Yosemite National Park is roughly in the middle of California near its eastern border, closer to Nevada than it is to San Francisco. It’s one of America’s many natural wonders, lovingly and iconically photographed by Ansel Adams.
Yosemite is in the news because of Donald Trump’s federal government personnel cuts. If the media is to be believed, those cuts have caused unimaginable hardship in our national parks. They’re a betrayal of America, a world-shattering tragedy. SF Gate tells us Yosemite’s sole locksmith, a probationary employee, has been let go, and the consequences are dire:
Graphic: Instagram Screenshot
Vince’s job as the park’s sole keyholder required him to keep track of the hundreds of keys and locks to the park’s bathrooms, gun safes, administrative buildings and gates, he told the Washington Post. When guests became stuck inside vault toilets or employees got locked out of their overnight accommodations, it was Vince who came to their rescue.
So, apparently no one in Yosemite, a park the size of Rhode Island, has any keys? Not to public bathrooms in their area of responsibility, not even to their own residences?! I knew the federal government was incompetent, but this is a new, incredible level of incompetence. We’re hearing horrifying stories of visitors locked in bathrooms and no one available to free them. Bathrooms usually lock from the inside to keep people out, not keep people in, but again, this is the federal government, so who knows?
Maybe they can just call in a few bears. They can get into anything. I wonder if Yogi's available? Oh, right. That was Jellystone, not Yosemite.
Government can get a bit persnickety when it doesn’t get its way. In 2013, during a regularly scheduled budget battle when Republicans temporarily shut down the government—like that’s a bad thing—Barack Obama showed those stupid Americans. He ordered every national park and monument shut down, and park rangers dutifully complied, keeping crippled veterans from far and wide from visiting memorials in DC, and shutting down access to Mt. Rushmore. They even patrolled the surrounding highways, trying to keep people who traveled untold distances from stopping at the roadside to so much as catch a glimpse of the Shrine of Democracy.
In that spirit, Yosemite’s noble guardians of our parks, are demonstrating their concern over increased government efficiency and decreased waste, and not solely by imprisoning visitors in bathrooms:
Graphic: X Screenshot
This is problematic for three primary reasons: (1) it violates rules for the display of the flag. (2) Patriotic Americans tend to get a bit touchy about people who show disrespect for the flag, particularly government employees. (3) The flag is flown upside down only to signal distress.
No doubt those dimwitted employees think they’re in horrible distress inflicted by the evil Trump, so let’s examine how badly their ranks have been depleted:
So the number of employees who run the park and serve visitors has PLUMMETED from about 1,151 to about 1,140, with NPS staffing falling from about 451 to about 440. It’s like we don’t even have a national park there anymore, Hitler Hitler Hitler. Eleven actual employees have been laid off, in a savage Nazi assault on the very concept of public parks. These numbers show that Yosemite National Park has been ruined, and everything has gone straight to hell, and the park is under attack.
Yeah! That monster Trump, that…wait a minute. Eleven out of 1,151 have been let go? Only 11? As Emily Litella used to say decades ago when Saturday Night Live was funny: “never mind.
No doubt, most of the folks working at Yosemite are honest, hardworking people. It’s likely they’re even chronically understaffed, and people of good will can certainly commiserate with others who lose their jobs. But that commiseration only extends so far.
There are few American who haven’t lost a job, and fewer who haven’t had to deal with understaffing. I never worked at a fully staffed law enforcement agency or a fully staffed school, and like everyone else, we made do. Sure, it was tough, but we sucked it up, didn’t expose our political rear ends in public and soldiered on.
Americans, however, draw the line at people who use the flag, or who inconvenience, even harm, those they’re supposed to serve to make political points. I suspect when all the more than necessary cuts have been done, there will be some rehiring of truly necessary positions, perhaps even people like Vince, who seems a productive, if loyalty confused, fellow. But our government is so shot through with fraud, graft and incompetence, less than surgical means are necessary to excise the cancer that’s killing us. It may be a bit easier at places like Yosemite, where one really can’t, for the most part, work from home.
In the meantime, desecrating the flag is a particularly stupid way to get sympathy. Perhaps we’re better off without people who thought it was?
On a different subject, if you are not already a subscriber, you may not know that we’ve implemented something new: A weekly newsletter with unique content from our editors for subscribers only. These essays alone are worth the cost of the subscription.
Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.