The birdbrain of Alcatraz
Back in 2005, I did some time in Alcatraz. I even spent some time in the cell that held the notorious Chicago gangster Alfonse Capone. No, not as a prisoner, but as a tourist. I was with my sister Susan and her husband Al. We had a terrific time.
The place has quite a history. About 1.25 miles (2.01 km) off the coast of San Francisco, Alcatraz began life as a fort in the 1850s. Then the main prison building was built in 1910–12 as a US Army military jail. Later, after the prison closed, it was occupied as a protest by native Americans from November of 1969 to June of 1971.
On March 21, 1963, then attorney general Robert F Kennedy ordered Alcatraz closed. It had no fresh water, so it had to be shipped over by the millions of gallons. Because it was accessible only by boat, everything, employees, prisoners, food, was expensive to move. Its main advantage, that it was hard to escape from, was made impractical by cost and improved prison technology.
Later it became part of the National Park Service (NPS), and today it brings in about 60 million dollars of much-needed revenue for the NPS. It’s one of their most popular tourist destinations. People who visit San Francisco as tourists inevitably end up in Alcatraz.
Naturally, Trump wants to restore Alcatraz to its former use, as a prison. It’s a stupid idea, wasteful and completely impractical. Alcatraz doesn’t even have room for that many prisoners. Back in its heyday at its peak it held only 260 inmates. You might say Trump is the birdbrain of Alcatraz.
Trump has already laid off scores of park rangers, degraded the quality and condition of America’s national parks and has plans to repurpose millions of acres for drilling for oil, and so on. In fact, Trump is destroying just about every useful government administration, watchdog and regulatory agency except the military and the Department of Homeland Security.
Everything from the NPS, NPR, science, housing, health and the environment has been slashed. Meanwhile the military-industrial complex cashes in. The Department of Defense has enjoyed a 13% increase, or $113 billion dollars. DHS gets a whopping 65% increase in budget of an extra 42 billion dollars.
So Trump wants Alcatraz returned as a prison. It will probably cost billions of dollars to restore it. Why does he want this wasteful bullshit? I’ll let Trump explain himself: “It sort of represents something that’s both [sic] horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable and weak.” (Yeah, “both” those things.) “It’s got a lot of qualities that are interesting.” Trump is a goddamn moron.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.