Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day…
Why does everything take so long these days? We used to get shit done in this country. Now, everything takes FOR-EVER.
First, some historical facts for background:
- World War 1: The United States declared war on Germany in April 1917 to enter World War 1. A cease fire was declared in November 1918. Granted, the British and the French had been at it much longer, but the U.S. came in and stuffed the Germans in bit more than a year and a half.
- WW2: The U.S. declares war on Japan in December 1941. Germany and Japan surrender in 1945. Less than four years.
- Empire State Building: The whole thing was built in 13 months. During the Depression. Without computers. In midtown Manhattan.
- The Moon. THE F-ING MOON!: Kennedy says “Let’s go!” in 1962. Less than seven years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have a picnic at Tranquility Base in July 1969.
- Hoover Dam: Construction started in 1931 on the biggest damn dam in the world at the time. It started generating electricity in 1936. Still going today and operates at a profit.
- The Gettysburg Address: It’s a total of 272 words and it took Lincoln about two minutes to deliver on November 19, 1863. It lives on as one of the greatest examples of oratory, American or otherwise, in human history.
So, Americans can do great things and not take forever and a day to do so. But you wouldn’t know it from looking around my humble hometown area here in Connecticut.
- Route 7: There is a mile and a quarter stretch of highway that runs from Brookfield to New Milford, Connecticut, that took 25 years of arguing and planning and three years to build. If the Interstate Highway System was built at this pace, I-70 between Kansas City and Denver would be a nice, dirt footpath suitable for up to two, horse-powered buggies. And a bicycle.
- Old brass factory, New Milford: About six zillion years ago, there was a brass factory in New Milford, Connecticut, that was shut down during the Van Buren administration. (Editor’s note: The time periods in the previous sentence are completely made up, but the building was empty and rotting for so long, that’s what it seemed like and I have now achieved a lifelong goal of working a Martin Van Buren reference into a post.) (Editor’s note #2: For those of you who skipped class that day, Martin Van Buren was a president. Of the United States. At some point.) After the brass factory shut down (in 1986, actually), it was a toxic eyesore that was a blight on the north side of town for 30-plus years. The endless fight about who would tear it down and clean it up was almost resolved when a demolition contractor was hired a few years ago. But that ended up in court and last I checked, there was still a big pile of rusted steel waiting for the steel fairy to haul it away and leave a quarter under the mayor’s pillow.
- Amazon Fresh Grocery Store, Brookfield: This is the one that prompted me to write this in the first place. We started seeing construction and zoning permits two years ago for a “mystery grocery store” opening in a previously occupied store in a shopping plaza in Brookfield, Connecticut. It took about 17 seconds for the local cocker spaniel or anyone with eyes to figure out it was going to be an Amazon Fresh store, but you would think that it was the Manhattan Project or Area 51 given the layers of secrecy associated with it. Local officials couldn’t and/or wouldn’t comment. Amazon spokespeople wouldn’t pick up the phone and the shopping center’s owners and developers swore an oath not unlike the one taken by the Illuminati (or so I hear…) to say NOTHING about anything. Here we are two years later and still no grand opening. For a while there, I was sort-of-but-not-really excited about a new grocery store in our area, but that enthusiasm has given way to the realization that Oreo cookies and Yoo-Hoo taste pretty much the same regardless of where they are purchased. ***yawn***
- Target, Danbury: Today, there is a news story in my local paper that the former location of the dead-and-buried Sears store at our local mall is to become a Target store. Now, you might think that turning a department store into a different department store, no new building required, would be easy, peasy, super-breezy. You would be wrong. According to the news story, the new Target will open “… in the next few years.” They built the Empire State Building from scratch in a year but changing the “Sears” sign to a “Target” sign and painting the walls of an existing building – THAT is going to take three to five years.
All of this is to say that we can’t seem to get out of our own way these days. I don’t know if it’s over-regulation or lack of imagination or bureaucratic sclerosis or just plain burnout, but it’s hard to believe that we will ever get back to the moon, let alone Mars, if we can’t seem to open a discount store in less time than it took to defeat fascism and become a global superpower. And I shudder to think about how we will solve climate change, save democracy, stop the next pandemic or fight the next world war.
Sleep tight.