’t believe it would be the biggest deal in the world if certain areas in national parks were drilled, although, of course: keep every last acre for us. I think? Point is, I don’t think it’s the biggest deal ever if it were to happen, and I certainly don’t think layoffs and some drilling would mean that the parks would close.