Frequent VatulBlog commenter, Blair, sent me an editorial on the recent bridge collapse in Minneapolis. The sentiment sounds eerily familiar, too familiar.
… So far, we are told that it wasn’t terrorists or tornados that brought the bridge down. But those assurances are not reassuring.
They are troubling.
If it wasn’t an act of God or the hand of hate, and it proves not to be just a lousy accident – a girder mistakenly cut, a train that hit a support – then we are left to conclude that it was worse than any of those things, because it was more mundane and more insidious: This death and destruction was the result of incompetence or indifference.
In a word, it was avoidable.
*chills* What the rest of America, most unfortunately, begins to realize is what I tell New Orleanians who claim the levees were bombed, the flood was planned and routed, etc. The incompetence and apathy of our elected government is far more egregious than any plot, plan or Freemason conspiracy the most imaginative of us can conjure. That a nation once the beacon of Yankee ingenuity and can-do attitude has deteriorated to this is nothing less than heartbreaking. This is not the America little Maitri in Kuwait wanted to be a part of.
Hold on, if anything was possible in America then, why not now? Nothing has changed but the color of our glasses from rose to jade, often borne of our own incompetence and indifference in the face of rectifiable wrongs. This has done nothing but lead us to missteps all the way from our choice of candidates to the voting booth, and a misguided faith in a vicious but ultimately insipid cobweb of politicians who are truly of, by, for and nothing without us. Are we not Americans, goddamnit, here to help our country and each other as long as we are? Do we not all share the burden of maintaining and growing a reputation that we have come to take for granted?
Instead of hiding away our deficiencies, ailments and skeletons and decades of it, it is time to acknowledge and work past them and, in so doing, come alive in a way any great people deserve. Our renaissance will come from hard work, decent educations, honest conversations, proper expenditure and each one of us dispelling from our own lives the notion of Quick Fixes To Make A Buck because it is a philosophy that does not a decent human or red-blooded American make.
A real American is not he or she who was born or naturalized on this soil, it is the one who builds this country up everyday regardless of nationality.
No more collapses, people, not our levees, not our bridges, not our schools, not our homes, not at home. Not in America. Not in a country millions flock to, escaping bleak futures and for the promise of a freedom rooted in trusting a system that works. Not in America. This is not an invitation into denial but a slap to breathe in reality and get moving at all costs. Feel it with me: Not in America.
Current America is not what I spent 10 years defending. The America I fought for is dead: it’s now about shareholders and their precious stocks, not the goal of the Founders.
Why do you think I’ve become a Socialist Progressive?
I seek a change.
I feel it!
The America you fought for is not dead, GG. That’s the whole point of the post.