National Parks

David Aretha’s review of National Parks

Author Rolf Margenau, a Korean War veteran who’s sharper than the rest of us, delivers a fresh, scathing, hilarious, and brilliant satire of greedy corporate America and our shamefully broken Congress. Set roughly 20 years in the future, with the US teetering on bankruptcy under a “President Cruz,” Congress considers the Parks Act, which calls for the national parks to be sold to private investors. The politically involved Crouch triplets (worse than the Koch brothers) are giddy about purchasing the Grand Canyon, as they envision damming both ends to create a water shortage and then selling their water at inflated prices.

In Margenau’s future America, corporations—with Congressmen and justices as their puppets—gain obscene amounts of power. In the Supreme Court’s eyes, “large corporations are determined to be more equal than ordinary citizens by virtue of their size, the large number of people in their employ, [and] the status of their executives in the world community….”

At one point, an entitled Frank Crouch grouses about the bleeding-hearts who object to Crouch Industries’ enhanced fracking process. “It’s like that old ‘whack-a-mole’ game we used to play,” he complains. “You put to rest one city’s bitching about how we’ve ruined their water supply, and another pops up somewhere else. Does anyone really give a crap that Wichita is experiencing a four-times-normal stomach cancer rate among its under-five population?”

No, they don’t. In what has become an apathetic society, citizens indulge in the online game AEROTICA, in which they select their own avatars to have sex with other avatars, and rejoice in the National Open Carry law (although some accidentally shoot off their own testicles). In the evenings, TV viewers enjoy the “latest reality program that require[s] unarmed contestants to survive late-night walks through downtown Chicago.”

Margenau, who attended the same school (Yale) as four of our last seven presidents, is relentless in his political and social satire—not just in plot, but in the use of language. In debating the Parks Act, network news “talking heads” engage in a “tsunami of blather [that] submerge[s] rational intercourse.” Lobbyists are even worse, spewing lies at an hourly rate of $1,500. At one point, Congressman Sneath talks with lobbyist Tureen O’Porto: “Sneath suspected her internal bullshit meter was approaching the red zone, but he plowed on.”

Not just progressives but techies will delight in Margenau’s world. Heck, they might even get ideas for future inventions. The author describes dozens of new innovations and breakthroughs. Gyro-roamers, for example, give pedestrians an extra spring in their step. Molecule-sized robots repair human organs. The Terratron satellite digitally peels away the earth’s layers to disclose the riches beneath. A drop of a woman’s blood on her fob will inform her if she’s pregnant, and if so then the fob will emit “romantic violin sounds” along with electronic congratulations.

Margenau’s sardonic wit is a big step above Saturday Night Live’s and on par with Stephen Colbert and John Oliver, both of whom would benefit by having this octogenarian on staff. I can envision each of those comics pounding the table in laughter, like I did, while reading National Parks.