One of the things that both amazes and disgusts me is how we can get used to dilapidated homes.
I’ve been in and lived in homes that were quite literally centuries old. When I lived in New Hampshire, I lived in a house that was first built in 1720 with the second story built in 1800. It took a lot of work over the generations to keep it going, and, yes, my family had to make serious revisions to two of the rooms while preserving much of the original framework, right down to the old wooden “attack” shutters.
But that’s the thing: every homeowner and resident in that home over the past two centuries took care of that home since 1720. The railings put in 1800 were replaced. The stairs were replaced when they cracked or broken. The swimming pool fence had to be repaired and even replaced a few times while we were there. But it was a constant effort. That’s why it was still very functional and livable when we eventually moved out.
I’ve also been in homes that were only a few years old that already started breaking down. Some because of shoddy construction, but also some because the people living there just didn’t take care of their homes. You smell the mildew, you see the cracked and broken floorboards, the carpet that has just worn down, the furniture that barely holds together, and the pipes and electricals that just don’t work. And people will live in those conditions for years. Not “biding time until we can afford to get repairs made” but “oh that’s just the pipes, they leak through the ceiling from time-to-time”. People will actually live in dilapidated conditions, with the pungent mold and the insects and critters, and not think for a second about repairing or replacing or even finding someplace new.
Everything rots. Everything gets old and cracks and breaks down. If you ever get a chance, watch some of the “Life After People” docuseries to see just how easily our greatest structures fail without us taking care of them. Even the things that we said “were made to last” eventually fails.
That brings us to our current problem... and, really, it’s been an ongoing problem for quite some time.
Our collective house is falling apart.
Yes, I mean America. The supposedly greatest nation on the planet with the wealth and the companies and the technology... we can build big things, gaudy things, really expensive things. The problem is... they’re all falling apart. Because everything rots. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but down the road, everything rots. Everything needs to be either repaired or replaced.
We’re talking roads, buildings, bridges, water and sewer lines, electrical lines, cable lines, satellites and satellite equipment, computers and computer software, phone lines, homes, government buildings, jails and prisons, schools, hospitals and hospices, traffic lights and even streetlights. Everything. Everything needs to be either repaired or replaced.
And it’s not something that just magically popped up. Brutally Honest readers can remember that I said the same thing more than decade ago, during the Great Recession. I pointed out constantly that we needed jobs, that we needed money going to infrastructure so our bridges won’t collapse and our highways won’t become pothole nightmares and also so that people who have been out of work will have jobs that would keep homes over their heads and food in their bellies and bills paid and spending on services, which would have sped a real recovery instead of the lie that was foisted on us about a “jobless recovery”.
The problem never went away! Ever! There was no infrastructure solution. Instead, Washington and state governments doled out tax cuts and tax breaks for corporations on the fraudulent delusion that it would somehow “trickle down” to the rest of us in forms of jobs and higher wages... which never happened.
But things still rotted away.
How many times can you fill a pothole before it becomes a waste of time? How long can you drive across a bridge that is slowly deteriorating before it collapses completely? How long can you overuse phone and cable and power lines before they fail to perform? With some of the bridges that I’ve driven over or boated under in my part of the Atlanta/Athens area over the past quarter-century, I am honestly surprised that they’re still standing.
I know from personal observation that counties and cities here in this part of Georgia have an absolute piss-poor record of dealing with growth and population changes. They don’t respond to increased growth until after it becomes a serious problem. They don’t add schools until the current ones are overcrowded and unmanageable. They don’t build new prisons; they just jam more people in there. Atlanta’s water and sewer lines have been a rotting boondoggle that was kicked down the road year after year after year, and they just kept paying the fines imposed by judges instead of spending the money needed to fix the problem. The Department of Transportation in this state will not allow a single traffic light to be put in needed intersections until “enough” people die at those intersections. We need to approve “special local option sales taxes” just to fund needed road expansions, and then vote to keep those SPLOST moneys going to pay for the “next” road project, often to repair the ones that keep deteriorating.
And if you want to know why our country has not been able to fix our rotting infrastructure, it is because of one man. Senator Mitch “The Bitch” McConnell. His blatant abuse of the filibuster as Senate Majority Leader prevented President Barack Obama from spending money on infrastructure and instead doled out tax cuts and tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. He wasn’t even liking the infrastructure ideas from his crime-lord savior Narcissist Trump. And now that he is the “minority leader”, he has already pledged to do everything in his power... everything... to keep President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill from becoming a reality.
The reason? He wants all of us... the hard-working Americans who are already getting fleeced and struggling to make ends meet and getting nickeled-and-dimed at every turn... to pay for the infrastructure. Not those rich corporations, many of whom are already not paying taxes. Certainly not the millionaires and billionaires who get tax cuts and tax breaks. Nope, Mitch The Bitch wants us – the struggling and fleeced – to pay for it all.
Let’s get brutally honest here... we need our rotting home fixed. And not piecemeal. Not just one rotted bridge after it collapses or just one road that is gridlocked and made up of potholes and repair plates. It all needs to be repaired or replaced. Just like our economy needed a boost, so too must our infrastructure.
Fixing our infrastructure will mean jobs; jobs that we still need because of the global pandemic. Jobs will keep houses over our heads and food in our bellies and bills paid. It will mean money spent on goods and services, both to upgrade our infrastructure and also from those workers who will be able to buy more things instead of worrying about the rent and insurance and the other bills. It will mean more people getting newer cars and newer clothes and newer electronics, and eventually newer homes and newer furniture. It means more people getting out of poverty instead of into it.
Oh, and debt? Yeah, funny how that’s only a problem when the criminal party, the party of bloody insurrection, the party of racism and bigotry, is not the party in power. Yeah, keep crying “wolf”, red hats. You lost your credibility on that subject after your narcissist crime-lord blew the debt up and you said nothing about it for all four of those years.
Everything rots. It is that simple. You can either fix it before it fails, or you can let it fail and spend a whole lot more money afterward and quite possibly some death and misery in the process. It’s up to you to decide which you would rather deal with. And that, by the way, *is* the responsibility of the government.
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