From Dependent Arisings:
The unfolding tragedy of the Minneapolis bridge collapse is a systemic one, not "merely" limited to the climbing body count. It is the result of government obfuscation and negligence as tortuous as the Mississippi river. Grover Norquest wanted to drown government in the bathtub. But the enfant terrible here is not government, but the ideologues who have so meticulously worked towards dismantling our trust in government’s ability to, well, govern.
Terror truly comes in many forms. Terror is a corollary of fear; it is the knowledge of our ignorance of the ubiquity of death–thus terrorism promulgates a fear that is everywhere and nowhere.
Imagine all of the people crossing the bridge between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Their ignorance of the own danger they were in--their trust in government--was a great gift; it is the same gift that was afforded to the children playing games in front of a levee 48 hours before hurricane Katrina. Is this gift something we can no longer afford to give to the people in richest nation in the world? The belief in the soundness of our basic infrastructure?
We have a duty–not a right, but a duty–to provide every American with the best possible infrastructure available. This is not enumerated in the Constitution, nor need it be. Every human being deserves a terror-free existence, and that requires a very different, but not necessarily mutually exclusive, understanding of terrorism than the one we have currently.
It is time for us to speak freely again in favor of Government, in our ability to trust. The Conservative attempt to "drown government" is not simply an attack on governing, it is an attack on faith in other people. It robs us of each other, and that, broadly construed, is terrorism.
So it is with rotting infrastructure. How can I not think of the terror felt by those in Minneapolis, or New Orleans, every time I cross the Bay Bridge? How can I trust a government whose philosophy is cannibalism?
It is time to run again on a platform of "homeland security," of faith in government, and thus each other. We can seize this "issue" again, not in the name of a hollow political pragmatism, but towards a transpartisan understanding and appreciation of human needs and rights. These rights are not political, but existential, and are equally integral to our physical and emotional environments. Bridges must be built, and not simply crossed.