Guest columnist Joe Gannon: Broken political infrastructure on display

What did we learn from the presidential debate we did not know beforehand? Nothing. What has the debate changed? Nothing, other than the sound of Democratic knickers twisting in agony across the nation.

President Joe Biden, it turns out, is an elderly liberal who is clearly past his prime, but still capable. Donald Trump is a mendacious, paranoid narcissist. As both of them were the day before the debate and the day after.

What has happened that is much more important than the debate is the U.S. Supreme Court decisions, for example, limiting federal regulatory agencies, and throwing a bone to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, including Trump. What has changed since then is that the federal government is no longer able to guarantee clean water to the people.  

I thought the debate was a perfect image and metaphor for where we are as a nation. The one a fiery resentment of baffling word salads of grievance and paranoia, the other, well, just too old and tired, heart in the right place but no true grasp on the present.

They are the infrastructure of our politics, as old, decayed, and obsolete as our physical infrastructure. Like the I-95; like Amtrak; like our roads, bridges, rails, dams, mass transit, child and elder care, highways, turnpikes and airports, Biden/Trump is all we have, all we have left after letting our political infrastructure rot because we were too busy doing something else.

And while we can fuss and fume and suffer in gridlock, we can feel anxiety whenever we plan a road trip, but we are going nowhere and doing nothing that our infrastructure won’t allow.

That is the state of our politics, too. And while I often fantasize about a country with a bullet train while stuck in traffic, it is a fantasy. Just as it is to think that the Democratic Party will come up with a replacement for Biden before the election.

We are gridlocked on a shaky bridge over a leaky dam while a train is stuck in the tunnel overhead. And for all our fussing and fuming over the gridlock, there is simply nothing to be done about it but be stuck in traffic.

We can individually try to get around it, as I did recently while gridlocked on I-95 and the only hotel was a Motel 6 that had a urine stain on my bedsheet as long as my forearm. I endured it till the traffic had let up then forced myself to drive home overnight.

And that too is where we are politically. We have as much chance of upgrading our physical infrastructure as we do our political!

So, we will continue to drive, as I will this summer on I-95, we will suffer, but we will get to our destination, eventually. Until, of course, the day comes when the system just breaks down.

That will likely come in 2024. The broken system cannot continue with the patchwork repairs of President Biden. But a Trump win will finally break the system we the people let fall into ruin.

Everything else is wishes — as I wish I could ride a bullet train this summer.

Joe Gannon, teacher and writer lives in Easthampton. He can be reached at opinion@gaezttenet.com.