The future is here and it’s not looking good. My life and future prospects have already been destroyed, now it’s time for the rest of America to join me on the road to the end of our society.
It’s a few days after Americans elected Donald Trump as President. It was during his term in 2018 when I was put on the street and threated with death by the Oregon State Police after being run over by a drug cartel semi truck under police protection. Now that he is president again, I have no hope of ever seeing justice for what has happened to me. I think many Americans are starting to realize they have handed over the country to the 21st century version of Adolf Hitler.
So America is doomed and we’ll probably take a good chunk of the rest of the planet with us. We’ll see how Americans react when they realize the American Dream and a significant part of American history is a big fat lie. By then, Trump will have the American military on the streets of American cities and democracy will be dead, never again will the dream of freedom, fair play and equality be a part of human existence. It’ the beginning of the end.
The United States, as we knew it, is coming to an end. All out war in the Middle East and perhaps Europe, is looking very likely. With Trump, the destruction of Planet Earth will return to full speed in order to keep corporate profits rolling in. So the country is gone and the planet a few years later, but I have problems of my own to deal with.
Since I became homeless in 2018, I have had to spend the winters in the desert, otherwise I would freeze to death living in my truck where I lived. This place, run by the Bureau of Land Management, has raised the prices for camping by more than 300%. This is a desolate, hot and windy place. The people who are here, mostly retired people and veterans, are like me, have been fucked over by organized crime, otherwise known as the “insurance” business and, of course, the veterans who get the dirty end of every dirty stick.
The Bureau of Land Management is possibly the most corrupt and worst performing parts of the government. They are certainly among the most dishonest. Hearing the facts or the truth from a BLM employee is a rare thing. Hiding the truth, not doing your job and placing the cost of corrupt government employees on American citizens is the BLM business plan.
People started coming to this place more than fifty years ago. Vietnam veterans came here to escape the society than shunned them in the seventies. They were followed by the first wave of retired Americans who realized the promise of a restful retirement after a lifetime of labor to make someone else rich was nothing but a huge lie. This barren patch of desert was the only place retirees could afford to spend their “golden years”. Vets come here to be with other vets who support and encourage each other, something the government won’t do. More broken promises.
Along comes the Bureau of Land Management. They can’t bear to see American citizens on American public land without paying, so they built two small bathrooms and started charging people money to stay here. Aside from the bathrooms, there are no services. There is a long list of rules and regulations, none of which are enforced. This creates an unruly and dangerous situation for the people camping here.
The BLM charges the “long term” campers here about $200 to stay from September until April, but most people don’t stay nearly that long. The majority of people who use this area are “day use” and weekend greatly campers. Over a season, the weekend campers outnumber the long term campers. The two bathrooms are cleaned on Friday and Monday because the weekend warriors destroy the place in two days, more use than the the long term campers in seven days.
Even though the weekend visitors use much more of the area’s limited facilities, they pay no fees of any kind. There are no rules, you can raise hell, do whatever you want, leave your garbage and that’s exactly what happens. If you are a long term camper, most of the area is closed to you on weekends and holidays because they are occupied by people who don’t pay to use the park and have no problem starting a fight with you because if you get kicked out of the area, the weekend warriors are back next weekend and you are gone, minus your $200 BLM fee.
Even though weekenders make up the majority of area’s visitors, the primary use of this spot is for about a half dozen year round residents. They claim to be “volunteers”, but they receive a free place to live with all utilities paid. If you count the cost of local rent and the price of electricity to provide air conditioning to a poorly insulated mobile home can be well over $15,000 per year. That’s not volunteering. What do these government squatters do to live on public land? They collect fees from the long term campers. Not the weekend users who are the majority of the visitors. They don’t do anything else except collect money, in cash, to pay their rent. They don’t do maintenance, they don’t pick up trash, they don’t enforce rules, they just collect money from one group of area users, nothing else.
Now the BLM wants to raise the fees of the long term campers from $200 to $600. Aside from the now run down bathrooms, in forty there have been no improvements for the camper’s safety or to make their stay more enjoyable. The only improvements I have seen in the past eight years are for the comfort and convenience of the permanent residents, the BLM squatters. The “sanitary dump” improvements the BLM uses as a reason to raise fees is BS. The dump is more than enough for the long term campers who pay to stay here. It is not enough for all the weekend campers who provide the vast majority of waste water and pay nothing, so the BLM has decided to raise fees on the long term campers.
In addition to harassing the long term campers who have already paid to make it look like they are doing something, the BLM squatters have developed schemes to put a little extra cash in their pockets. For the past couple years, the BLM has not had permits ready on the published opening day and the Long Term Visitors Area doesn’t officially open until they arrive, usually the end of October. Campers start arriving in September find the park office closed. You could camp until the permits arrived, but you couldn’t use all the facilities, including the showers, unless you bought an additional pass for $75. Remember all transactions in cash, no receipt for this pass. Later in the season, another BLM squatter comes by my camp, says the $75 pass is illegal and tries to grab it. I spoke with several people who were victims of this scam. I wonder how many times that one pass was sold and resold? In addition to the late permit fiasco, last season, once most of the campers were here and paid for with cash, the BLM shut down the camp showers for the remainder of the season.
This season, the number of long term campers is way down. Most of the people have been coming here for years, the diehards with basically nowhere else to go are here, but that’s it. Some former long term campers who know the drill were here early when there were no permits and camping was free. They cited the turning the showers off along with the general decline of the conditions here for not returning. The BLM is raising prices because their sheer incompetence and corruption has killed off what was commonly known as the “snowbirds”, retired people from colder climates. The BLM will have 50% less visitors next year but they still want to make the long term visitors pay much more so the BLM squatters can live here and weekenders can play for free.
It’s hard too see government corruption in the state on nation’s capitols, it’s easy to see here in the desert where there is nothing else. Here it is in the open under the bright desert sun. Don’t believe what you read. Look for yourself. Come here on a Saturday morning and stand next to the empty, air conditioned park office(closed weekends and holidays). See how many people stop and pay. See how many people who haven’t paid and are technically in violation of the park rules drive up to use the bathrooms. Count the number of unleashed dogs and ATVs racing around the camping area. Think about handing $600 in cash to a person who is not a government employee and has no responsibility for his actions or his actions towards others. His main concern is to do everything he can, legal or otherwise, to keep his free vacation home with all utilities paid, free. Should you threaten that free ride, you will be facing armed park rangers who protect the entire sham operation.
There’s more, but it doesn’t matter much. The way things are going, this place won’t be here much longer. Rumor is that this is going to be turned into a detention area for illegal immigrants under the new Trump administration. Another part of free American closed to Americans. The right wing bigots who run this place scream that no illegal immigrants should receive government assistance while American veterans are homeless, but have no problem with those homeless American vets paying the rent so BLM government squatters can live for free.
When I first got here, late September, I expected to hear a lot of political conversations. Americans are divided, the election a few weeks away, I expected to hear a lot of political opinions about Trump and Harris. To my surprise, I heard none. However, I did hear the same statement over and over; “We need to get rid of the government”. The $600 you won’t be spending to camp here next year can buy you a really nice gun. Maybe that’s what we should all be doing.
Some information that could identify me to BLM employees, especially the park police, has been omitted for my safety.