Earlier this month I took a trip from northeast Tennessee up to Connecticut for a few days to visit with friends for their family reunion and to visit with other friends I’ve known since my school days.
It had been six years since I last went up to Connecticut to visit friends and to attend my first International Cultic Studies Association conference held in Hartford. In six years’ time I could not get over how much more congested the interstate highways were, how much more construction was underway, how many stretches of highway were in horrible, rough condition, and how savagely rude and reckless too many drivers were. Most car and truck drivers drove safely, but I observed on this trip to and from Connecticut by far too many dangerous, aggressive drivers. Not surprising, then, I also saw accidents — the amount of which I have not seen in all the other trips either I or my husband and I together have taken over the decades on various interstate highways, including through major cities. The eight trips I’ve taken from or to Connecticut in the past eleven-plus years took a consistent, dependable twelve hours. This time, my travel up to Connecticut took seventeen hours due to accidents, detours, road construction, and traffic congestion. My trip back home to Tennessee took me nearly fourteen hours for much the same reasons.
The interstate highways system is a great concept, and we have President Eisenhower to thank for bringing his experience using the Autobahn in Germany during and after WWII into a nationwide reality in our country. Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act in 1956, and construction of our current interstate highway system began that same year. Our interstate highway system was a huge boost for speedier commerce and transport of goods, encouraged and eased travel, and created an efficient evacuation system in the event of storms or attacks on our country. Its construction also provided steady jobs, which in turn provided good economic trickle down effects.
The interstate system was projected to need lane expansions by the 1970s. That, unfortunately, never happened anywhere near to the scale needed to handle a growing population and the increase in truck and car traffic.
Nearly seventy years after the first stretch of interstate highway was begun, our interstate system is an absolute horrific mess. Bridges have collapsed or are in very rough condition, and the highway system is characterized by standstill or creeping congestion, car accidents, patch-job construction, very few lane expansions, and road rage incidents.
One of the issues I discuss in my book Fighting for Justice: Religious Fraud, Mental Illness, and the Collapse of Law & Order is that our legislators and numerous unelected officials in various alphabet departments continue to atrociously mismanage our tax dollars by flinging obscene amounts of our money nationwide and worldwide to dubious causes, such as to brazenly outright lazy individuals who refuse to even look for work, to illegals invading our country (too many of whom are dangerous criminals), to pay for elective medical procedures that are morally objectionable and even hazardous for the individuals undergoing those procedures, to finance unending wars, and to fund international “relief” efforts intended for poor people but instead the monies are absconded by corrupt foreign government officials and terrorist organizations. Meanwhile, our interstate and other highway systems are dangerous, crumbling testaments to government corruption and incompetency, and American citizens in true need after all the devastating storms we’ve experienced are ignored, mistreated, or have insultingly pittance amounts of monies offered to them by the unelected Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
The worst aspects of our culture are also evident on our interstate highways. Again, most other drivers I encountered in my recent trip from Tennessee to Connecticut and back again were perfectly fine. But I saw far too many aggressive, dangerous, rude, littering drivers and passengers, not to mention truly crude, offensive bumper stickers. All that we’ve witnessed in recent years of month-after-month infernos lit by anarchic rioters against our cities’ private, state, and federal properties, the intentional destruction of law and order by the very authorities who are paid by our tax dollars to enforce laws and protect our communities, the insidious vitriol characteristic of our cold civil war, the disrespect and overt disregard of people in general, the lies and deliberate disinformation spewing from our media and our questionably “elected” officials — all of this manifested itself in one form or another in my travels on our interstate highway systems.
In sharp contrast to the worst of human nature and the undeniable evidence of government mismanagement I witnessed by traveling on our interstate highways, and that we’ve all witnessed in riotous destruction of too many parts of our country, Tropical Storm Helene’s devastation has brought out the astounding best in human nature. Not only have local communities pulled together to help their neighbors, but some people have travelled from great distances to help those whose houses, lands, and personal property have been swept away. Businesses have donated workers, time, and equipment to help rescue people, clear debris and fallen trees from roadways, and they have even used their own heavy equipment to repair roads or make roads, as well as repair driveways for people with no access from their properties. Private individuals have likewise volunteered to clear roadways and driveways of debris and fallen trees to help their neighbors and their communities. Those who own mules and horses are using these pack animals to bring in food, medical supplies, clothing, and other supplies to reach remote areas that have not yet been cleared. Pharmacies have been bringing in both prescription and over-the-counter medicines to residents and volunteers alike. Restaurants have donated hot meals to residents and aid workers. Volunteers continue the horrendously difficult task of looking for missing people weeks after the flash floods roared through various regions. Volunteers with airplane and helicopter licenses have been making multiple back and forth flights to pick up much needed supplies and drop them down in barely accessible areas affected by Helene. Businesses, churches, and civic groups are offering portable showers and shelters to people. Donations of food for people and pets, blankets, clothing, heaters, generators, dehumidifiers, campers, and all kinds of supplies continue to pour in, along with monetary donations to private charities who have boots on the ground to help these people who have lost everything. It will take not mere months to rebuild most areas, but years.
People my husband and I know personally have told us that the federal government and even some private but federally-funded organizations have been slow and inadequate in their response to areas hit by Helene, and other accounts we’ve read agree with this observation. One international organization arrived in a Tennessee county and started dictating to members of churches and civic groups to leave and let them handle aid efforts. The leadership of that county were informed by those members of churches and civic groups about how inexcusably disrespectful members from that organization were acting, and the county’s leadership responded by telling the members of that international organization to leave immediately. People in the areas affected by Helene are not waiting for government or government-funded organizations to bail them out, and they certainly will not tolerate being dictated to by people who are not familiar with the areas and who actually hinder the hard work and reliability of the local community helping their neighbors in need. The people in this region have shown their resolve and determination to take care of their own, at their own expense. Outside help is very much still needed and appreciated, but anyone coming in who tries to hinder rather than help locals’ aid efforts are being told in no uncertain terms that they are not welcome.
The troubling state of our country and of our world from all the crime, injustice, government corruption, disinformation and outright lies, and political upheaval can be crushingly depressing. But in the face of an unpreventable natural disaster good people continue to step up, make extraordinary and exhausting sacrifices of time, money, and effort to bring food, water, medicines, various supplies, prayer and comfort to people traumatized by the loss of loved ones and of having everything they’ve owned and treasured destroyed in an instant. This demonstration of the best of human nature gives me hope that somehow we the people (not the government) will be able to band together to save at least a portion of this country from the worst aspects of human nature.