I've always marveled at the extent to which the modern right-wing hates, at the level of an involuntary neuromuscular reflex, any push for more and better passenger rail in this country. https://twitter.com/CatoInstitute/status/1360914692655509507

I mean, aren't these people supposed to love heavy industry? Big Engineering? _Ayn Rand_ loved trains, for heaven's sake.

But the fact is that solo guys, stuck in their cars in 90-minute commutes, spiking their blood pressure while listening to talk radio dudes telling them to hate their wives and daughters, is a social arrangement that the modern Right can't help but love.

Everything about car dependence works to strengthen everything necessary to right-wing power. It atomizes people. It alienates neighbor from neighbor. It destroys close-knit urban neighborhoods.

And the remains of those neighborhoods are reduced to blank places to be passed through (or over!), not interacted with. And it binds individuals to more chains of debt, making class mobility even more difficult.

I have ridden trains across Europe and in Japan, and the idea that those rail networks are the equivalent of rotary FUCKING telephones is...a very, very special thing.

I have been in European and Japanese city-center train stations that were as inspiring as the best accomplishments of NASA. Places where you can stand in a great soaring space with thousands of other people and think: "Human civilization! Actually pretty goddamn awesome!"

YeAh yEaH ToBeSuRe, all these rail networks HaVe tHeIr PrOblEmS.

And yet the utterly normal, frequent experience of so many people in the Actually Developed World (tm) is to relax into a train seat while drinking pretty good wine, having a tasty snack, reading a magazine...

...or watching a show on their phone, or just enjoying the passing landscape, and getting to their destination with a spring in their step. See above, human civilization.

While meanwhile, their fellow Earthlings in the USA are stuck in their cars, growing snakes in their brains.