Just came across an article posted on an Oregon news source related to outdoor camping … and immediately saw the similarities to the current political atmosphere.
According to reports by some Oregon Parks officials, the high demand for crowded campsites this past summer has led to arguments and fistfights as would-be campers quarreled over first-come, first-serve campsites. In fact, the common courtesy usually displayed among prospective campers seemed to have vanished, forcing many of the Park Rangers to serve as mediators.
The Parks officials further reported that many Reserved campsite tags had been torn off and replaced with someone else’s name, prompting the nickname “campsite pirates.” Naturally, the original parties ended up angry and confused when they arrived to find their campsite occupied. In the past, such an action was extremely rare, but it’s been happening more and more.
In fact, it’s become so disrupting that Park officials have proposed legislation to give rangers added protection due to the increasing level of assaults and harassments directed at them as they have attempted to enforce park regulations.
The article reported that in the past, only about 1% of visitors struggled with following park regulations. Now, more than 10% of the park population refuse to comply or adhere to the rules.
Am I the only one who sees “signs of the times” in these incidents?
Nan's Notebook 
At this rate human beings will soon disappear and we’ll be left with a new species of animals without manners.
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This has been a growing problem here in Canada ever since they started taking online reservations with a significant number of empty but booked sites.
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I have not heard of similar problems here in Finland, though it has been repored, that more people have found camping as a hobby during the pandemic. I would surmise, that the problem is likely due to some technical issues, as with what Tildeb said happened in Canada. Rather than any “end times”.
There are more and more of us and when tightly packed, it seems people become beastly. Perhaps this manifests at camping sites because people go there precisely to get away from other people?
On the other hand, the so called “social” media appears to have normalized bad behaviour, as the algorythm rewards controversial messages.
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VHEM is the solution.*🤪
*Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
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A State Park Ranger friend in Colorado has told me the same in that the last year or so interactions with visitors many times becomes confrontational. Never like that before. Thanks trump!
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Sorry One Fly for the delay in posting this — it ended up in Spam. 🙄 As for what you wrote … your last two words sum it up perfectly.
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I don’t go camping or even backpacking anymore. Not that the numbers were grat at the time, but more and more people were less and less willing to help their fellows who were in trouble or even just having minor problems. I am not talking great numbers here, but it used to be almost everyone stopped to help those asking for help, or if no one was asking for help but they seemed to maybe need some, people would politely ask if help was needed.
That was what I noticed, that and finding it harder to make friends with neighbouring campers. More people were about themselves, less likely to share their time.
Whatever it was, we just stopped enjoying going camping or backpacking. And since Trump made it okay to be an asshole I can only imagine that things are deteriorating more than before.
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Your last sentence was the point I was trying to get across. Too many people are emulating the actions of both him and his supporters. Yes, I’m sure there are other factors involved, but I think many of us will agree that rudeness and selfishness have become much more evident in today’s world.
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Yep…since 2016
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I don’t think it’s the sign of end times, at least not in the religious sense, but the times..too many people period and too many feeling entitled and brazen…lack of empathy etc. Stress and life’s pressures and innate unhappiness literally changing the psyche of humans.
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Yes, I agree that stress and the pressures of life play a role, but my “signs of the times” was relating back to the political environment. As I mentioned to rawgod, Trump has opened the door on rudeness and the “me first” mentality. That it’s even being displayed when people are trying to enjoy outdoor recreational activities is pretty sad.
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Yes exactly….
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I agree. but I might also posit that the Victimhood Olympics and self righteousness found in many modern pwogs also contributes to this?
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I always wince when I see stories like this, not because of a fear the human race is going to hell in a handbasket, but because I know that for every story like this that you see in the media, there are dozens of other, far more positive incidents that go unreported. The media focuses on the bad because that’s what generated page views or sells newspapers. So it splashes all of these “OH MY GOD WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!” stories all over, and we rarely or even never hear of the positive stories out there.
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Do you read Jill’s blog? She regularly writes posts on people doing good things. 😊
I do agree, however, that even as individuals, we tend to focus on the negative. Wonder why that is?
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Whatever makes people stop to look at a car crash..rubber neckers isn’t it called? For some psychological reason, the negative has more of an impact on our emotions…
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I think it’s partly evolutionary. Being interested in bad news might have been a survival trait that permitted us to prepare for impending problems?
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Nan, common sense is not all that common Mark Twain is alleged to have said. Maybe common decency is losing its sheen as well. On the flip side, we only get to see the stories about the less than gracious among us, rather than those who dare follow the rules. Keith
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You are not the only one. It’s all them damn snowflakes and peaceniks and free love freaks causing the problems. But part of me is laughing: “idiots.” And part of me is: “why?”
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I saw that in The Bulletin but I was too busy [yelling “you stupid dips!”; laughing my ass off; shaking my head sadly] at the news that with a major fire still burning not twenty-five miles away they lifted the campfires restriction. You’re right, of course, Bend ~ Central Oregon ~ is just a microsm of the rest of the country. We got it all.
