What I call the Paradox of C-Span is that the programs are so good, but the callers so bad. A C-Span caller this morning opined, "Methamphetamines are destroying the infrastructure of our country." I would have thought that neither 'meth' nor its ingestion could have any such power. Do methamphetamines have the power to destroy roads, bridges, air fields, factories, telephone lines, harbors, sewage systems, hydroelectric plants, nuclear reactors, and the like? Things like that are what 'infrastructure,' used correctly, refers to.
Some of you will be surprised to hear that the term originates with Karl Marx. He contrasted Unterbau (infrastructure) with Ueberbau (superstructure). The infrastructure is the material of a society's economic productivity, its industrial base, together with natural resources. It also comprises the relations of production including the division of labor and the distribution of property and wealth. The superstructure comprises the ideology of a society, its 'consciousness' (Bewusstsein) as incorporated in its dominant class. To the superstructure belong religion and theology, politics, the educational system, language, the legal system, the arts and sciences, the entertainment industry, etc.
The Marxist idea, roughly, is that the infrastructure determines the superstructure, and that the latter, as refecting the former, serves to legitimate it. Hence the superstructure's ideological function. But what is ideology? See here.
Potentially embarrassing questions for Marxists: What about Marxist theory itself? Is it but ideology? If yes, then why should I take it seriously? If no, then how does it escape infrastructural determination? And if it escapes, then how can you be so cocksure that my brand of 'bourgeois idealism' does not also escape?
Contemporary correct use of 'infrastructure' is of course not as specific as the Marxist use. But if you are unaware of the term's origin you will not be able to assess properly its Stellenwert, to use an untranslatable German word. (It means something like 'positional value or sense within a constellation of related concepts.')
'Infrastructure' is not a buzzword and should not be used as one. You will not sound intelligent by using it unless you use it correctly.
2. Disallowing comments from a particular person, or deleting an offensive, off-topic, or otherwise substandard comment, has nothing to do with censorship. People who think otherwise confuse censorship with lack of sponsorship. I am under an obligation not to interfere with anyone's exercise of legitimate free speech rights. But I am not under any obligation to aid and abet anyone's exercise of free speech rights, legitimate or illegitimate.
3. The Comments area is not an open forum for anyone to say anything about any topic. As the name implies, it is primarily for commenting on the author(s)' posts. But to comment on them, one must have read them. And if I have spent three hours on a post, a reader will not understand it in thirty seconds. Secondarily, the Comments area is to facilitate civil discussion between and among commenters as long as the discussion remains on-topic.
4. Some undesirables: The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.