Donald Trump, Infrastructure, and the Human Predicament

Some diehard Democrats, Baruch Ashem, are desperately grasping like drowning sailors for any potential flotsam, perhaps real, perhaps imaginary, taking those last gasps of what is surely a fading hope for a 2016 presidential miracle. Or in the language of our great American sport: it’s the last play of the game, we’re down a score, the clock’s run out, our quarterback is scrambling in her end zone; humongous, confident, testosterone-filled linemen bear down on her, and she throws the ultimate Hail Mary… hoping for a few Electoral College faithless to gift Hillary with a last-minute switcheroo[i]; or perhaps a voter recount in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will reverse a perfectly distributed 100,000 votes; or some illegal outrage surfaces, most likely in the form of a flagrant breach by the Donald of the “Emoluments Clause”[ii] (that is—as I am reading from the same pocket constitution as I believe Khizr Khan brandished during the Democratic convention—Article I, Section 9, clause 8 of the constitution, which prohibits payments “of any kind, whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign States”—oh, those frumpy 18th century Founding Fathers), or, more incredibly—a combination of these.[iii] Barring such an unlikely election stunner, however, Donald Trump will become the leader of the most powerful military and economy the world has ever seen (gulp)… for some indefinite period of time at least. 

Of his many vague and vagarious vows[iv] (“believe me”), his promise of “America Infrastructure First” actually holds some slight promise for the United States. Promise because, by everyone’s count, excepting those retrograde but affable congressional conservatives, the state of U.S. infrastructure is in actual crisis and is in need of trillions of dollars of repair and modernizing.[v] The American Society of Civil Engineers gives this country’s infrastructure an overall D+ grade. Okay, there be could be a self-serving component to their grading system. But a D+? What the hell is that? What student in memory who wasn’t on heroin or hadn’t just simply quit coming to school ever averaged a D+? Of course, the poster child for this near-failing condition of America’s material foundation was the August 1, 2007 collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis. Thirteen people were killed and some 145 were injured on that evening when over a hundred vehicles went suddenly plunging some hundred feet into the river below.

AP Photo/Morry Gash

Axiomatic in economic and political circles is the imperative of infrastructure to a vibrant economy. Hunger and poverty in Africa is due not to a global shortage of food and consumer products, but rather to insufficient transportation systems in much of that continent. To get first dibs on their plundering resources, China’s major inducement to poor countries in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia is the promise of infrastructure projects—roads, ports, and dams.[vi] And the problem in the United States is that not only are its 19th and 20th century roads, rail, water mains, and energy grids in desperate need of repair, but that much of the world, including Europe, Japan, and China are investing in 21st century technologies—smart grids, high speed passenger trains, distributed solar and wind energy systems, and small personal vehicles powered by any number of means that do not include fossil fuel.

So, the Prince of Fifth Avenue has correctly highlighted infrastructure as an American priority. However, his vision seems tunneled onto the halcyon days of an America that chugged upon asphalt roads that were lined with gaudy electrical wires and that made an older generation of oligarchs wealthy beyond measure, that have rusty half lives numbering in the decades, and whose carbon emissions have proved disastrous for Civilization. Included on the Trump-Pence website are following bullet points:

• Approve private sector energy infrastructure projects—including pipelines and coal export facilities—to better connect American coal and shale energy production with markets and consumers.

• Incorporate new technologies and innovations into our national transportation system such as state-of-the-art pipelines, advancements in maritime commerce, and the next generation of vehicles.[vii]

Unlike Roosevelt’s New Deal electrification of the countryside and Eisenhower’s national highway system, Trump’s vision is not designed to service our vast, complex, and growing society for the coming century. His is designed for the previous centuries. It’s as he were—like George Bush II before him—driving down the future’s road of twists, turns, forks, and potholes, staring into the rearview mirror.

This would be merely foolish and not actually immoral if we lived in a world of infinite resources and peaceful, well-fed, contented nations. We don’t, of course. Billions of people are malnourished, the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are warming in ways not friendly to crops and coastal cities, not to mention most of the planet’s ecosystems.  After sixty years of profligacy by history’s wealthiest societies, of treating the sacred privilege of high-speed transportation like throwaway toys and the air and oceans like our personal garbage can, all of nature is sounding the alarm: the biosphere cannot afford another sixty years of Civilization’s adolescence.[viii]

We cannot even afford to behave as a middle-aged adult might. We need a kind of wisdom I see in my father-in-law, a man who, although wealthy by the standards of 95% of the world’s citizens, lives a comfortable but hardly ostentatious life. He knows that anything that he spends will not be there for his grandchildren and great grandchildren not yet born. Besides the original Americans, few in the U.S. consider their actions beyond the generations directly in front of their face. Our conversation rarely goes beyond the needs and wants of the 325 million Americans who already—for the most part—take for granted Civilization’s great gifts of clean running water, sewage disposal, safe births, long life spans, and plentiful food.

Let’s imagine, however, that our new leader has a Road on Damascus epiphany and decides with our blessing to make the wisest choices for our transportation, communication, education, and healthcare needs, pursuing, as he called it, an “America’s Infrastructure First” policy. Trillions of American dollars are then efficiently diverted into all the solar, renewable, and smart systems that you and your in-group consider prudent. Americans get well-paying jobs, the economy roars, America is great again.  So, what about the rest of our human family? Those not in the United States, or in Europe, or of the wealthy half of China?  The other eight-and-half billion people who will be sharing the Earth with us in 2050.

