Without so much as a groundbreaking ceremony, heavy construction machinery has been brought in to rip from the ground about 800 old-growth trees in order to make room on Chicago's lakefront for a personal monument to the wonderfulness of Barack Hussein Obama.

The so-called "Obama Presidential Center" is not a "presidential library." It will not house any presidential papers for use by scholars, nor will it be controlled by the National Archives. Ownership and control will rest in the hands of the private Obama Foundation, whose board of directors is packed with Obama acolytes, so there is no chance that the "revisionist scholarship" of the Obama presidency (sure to come), critically evaluating (for instance) the deterioration of race relations during his presidency or the disaster wrought by the "Arab Spring" that Obama endorsed, will find a home there.

Nonetheless, precious public parkland has been turned over to the foundation for construction of the private monument. The parkland in question was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the genius designer of New York's Central Park and many other of America's best-loved parks. His work on Jackson Park, where the Presidential Center is grabbing almost 20 acres, made it widely recognized as a "jewel of Chicago's parks."

Here is what is happening to that jewel:

Public sidewalks are “closed” so this desecration can be carefully hidden. pic.twitter.com/ZbWEyFLdd4

— Lynn Becker (@LynnBecker) September 1, 2021

While the sudden commencement of tree-ripping with no groundbreaking ceremony to mark the step can be attributed to fears of protest, it is still noticeable that none of the greenie fanaticism seen elsewhere to protect old-growth trees has even been hinted at. When the University of California Berkeley attempted to improve its football stadium, protesters spent about 20 months living in the branches of a grove of oak trees next to the stadium to stop construction.

Matt Monaghan reports for the Hyde Park Herald:

Removal of trees from the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) site commenced Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. Felled trees and stumps could be seen along the northern edge of the Jackson Park Women's Garden. Further south within the OPC footprint more trees had been cut, their stumps remaining in the ground.

Earlier in the week, trees in the OPC site had been marked with bands of different colors: blue, green and white.

According to a contractor doing a survey of the trees on the site, the trees with green and blue bands were to be "repurposed" and those with white bands were to be removed without repurposing.

Repurposing?

In response to a question about the repurposing of these trees, an Obama Foundation spokesperson wrote to the Herald that "The trees will be repurposed into playground equipment, furnishings, nurse logs to propagate site biology, or provided to local artists and artisans for work in and around Jackson Park."

I believe that is called "harvesting" trees. That's what companies that greenies hate, like Georgia-Pacific and Weyerhaeuser, do.

The presidency of Joe Biden, largely staffed by Obama veterans, is turning out to be a disaster of historic proportions. No wonder they want to finish up the OPC as quickly as possible, to outrun the verdict of history that will be building.

Hat tip: Peter von Buol.

Photo credit: Twitter video screen grab.

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