people don't understand

had a very hard chat with someone tonight. he doesn't understand why things are so difficult here and why there isn't some panacea for the problems. why doesn't everyone stop bumbling around and fix the fucking city already. i told him it is complicated. i told him there is lack of leadership, i talked about the complex, byzantine and antiquated policy and law structure. i talked about the lack of funding. i talked about the previously crumbling infrastructure. i talked about the lack of human capital.

he said, why don't you fix the fucking city already. the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end with rage for this basic, simple thing. why don't we fix the fucking city? this isn't gluing back a fucking vase. there is no superglue for something like this. have you ever tried to repair a city before? try fixing the bus and transportation, the education system, the sewer, the water, the tax structure, the building code, the evacuation plan, the lack of tax base, blighted properties, poverty, a race schism, historic preservation, dwindling tourism, high sales tax, environmental degradation, federal incompetence and ignorance, dissolving roads, spotty utility service, inflated rents, insurance, lack of housing, nepotism, stinging caterpillars, flooding, broken levees, all located in a delicious little hurricane zone by a population of less than 200 thousand and couple of well-intentioned volunteers from Connecticut.

fix the fucking city already. yeah. i have heard that one. 'why don't you just ____? why don't you just_______?' Why don't you just try to put the Bamiyan Buddhas back together with Elmer's glue and a toothpick with one arm while blinded in a windstorm. we will 'just' do everything in our small-brained, well-intentioned way to make it better. fuck yeah. why don't you just shut the fuck up unless you want to come down here and fix it all, introduce something that no-one has ever thought of. i am sure there is something that no one has ever thought of. and it was probably you that thought of it. duh. people down here really don't get the obvious. they have missed the whole point!! gosh.

i think it can be done, i am a believer. well it's that or nothing. i think it will take longer than we think (doesn't everything?) and it will be harder than we think, and the choices and tradeoffs we have to make will be more painful and poignant than we realized. the personal exertion will have to be more than we want, even in crushing heat and soul-sapping, hair-frizzing, air-conditioning worshiping humidity.

but please, please do not sit in a gated community in texas and say that things could be going better. because we know things could be better. but we aren't going to give up right now, and skepticism and blanket statements and vague suggestions are not necessary. haven't we heard them enough from the national press and every Ivy-League school there is? there is no choice really at this point. getting off the path is a very very bad mistake, so we have to go forward. that is what people do, we figure it out somehow. the process may be painful, but, to quote a long-lost genius somewhere in brooklyn, 'nobody said it was going to be easy'. that's the good part about it.