For perspective, Clinton's campaign national infrastructure bill proposed spending $240B over 10 years, and a national high-speed rail network might cost around $500B. Those are huge expenditures, but they are investments in the American public.
War in the Middle East? Our money just goes up in smoke...
[1] Summary of Costs of the US Wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan and Homeland Security: http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/201...
It's just that the large infrastructure projects that can only be undertaken by government have gotten so paralyzed by special interests, that the stories just sound like anything you'd hear from developing nations with woefully corrupt governments. That billions of dollars were spent, there is literally NOTHING to show for it, AND nobody was punished either.
I say this living in an area (DC Metro) that now has gigabit fiber from the local telco. But I know our situation is rare.
I miss my FiOS - I don't miss the weather :-)
It's not just D.C. though. The whole surrounding area is pretty lax about development. The Chesapeake Bay area in Maryland is pretty rural, but also has fiber internet because ISPs are permitted to build where it's profitable to build.
But you're right; the US got overrun by nationalism post-9/11 which led to a feeling that because we were already the best, greatest, freest nation given to man by god -- and the rest of the world surpassed us in many ways.