So around 11 Monday I finally get to EMU’s campus having driven from the not so distant land of Dearborn, I manage to park close to the building but as I am walking up I start to follow the line and then i keep following it for a bit, before reaching the end. An hour and a half of cold windy waiting later the line started to move, inside I go to see my first political rally since Labor Day 2008.
One of the things and maybe the key subtext of a large part of the speech was dreaming Big (or yuge as the crowd cheered), be it about single payer or infrastructure. Single payer gets talked about plenty, and while the failure of Flint is a major issue in the new today, I feel that infrastructure could be a sleeper issue in the long run.
Not a month passes around here without me hearing the report that somewhere in Metro Detroit a water main is burst. Which brings me to the bigger point, the bulk of our infrastructure is old, really old. Build either in the boom after WWII or even before then, the core parts of these systems were also designed to last 50 maybe 60 years when you get down to it. Our water systems and bridges are reaching the ends of their life spans.
The reason mains breaking here and there is they only have the money to repair and patch as they break, rather than doing the whole system level rebuild we need to move deeper into this century. Our roads and bridges too are in need of large scale repairs. So this leads me to key question that’s been tossed about this season, “what could a ‘President Sanders’ do with a republican congress”.
I think even with the Tea Party types there should be enough reps in the house who would love to stand around doing ribbon cuttings that a national scale infrastructure bill could be passed. The Senator sold it hard at the rally this Monday, we spent all this money rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan why not rebuild America.
I was born in 1985, I don’t remember Reagen nor really H. W. Bush, but I do remember the election of Bill, and how much younger he seemed than Bush. Having been born then I have had the sad story of missing out on so many of our epic national projects from the New Deal, to the Highway project, and the Space Program’s Moon Race. My entire generation has been told we need to live less like the Greatest Generation and that just doesn’t sit well with me.
I want to live in a country that does more than just patch holes, fight fires and make tiny little changes here and there. I want to live in one that dreams of doing big and works to be that shining star among nations we so often brag about being.
That is why I am feeling that Bern and yesterday it was a bit of freezer berrrrrrn.
-Gabe