America's infrastructure is crumbling

Can't take the heat

Quote:

the heart of the capital of the most powerful nation on earth, less than a mile from where we stood, had been plunged into the kind of chaos one might envisage in, say, New Delhi on a very, very bad day. Because of the temperature, an underground train had earlier derailed as a result of what was described as a "heat-buckle" on the tracks. Two separate fires on the subway system were then triggered that morning by faulty "stud bolts". Terrified, sweaty commuters sprinted up stationary escalators while, from above, all they could hear was ambulance, police and fire sirens zigzagging frantically around them. In the meantime, a switch in an electrical sub-station sizzled out, cutting power throughout central Washington - including, yes, the White House. "It was like each man for himself . . . like a third world country," next day's Washington Post quoted 34-year-old David Zaidain, "a city planner who was stunned by the level of anarchy he encountered while walking to work", as saying. Pedestrians were struck by cars at junctions where traffic lights were not working (although, miraculously, nobody was killed).

The money from dumb war could be more effectively spent in the US.

I read the article quoted, and, unfortunately, lost much of the respect I have long had for British news reporting. The following is from the article:

new Statesman wrote:

To my American readers: please do not get too angry with me when I say this, but the rapidity of the deterioration of your country's infra structures often reminds me of an extensive tour of the Soviet Union I undertook in 1986 - when I saw for myself, in places such as industrial Ukraine and Siberia and St Petersburg, that the Soviet Union had already had its day.

I, too, have been in the Soviet Union on several occasions dating back to the 1970s, and in much of Eastern Europe prior to (and after) 1989. Our infrastructure problems are real, but infinitesimal compared to anywhere in Eastern Europe at that time. To even mention them in the same breath is demagoguery of the worst sort.

We have problems, and in many cases are addressing them. The occasional mass transit disaster as mentioned in this article happens occasionally everywhere in the world, including France, Germany, and the UK. There is a word: Schadenfreude.