OK.
So if that's the way it's going to be, I guess I should just jump on board and ride this sucker to its obvious conclusion. Far be it for me to derail this Cant train.
The only thing that comes to mind is that trains pretty clearly highlight one way in which the United States totally sucks.
Having said that, I realize that anyone reading my Cant corpus might get the idea that I'm anti-American. Actually, the United States rocks. It's more that I'm anti-stupidity and, given the relatively free nature of government and culture in the U.S., there's quite a bit of latitude for quite a bit of stupidity. Where else but the U.S. would the hottest new vehicle be 6,400 pounds of fear-palliating, ego-inflating penis augmentation that gets 10 miles to a gallon of gas? Still, I feel damned lucky to be typing on the latest technology, sitting under a roof that I should own in about 30 years, with a refrigerator full of food, not much fear of my son dying from cholera, and the sincere hope that we can get Bush out of office without a coup.
I also hold in deepest respect and reverence the sacrifices of the men and women through the years that have afforded me all these advantages. In fact, I'm reading a cool book that pretty much refutes all claims by strident shit-for-brains liberal assholes that the U.S. is evil for having dropped atomic bombs on Japan (Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, Richard B. Frank). I don't want to hear one fucking peep of indignation from anyone who hasn't read the book. If you have read the book and you still think that the Soviets invading Japan, one million American combat deaths during our invasions, hundreds of thousands of civilian Japanese casualties from continued conventional firebombing, and horrendous numbers of Japanese casualties, both military and civilian, from defending their homeland from invaders can be in any way preferable to dropping Fat Man and Little Boy, please leave me a comment in the forum. I am genuinely interested in learning what passes for logic and morality on your planet.
I'm just not an orthodox American. Everything that the U.S. does is not intrinsically good because it is done by the U.S. or its citizens. Its policies towards indigenous peoples have been pretty icky. Slavery sucked for a while until tens of thousands died to preserve the Union and end slavery. Prohibition was a sadly naïve experiment. Our involvement in Southeast Asia generally sucked, but the paranoia that motivated it is mostly understandable if not justified considering Stalin and the state apparatus that he erected. Mary-Kate and Ashley pretty much just suck.
Thus, on to trains.
The United States is long on train nostalgia, but comes up short on present-day train implementation. Amtrak has been a gigantic, multi-billion-dollar farce for years. Only recently has it acknowledged the stubborn American love of airplanes and automobiles and begun to focus on high-density, big-money corridors like the Acela Express (Washington, D.C. to Boston). Other inter- and intra-city rail transportation generally stinks.
In my travels in Europe, nearly every rail experience I had, from the Chunnel to the grotty trolleys in Brussels, was overwhelmingly positive. It was all expensive, to be sure, but travel in Europe is expensive if you're not willing or able to hike, bike, or hitch. There are some apple-to-orange flaws here. Europe never had to deal with the burning sense of individuality fueled by a post-war boom, lots of available land, and industries eager to sell cars, gas, and tires. Most countries in Europe are pretty tiny in comparison to the U.S.'s obscene girth. Europe as a whole is large, but it doesn't have vast, isolating swathes of wasteland inhabited by violent and primitive natives, like Utah and Texas.
Nevertheless, it would be nice to hop a bullet train to Seattle. At some point I'm going to have to make my hegira back to Orange County so that my son might experience Disneyland (or Disneyland Resort or whatever the hell they call it these days.) It would be so nice to cut through the steaming cesspit that is Los Angeles at 200 kph on a bullet train.
Pakeha