The losses we now face as Americans are dizzying and hard to even track, much less emotionally process — so much so that it’s easy to lose track of what’s at stake in the fight with oligarchs Elon Musk and Donald Trump: some of the greatest working-class achievements of the twentieth century.
Oddly for someone currently laying waste to those achievements, Trump has an instinctive grasp of how much they matter. In his quasi-State of the Union address several weeks ago, rhapsodizing eloquently about the wonders of America, he singled out the Hoover Dam — curious given his cuts to the Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees the dam, and given his clear determination to sabotage the collective accomplishments of New Deal, of which the dam is one.
Another great wonder of America that Trump mentioned in his speech was the Golden Gate Bridge, another New Deal–era creation. There again, ironies abound: that beautiful and aging bridge has structural problems, and the federal agency that has been monitoring and reporting on those issues, the National Transportation Safety Board, is also facing staff cuts by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — raising the alarming possibility that these structural problems could go unaddressed, leaving the bridge at risk of collapse.
Speaking of great government achievements of the twentieth century, our National Parks System (NPS) — more than eighty-five million acres of land — has long been the envy of much of the world. Even the Chinese government, no slouch at public infrastructure creation, regards it as a model. Though the specifics vary and many of the NPS cuts have been overruled by courts, Musk and Trump have been significantly slashing staff from the parks.
We constantly celebrate our great wilderness in America, from legends about the frontier to “the purple mountains’ majesty” of our national anthem to car ads…
Auteur: Liza Featherstone