Let’s follow the logic of the human predicament: We could keep wishing them well, of course, sending them a little aid and our best Christian prayers and Buddhist compassion, and maybe hope that China will keep building them roads and dams. But that hasn’t really helped so much yet. See, the wealthiest 17% of the world appropriates 70% of all new wealth.[ix] That is, not only does this top economic tier own 85 percent of Civilization’s total wealth, but they also take for themselves most of the increase in GDP each year.[x] So, as the swelling populations of mostly poor people continue to be added to mostly arid, crowded landscapes, their individual share of this 30 percent cannot expand enough to develop their own set of massive infrastructure improvements. They are caught in the vicious cycle of poverty begetting poverty.

To continue the logic of the human predicament: What if somehow we experienced a punctuated jump in our consciousness, enough of one that we were suddenly willing to forgo our luxuries so that others around the world could secure their necessities. For example, what if we diverted trillions of American dollars of infrastructure projects to their countries. Yay us! Nine, perhaps ten to eleven billion people could expect lights in their homes at night, heat and air conditioning, jobs, cars, and meat on their tables. The vicious cycle turns into the virtuous cycle of wealth begetting wealth. All because we decided equality was more important than personal surfeit. 

But then, could the Earth afford it? Since at least 1985, the human footprint has exceeded what the biosphere can absorb and renew.[xi] That means, each year the Earth is losing forests, soils, stored water, biospheric resilience, that sort of thing. The atmosphere warms, the oceans warm and acidify, the ancient aquifers dry out; the soil—the mother of all life—washes into the seas. And each year we further increase our footprint over the previous. The ecological deficit grows. As we all know by now, most of the footprint has been impressed upon the Earth by the wealthiest 17% or so. Yet, no matter whose fault it is, there is no evidence to suggest that there is enough of the Earth for everyone on the planet to live a long, comfortable, well-nourished life. This is in a nutshell the human predicament. We seemed damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.

This is not an excuse for apathy or pessimism. Rather it is a better reason for each one of us to mature quickly, both so that we can be of service to our fellows as best we can and to make wise decisions for ourselves, our loved ones, and all whom we encounter during the turbulent times ahead. At that point, the allegiance to fictions of Democrat and Republican may be remembered as quaint luxuries of childish societies. There is no uniquely Republican hate, or Democratic anger, or Christian love, or Buddhist compassion. Hate, anger, love, and compassion are universal experiences, and all of us share in these.

[i] There is some precedence, sort of, for Electoral College faithlessness. In 1876, the Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes lost the popular vote to the Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, but was awarded twenty contested Electoral College votes in what is called the Compromise of 1877. Also, it is calculated that there have been 157 “faithless” electors in U.S. history, less than one percent of the total (Barrow, B. (2016, November 26) Can Electors Vote for Clinton Rather than Trump? How the Electoral College Works. Los Angeles Times. Accessed November 27 at http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-pol-electoral-college-2016-story.html

[ii] And emolument is, for those who are not a walking dictionary,a “salary, fee, or profit from employment or office.”

[iii] Borger, J. (2016, November 27) ‘A Recipe for Scandal: Trump Conflicts of Interest Point to Constitutional Crisis. The Guardian. Accessed November 27, 2016 at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/27/donald-trump-conflicts-interest-constitutional-crisis. According to the Guardian, “That view is not restricted to academics and Democrats. Richard Painter, George W Bush’s chief ethics counsel, agrees that without a major reconfiguration of the Trump Organization, the president-elect is heading for a constitutional collision with the electoral college. “The important thing for the electoral college is to ensure that he technically complies with the constitution,” Painter told the Observer.


[iv] I do love alliterations.

[v] Berman, R. (2016, August 9) Donald Trump's Big-Spending Infrastructure Dream. The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/donald-trumps-big-spending-infrastructure-dream/494993/

 Drew, E. (2016, February 25) A Country Breaking Down. The New York Review of Books. Accessed November 26, 2016 at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/02/25/infrastructure-country-breaking-down/

[vi] For example,

Kahn, J. (2006) China Courts Africa, Angling for Strategic Gains, New York Times, November 3.

Libre, R. (2010, Februrary 1) Proposed Dam to Flood Burma, While Powering China. MinnPost.

Perlez, J. (2006) Forests in Southeast Asia Fall to Prosperity’s Ax, New York Times, April 29.

Shih, T.H. (2013, November 18) China to Provide Africa with US $1tr Financing. South China Morning Post.

Sun, Y. (2014, February 19) China, Myanmar Face Myitsone Dam Truths. The Irrawaddy.

[vii] From https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies/an-americas-infrastructure-first-plan

[viii] Btw, no offence meant toward adolescents. For people in their teen years, behaving as an adolescent is age-appropriate and mature. However, when six-thousand year old Civilization is still behaving as an adolescent, it is behaving inappropriately and immaturely—check out my video, The Evolution of Consciousness 5: Is a Shift in Consciousness our Salvation? a Summary at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS1q1CvogDQ

[ix] Speth, J.G. (2008:49) The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, Yale University Press, New Haven.

[x] Serageldin, I. (2002) World Poverty and Hunger—the Challenge for Science, Science, v. 296, pp. 54-58. Another source, from the Zurich bank, Credit Suisse finds that the top ten percent (about 730 million people) own 86 percent of the world’s wealth. Credit Suisse (2013, October) Global Wealth Report 2013. Credit Suisse Research Institute.

[xi] http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/