Tonight, PBS Newshour aired a segment where an ex-ranger, Lydia Jones for the National Park Service was interviewed. It’s in light of the recent swath of firings that’s affected the entire federal government.
There aren’t many unequivocally good things the United States has done. Even in that category, most are making up for a mistake of equal weight. Emancipation and later, civil rights—in response to slavery. Women’s right to vote—well over a century too late. But national parks? They’re a true good. An acknowledgment that the land is good, and we should ensure that at the very least parts of it stay good. Clean, pure—untainted by progress at all costs. In an ideal world, two hundred years from now when we’re living in deep space and surrounded by metal, we could still take our drop pods down to visit a strip of land in Zion, or a deep forest in Yellowstone and see nature as our ancestors saw it. Unchanged, enduring, preserved.
Key to maintaining these parks are of course, the workers. They clean up debris, observe the land for anything out of sorts. They help guide visitors and in the case of this woman interviewed, offer initial medical aid as an EMT. They’re people who just want to do their jobs, and their jobs are helping people. Helping their community. Lydia felt a calling to this line of work, to spend the best years of her life helping to maintain the parks, and the people who come to visit.
That’s it. She just wanted to help her community. Now, she’s looking to join the local fire department as an EMT so she can keep doing that. Maybe it’s my own perception, but throughout the interview she sounded either upset or infuriated. She carried herself well, but the undertones may have been there. I don’t blame her. I felt white-hot rage as she talked, the kind of anger where as furious as you are, you’re focused. Clearheaded, because you’re not personally attacked - you’re enraged that something this offensive is even happening. The worst part is this is just the latest transgression that’s hit the news. This is after USAID, after Veterans Affairs and so much more - with so much more to come unless this administration is stopped.
These people—all these civil servants, all these career feds—they by and large want to help us. There’s no politics, no bias. Just providing a damned service. Of course Lydia’s one person, she’s not representative of the whole. I’m more than aware that for every handful of fed workers, there’s one that skates by for the easy paycheck, only ever doing the minimum.
Is removing that weak link worth tearing down everything our government stands for? Is getting rid of thousands of Lydias worth taking out a few lazy fed workers? Don’t get me wrong, there’s a dire need for federal reform. Reform, not destruction. We should spend less. We, the bottom 90% of Americans (and I’m very much speaking to everyone, no matter if you’re redder than MAGA or so progressive you make AOC blush) should pay less taxes. The top 10% should pay their fair share, and I do mean fair. Not insane tax rates, just at the very least equal to ours—with no loopholes.
We can accomplish all of that without taking an axe to our government. We don’t need to hang the Lydias out to dry just so we get the few bad apples as well. Government waste is greedy hands at the top taking too much and providing too little, not your neighbors who decided to take less pay and less excitement in exchange for helping to make all of our lives, yours included, just a little bit better.
