I wasn’t born in Houston, but that city shaped me into who I am today. A lot of that being cynicism and an overutilized fight-or-flight instinct that most people don’t have. Houston is nothing to compliment. Even though Chicago can lament its fall from grace, its high homicide rate, how it has the worst weather of any major city in this nation — the fact is Chicago has more of a cultural identity than Houston could ever hope to have. Houston is the international city of the 21st century. Hong Kong or Dubai ain’t got nothin’ on it. Houston has a Polish quarter next to a giant Chinatown next to a mixed ghetto of blacks and hispanics. It’s only a bus stop from Indiatown to Arabtown. You’ll see some Turkmenistanis and Uzbekistanis on the way, too. Houston is a nonsense city, and people get their kicks out of coming to it, making their money, realizing it sucks, and leaving in a huff f before it gets any worse. There’s always enough people to replace them, though.
I grew up most of my life along a highway we all knew as 59. And ever since I was a little kid, it was under construction. The same construction that slowed traffic back in the 90s, is slowing even more folks down today. You could feasibly have grandchildren who are just starting to drive who are drudging through the same homicidal traffic you slogged through 31 years ago.
I remember the speed limit, where I grew up a ways out of Houston — but still in the metropolitan area — the limit was 50 mph! Ain’t nobody going that speed in Houston, I can tell ya that. And most of the folks out where I was worked in Houston proper. Yeah, nobody is going 50. Maybe when they were told it would only take a few years to finish construction. But that was at the same time when the Sam Houston Tollway was supposed to be temporary. I can’t imagine how much the boomers must feel like suckers in retrospect. They were sold so many lies, and none of them were worse than being told that tollways were temporary. My generation might be full of incompetent morons, but at least we don’t feel like suckers.
But what was really under construction on Highway 59? A great big beautiful multi-lane interstate going up to Michigan! I remember when I was told that 59 was now 69. I was a kid, but it was still funny. Like, it leveled up! Interstate 69 (I-69) started construction in 1992, and has been going overbudget ever since. It’s been 31 years, and they still haven’t finished but half of it. Might be to the waxing and waning of the oil industry down here in Texas. South Texas was very different, at least prospectively, in the 90s. Only now is it really coming back from a long economic drought. Doesn’t matter, though, the intermittent construction on that interstate was all I remember from my rides as a kid, and my drives as a teen and an adult. And here we are, the future is evermore uncertain, Houston has been wracked by historical hurricanes and a winter storm, we went from a conservative female governor to a lesbian mayor, and the interstate is still stuck in the mud.
But just like a dog, America has to have its nose shoved in its own crap when it defecates in the house. Yet, though a dog gets potty-trained from this discipline, America never learns its lesson. We strike down any major infrastructural progress to make any cities realistically functional for any class. Because of this, they end up being miserable for everyone, but at the end of the day at least we get to drive in a big piece of crap Chevy or Ford and pretend like we have more freedom than those flamboyant Europeans driving around in Fiat 500s or little girly Renaults or Mini Coupes or whatever. The overarching problem is we never seem to evolve from the failures of our infrastructure. All of the same problems spawn from greed, and we act like it’s exceptional rather than embarrassing.
Anytime someone, from any side, proposes that perhaps public funding should go towards improving our third-world transportation that lags behind even literal third world countries, everyone from the centre to the farthest right has to shout against the idea. The very idea of having functional cities is somehow an affront to either liberty or to more pertinent problems at hand. As if having a functioning monorail system that is less energy consumptive, more efficient, and more helpful to lower classes wouldn’t improve literally any city. Anybody who says this has never taken public transit in this country. Outside of New York or Columbus — a few outliers — the redder the state, the more primitive and unattended the public transit is. It’s almost like they rely on the greed of the rich, and the desire to not be on public transit of the poor, to have an excuse of why public transit is just a necessary evil. It’s embarrassing.
Even more embarrassing is the dialectical innovations of the Dissident Right seem to still fail at addressing the issues of shithole cities past, “Guys, black people do crime! Homeless people smelly and show wiener in public!” Whoa really! That’s crazy! Any solutions!? It seems more like bemoaning than actual desire to improve. The unfortunate fact is they don’t want to face actual energy crises head on. If they did, they would be interested in change, but since they can’t foresee any world outside something that isn’t Faustian, they will be forever stuck to the same problems that caused the crisis we are in now.
As if abandoning your self-absorbed, irrational desire to be independent is a bad thing. Reminder — Hell is the self.
Nothing says we are lacking spiritually, in some way, than how we can’t give up some land for the benefit of our cities, states, or nation. Americans — specifically whites in this case — would rather clutch on to unused land, or as a friend of mine puts it, using land to farm the easiest cash crops that are a total hustle (like cotton or corn) — than to donate or sell some (eminent domain pays top dollar and then some). This is a deep issue with America that will never improve until some level of authority can just say, “Yeah sorry, we need this.” I’m open to slippery slope arguments, but this is what impedes any real cultural and communal growth in this country.
From rich to poor, this nation is self-obsessed, and no one has skin in the game.
And the only thing that impedes this nation from greatness is the poor man not wanting to be seen as naked and poor as a pedestrian, and anyone above him from being seen as a peasant whenever they cross the street. Politically, this nation is stunted from greatness within its reach. It is only self-absorption of political parties and certain schools of thought that inhibit it from being the beacon of civility and true liberty that stands above all else.
It doesn’t do justice, but it’s justice enough; America used to build a skyscraper every couple of years at the turn of the century. We simply no longer care about becoming great. Beyond racial animus and economic stagnation, there is a spiritual degradation that inhibits us from wanting to be great. Partly it is due to the rich men of this nation not being what they were at the turn of the twentieth century. Though, most of the blame is on us for not caring about one another. We’d rather degrade and stick stakes between one another, than realize America’s greatness — that we are meant to be a beacon of light that transcends race and selfishness. If not, we are bound to decay.
Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.
Saint Augustine