The United States is widely regarded as a global economic superpower. Citation: I’m sure that sentence has appeared verbatim in Time Magazine before. But on a recent roadtrip throughout the middle and Eastern US, I found myself wondering, ‘If we’re such an economic superpower – If we’ve been plundering this land for centuries – what do we really have to show for it?’
Not to put too fine a point on it, but…
Intersections.
Overpasses.
Viaducts over parking lots.
Asphalt Rat-Kings.
Asthmatic children.
Surprisingly honest advertising.
Pot of gold (clogged toilet at Denny’s).
K-Mart parking lots.
Vinyl siding that ranges in color from grey to light beige.
Roads near buildings.
Roads on top of roads.
Bus stops where passengers seek refuge from the harsh sun under shrubs like marsupials in the Australian Savannah.
A whole lot of this stuff.
A giant statue of a Native American man with his arm out, palm up, as if to ask, ‘WHAT DID YOU GUYS DO TO THIS PLACE?!’
Here and there a sign that it’ll all be over soon.
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Plenty of good to go with the bad, though I realize that would go against the grain of this post…
“excuse me sir, we need to ask you to step out from the bathroom and hose you off”
“BUT I KNOW THERE’S GOLD IN THERE SOMEWHERE!”