America is Coming Apart at the Seams

A few weeks ago, for the fourth time in the past two years, I was driving in a major metropolitan area -- this time in New York City -- in a country with the world's largest economy, when I hit a massive divit in the roadway, maybe ten inches deep, that blew out my tire.

It was, of course, raining hard, as it tends to be when one gets a flat (I've long thought that Murphy was an optimist).

Last year, in the suburbs of DC -- the capitol of the country with the world's largest economy -- I hit a huge pothole, replaced my tire with the "doughnut" spare, and then blew that out in another Lake Michigan-sized pothole a few miles down the road. As the kids say: I shit you not.

New York, like so many of our urban centers, is falling apart around us -- a result of years of underinvestment in our infrastructure, which, in turn, is a result in large part of the successes of the New Right's anti-tax crusade, embraced as a bipartisan affair since the 1990s.

Last August, after that overpass in Minnesota collapsed, I wrote a piece titled, "Are the Dead From the Minneapolis Bridge Collapse Victims of Conservative Ideology?" (I submitted the title, "America, Crumbling," but my editor put the kibosh on it).

America's core infrastructure has been falling apart in very visible ways during the past few years. It's a predictable outcome of the rise of "backlash" conservatism; we've swallowed 30 years of small-government rhetoric, and it's led us to a point in which our infrastructure, once the pride of the developed world, is falling apart around us. We're reaping what we've sown.

We have a crumbling power grid and are falling behind the rest of the world in broadband infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) talks of "congested highways, overflowing sewers and corroding bridges" that are "constant reminders of the looming crisis that jeopardizes our nation's prosperity and our quality of life." Every year the engineering society issues a report card grading 15 categories of America's once-premier infrastructure. In 2005, that "core" infrastructure collectively got a "D-," slightly worse than the "D" it received in 2000. Ironically, the nation's bridges received the highest score -- a "C" -- in 2005.

The accessways around New York City are like a depression-era mural -- hulking masses of creaky old iron patched with uneven steel plates or left unpatched altogether. The city's environs are undrivable. The signage is pathetic -- it's pretty much impossible for a tourist to drive from JFK to Manhattan (one needs to know to take the Northbound Van Wick -- you'll only encounter signs to Manhattan after a few miles).

After hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, CommonDreams posted a pictorial, "without comment," titled "Their Levees - Our Levees." It's anecdotal, of course, and no doubt the photos selected were not entirely unbiased, but I thought it drove the point home pretty well ...

Here's how the British hold back the waters from flooding London:

And the Dutch solution to protecting an entire nation that mostly rests below sea level:

The Italians are defending their city on the sea, Venice:

And...

Here's how the richest, most powerful and technologically advanced

nation on earth protected against the long-forecasted flooding of New Orleans:

When I lived in Germany, I remember things running pretty darn smoothly -- their shiny infrastructure felt so modern next to our decrepit 19th century roads, rails, bridges, etc. I paid higher taxes, of course, but the $400 bucks I've blown on new tires and rims has to be included in that, and that's a tiny microcosm of the costs that we bear as a society for a creaky and crumbling old public sphere. We don't have single-payer healthcare because everyone's too afraid of being a socialist to propose it, but our people and corporations are being buried under sky-high premiums and others are priced out of health care altogether. I paid more taxes when I lived in Germany, but when I broke my finger, without health insurance, I got it examined, X-rayed, set and they even gave me a handful of happy pills for the pain. Cost me $10.