[Orig to FB]
The “Alt National Park Service” account is asking people to contact “companies [that] built their entire business on these lands” to “say out loud.” A few thoughts:
First, the traditional assumption is that Congress is supposed to stop this kind of overreach. They haven’t been doing that, and indeed the Dems show no sign whatsoever that they intend to address the rampant destruction Trump & Co are causing — to halt it by hook or by crook, to counter-attack those responsible, to develop any semblance of a real-time strategy to hold these crimes to account now, to effectively punish the culprits, or to build and fund new, more durable agencies. None. The only thing we hear is mummery about “investigations,” which is barely a step above “future historians.” When this “Alt National Park Service” account encourages you to contact companies and trade associations, they’re tacitly endorsing the idea that actual representative democracy does not and cannot work. That doesn’t seem like a very well-thought-out stance for civil servants to take.
Second, the list of “companies” is such a random-ass grab bag that I think it tells us quite a bit about this “Alt National Park Service” account.
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REI has morphed into a tightly controlled, aggressively anti-labor outfit
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North Face is owned by VF Corporation, which controls about half of the US backpack-oriented business (incl. JanSport and Timberland)
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Columbia and Vail are publicly traded
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Alterra and Vail are chain of ski resorts, one publicly traded one private equity–owned
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Orvis is family-owned, and Sitka is owned by the private company that brought you Gore-Tex
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the National Ski Areas Association
So, let’s see, we’re supposed to contact two corporate ski resort chains and a ski resort trade organization to pressure Trump not to…open up wilderness for development? Cool story, bro — pass the bong.
Third, their first advice is to cut-and-paste your objections into AI customer chats because “a handful of emails does nothing.”
These “Alt” and “Rogue” federal agency accounts are fine, but I wouldn’t set much store in them. Have you ever heard a word about who runs them, how they’re run, how research is conducted and decisions are made? I’m looking for signs of movements, not of influencers. And, no, don’t try to say they can’t reveal any of that because they’re so frightened of the regime — that’s just romanticized nonsense.