You think the moral high ground is with us? I'm hoping you're just ignorant and not wicked.
I'm quite inclined to say 'yes,' for the opposite reason that you assert. Bissell's handling of the Jurek situation was ham-fisted and hurt his cause. But his overall grievance - lost in the Jurek kerfuffle, is legitimate. Our numbers are a problem for BSP, and there may be no solution at this late date but to remove ourselves from the situation.
To try to resolve the situation by eminent domain will merely create more conflict. Federal eminent domain also extinguishes any State public trusts, so would completely obliterate the terms of Baxter's will. Given the way that things have been going with other Federal lands, the most likely result of an eminent domain taking would be that the Feds would turn around and sell it off to Disney or somebody a few years later. Even if the Government were to hold on to the land, the heavy-handed move would engender resentments that would last for generations.
Ask any Mainer on this forum about Roxane Quimby's proposal for a new national park adjacent to Baxter - involving a gift of land from her land trust, not a taking. You'll get nearly the same reaction that you see all along the Trail corridor from people who had their land stolen - yes, stolen, they got pennies on the dollar for their acreage - to transform the Trail from private easements to National Park Service land. The transformation was unnecessary. The Trail had existed for decades without it, with a partnership of public and private landowners and a system of easements to cross. But hikers persistently abused the landowners' rights, and when the landowners demanded relief, that was the Federal response.
No wonder hikers act entitled. We get to do as we please on other people's property, and anyone who complains - up to and including State governments - simply gets the property taken away altogether.
I'm seriously ashamed that I as a hiker benefit from all this. And all it will do in the long term is that sooner or later the patience of the non-hiking public will crack, support for the rights of the remaining landowners and of the communities that adjoin the Trail will grow, and we'll suddenly lose it all.
https://farm1.staticflickr.com/8/106...d6a_z.jpg?zz=1
A farm along the corridor near DWG. The sentiment is held by most of the neighboring community.