Denying

SOUTH CAROLINA needs to spend billions of dollars to rebuild its entire crumbling infrastructure, mainly roads, bridges, and sewer systems, right fast like, or they aren't going to even have an infrastructure worth rebuilding. If they had been maintaining it all along, year after year, decade after decade, maintaining a continuous program of spend and repair as you go, as needed, they wouldn't be in this fix now. Instead, they have done absolutely nothing for decades, including neither raising the gasoline tax, nor paving roads. The cost will now be about ten times greater than it would have cumulatively been had they done it the right way, constantly and steadily. Its as if the entire state has been in a state of denial, both the politicians, the media, and the general public. The masses, all wearing blinders. Pretend there's not a problem, and there isn't one. That seems to be the emerging American way; or maybe its already emerged, long since, a cultural tendency to deny and self deceive, and procrastinate the solving of problems. There is a man who has written a book, telling about and strongly defending and even advocating his decision years ago to deal with his Parkinson's disease by pretending that it is not real. Strict denial. He is a very thoughtful and intelligent man, and points out that in our culture we are strongly inclined to view every problem, indeed, every circumstance, as a fight, a competition, me against whatever, and to think of it and respond to it in confrontational terms. All well and good, maybe, to a point. Learning to accept reality is also considered a core American value. Accept it, and fight it, all at the same time. Ongoing denial, on the other hand, allows for the elimination of both; elimination of the death struggle, and elimination of the pain of acceptance of reality. Sounds pretty questionable, but, hey, as we speak, dude's still alive, and able to do a fascinating interview on radio, after eight years of Parkinson's, so maybe he's got something after all. Crumbling national infrastructure? National debt at bankruptcy levels? Onrushing climate change and impending global disaster? As they say in Brooklyn: Fuggettaboutit!