Is America Going to Hell?

I am piggy-backing off of Howard French's blog by posting this article from James Fallows of The Atlantic discussing the necessity and possibility of reform in America. He covers several topics, including infrastructure, education, party politics and institutional reluctance to change. To some degree, the article is not much different than some of Thomas Friedman's work, comparing the stark contrasts between the United States and other countries (including developing countries) in terms of infrastructure and telecommunications. However, he takes a slightly different approach given his experience living abroad. He decries the sense of former glory and crumbling infrastructure that characterize many American cities. He also describes it through his correspondence with international students in America and his own experiences traveling to Europe as a young man.

When I was a schoolboy in California in the 1950s and ’60s, the freeways were new and big and smooth—like the new roads being built all across China. Today’s California freeways are cracked and crowded and old. A Chinese student I knew in Shanghai who has recently entered graduate school at UC Berkeley sent me a note saying that the famous San Francisco Bay Area seemed “beautiful, but run down.” I remember a similar reaction on arriving at graduate school in England in the 1970s and seeing the sad physical remnants—dimly lit museums, once-stately homes, public buildings overdue for repair—from a time when the society had bigger dreams and more resources than it could muster in the here and now. A Chinese friend who flew for the first time from Beijing to New York phoned soon after landing to complain about the potholed, traffic-jammed taxi ride from JFK to Manhattan. “When I was growing up, these bridges and roads and dams were a source of real national pride and achievement,” Stephen Flynn, the president of the Center for National Policy in Washington, who was born in 1960, told me. “My daughter was 6 when the World Trade Center towers went down, 8 when lights went off on the East Coast, 10 when a major U.S. city drowned—I saw things built, and she’s seen them fall apart.” America is supposed to be the permanent country of the New, but a lot of it just looks old.

While he outlines his critique of American polity, he still mentions the abundance of American existence: the material ownership of Americans both rich and poor, the cars, the television sets, the full diets. I believe this resonates with many who have lived abroad, especially in Asia. Yes, China is mass producing engineers, making massive strides in infrastructure, and has a ravenous appetite for Gucci bags, yet you still see material need all around you.