Tim Egan: Quit Yer Bitchin'...

Egan, a drop-in op-ed writer at the NYT, bemoans the fact that white 1%'ers like himself are being asked to pay (gasp!) $70 per carload, per week, to access the national parks that he is so fond of...

Do the math:  with 2 grown children*, and a wife, in tow... his family of four would pay only $2.50 per person, per day to enter America's greatest treasures.  Less if you buy the annual pass. And he is bitching and moaning here, why exactly?

About

I am currently one of the many insignificant bipeds systematically trying to create my own slice of nirvana here on earth. My personal idea of nirvana may be different from yours, but all in all we are equally yearning for the same aspirations in life – the avoidance of pain and an increase in pleasure – whatever that means to you and how you accomplish it is within your own personal agenda.

Some would say I seem to be in the throes of modern human angst. Quite the contrary. But, haven’t we all been there at one time or another? If you haven’t, well, I am totally worried for you. You are either in complete denial, delusional, or perhaps happy with your own personal ignorance. Today, possibly moreso than at any other time, there are just too many challenges going on in the world. If you’re not aware of this fact you should become aware, very quickly.

That aside, I am mostly happy with my life. I have all the food I could ever need, reasonably clean drinking water, my income is in the top 1% of the world’s population, I live in a nice home, I have personal transport that will take me anywhere and at anytime I so choose. In general, life is good. Of course, and as mentioned above, those pesky little issues going on in this country and throughout the world need to be nipped in the bud, pruned down to a more manageable state, and most important, some type of organic bug spray must be applied. I will get to those uncared for rosebushes in time, one by one providing my opinion on the topic at hand. Perhaps even some solutions. For what is an opinion without solutions? Nothing of importance.


I find writing behind a monitor can be such a solemn act. It’s interesting in this day and age, we have taken human interaction out of the cafes, the coffee shops, and such, and it has now become digital, virtual so to speak. We read and dream in pixels for the most part. We are all here, living in a virtual reality, everything tangible around us set aside and ignored, and in many ways we are more distant than ever before, yet so close in proximity we could touch atoms.  I suppose  living as we do now in this modern world is better than having no communication whatsoever, but I still feel a sort of disconnect from the human community out there. I’m sure I will get over it. Just like time, mainstream culture continues to move forward, unabated, regardless of my personal view. I sometimes wonder: ‘May I remove myself from this speeding train?’ I think not even if I tried.
Timothy Egan

I suspect that was written before (gasp!) America elected Donald Trump as president.  The world is going to hell in a handbasket now, you know, and it's all Trump's fault!  (Maybe Egan could start a GoFundMe begging fund, so he could afford the long-overdue national park price increases to take his fresh air ?)

{T}he Trump administration has proposed nearly tripling the entrance fees to select national parks, to $70.

The man who loves nothing so much as his gold-plated bathroom fixtures wants to gouge people who want to experience something that all of Donald Trump’s minions could never create. It’s a teardrop in the federal budget, but is emblematic of the ocean of wrong coming from this president.

First, we already own these parks — Glacier, Olympic, Mount Rainier, Zion, Yellowstone, the names themselves music to lovers of magic in the natural world. They are a birthright of citizenship.

---------------------------------
*  If my internet research is correct, he's got one at Medill in the graduate masters' degree program, and one already a published author.  Coming up in their father's footsteps like that, you'd hope they have a better sense of the maths to accompany the entitlement mentality...