Drumpf ucks want to join Idaho …
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That joining Idaho thing … FORTUNATELY, our county voted it down. What a fiasco!
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Oregon parks and campers sound eerily SIMILAR to regular every day Texans at grocery stores, shopping malls, parks, boulevards and highways in auto road-rage, elementary middle & high school campuses, sporting events, town meetings, restaurants with lines, and Party-line anti-foreigners on the borders… of Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, and New Mexico included and everywhere in the middle!!! 🙄
WE CANNOT HAVE ANY STRANGERS OR NEWCOMERS IN OUR BORDERS OR OUR CAMPSITES!!! NEVER EVER!!!
If you ain’t white Texan, then be totally invisible and silent! That’s the MAGA-Repub method.
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I blame reality TV. (BTW there is no such thing! It’s scripted, ask me how I know)
I also blame trumpazee types with no remorse, no manners, no good sense, no empathy, no love for other than thy self.
Now I’m no expert, but when they stopped dusting the britches of disrespectful children, they brought this scourge upon us.
I saw it happen. I think my generation was the last to properly dust britches when they needed it. I don’t know how many times I have watched as an unruly, screaming child, just kept carrying on until they got their way. Then the kid quieted right up. That is how you train a child to be exactly what we are seeing today.
And as I witness these events, the whole time I’m thinking, whoop that ass! I even saw a five or six year old once, carry on and on and on, screaming, kicking, not getting what they wanted, then they loudly slapped the face of the parent. The parent caved.
Disgusts me.
I actually applauded once when a parent dusted some britches in a store. The kid put on a show, but the parent parented.
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TRUTH! — “That is how you train a child to be exactly what we are seeing today.”
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Is “dusting the britches” an euphemism for hitting a child? If it is, I have to disagree on it, though I totally agree about the reality TV. My grandfather refused to punish his sons by hitting them, or letting anybody else do it either. He had been through a bloody war and a concentration camp, so I guess he had seen more violence than enough. His sons, including my dad, never hit any of us. As far as I know, the same applies to all of my siblings, cousins, their children and their childrens children, yet we are not a particularly unruly bunch. It has been illegal for ages here in Finland to punish children with violence, but if anything we have not turned into a nation of especially self centered dicks.
Violence is not the only option to caving in, not unless one has never gotten an example of any other kind of parenting, exept violent punishment. That does not teach the kids about why something is wrong, it only teaches, that through violence it is possible to get what you want, as the parent does. Sure, kids test their boundaries, but acting up may also be the result of too little attention. I blame disinterrested “parenting”. Kids have a natural inclination to please their family members, but this takes a lot of positive confirming to form into a behaviourial pattern. All mammals, especially us social species have the capacity for empathy, but it still needs to be taught. If the values of the innermost community of a child emphasize and idolize competitiveness, individualism and hard, brutal ways to get what you want, then Trumps are what follows, no matter how often the kids are beaten, probably even more so.
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I’d rather not get into a discussion on this, but “dusting their britches” is hardly violent punishment. A single whack across the buttocks with a parent’s hand, while a condemned action in today’s world, was not uncommon a few generations back. And in most cases, it was all that was needed to circumvent a tantrum as the one SD described.
Please understand — we’ve NOT talking about beatings or brutality. We’re referring to appropriate parenting that doesn’t allow the CHILD to create a scene and become the dictator.
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If you do not wish to discuss it, I do not wish to push the issue. I’ll just say I disagree on the necessity and on the long term reprecussions.
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I would never condone beating a child. Dusting the britches is a spanking, not a beating. There is a difference.
I would also add, never spank a child in anger. Just be calm, cool, collected, and dust them britches.
If you spank in anger the child has won.
If you don’t spank at all, the child owns you.
I never made a habit of dusting britches. But I certainly have. It is a tool in the box. I was always as open, fair, and honest, as I could be with my kids. They rarely ever needed a scolding let alone a spanking. But they can all attest that I used the tools I had available.
All parents should IMO.
Though I can appreciate a difference of opinion, I can’t agree that a spanking is out of bounds for a parent. Far from it.
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Since our gracefull host Nan does not appriciate this line of discussion, I shall not engage more than to say, that in legal terms here in Finland there is no difference between spanking, or beating. If you spank your child in public here, be sure someone is likely to call the police and then it is a whole new adventure with them, the justice system and the social services.
I have never been spanked by my parents, nor have I ever spanked them. For sure I did not “own” them when I was a kid. I would never spank, or otherwise hit, anyone I love. Do not get me wrong. I am a violent man, in the sense, that I do believe violence solves problems and has several times saved my hide in the past.
Acting up by children has not been serious a problem in my extended family and I have not seen it much in the public. I know spanking is a common practice around the globe, but as a tool, I think it should be recognized as outdated and harmfull. People who consider becoming parents should learn better ways to deal with their children. I think this because I have first hand experience how unnecessary even spanking is, if you have other tools in the box.
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