Three of my co-workers in the diamond exchange commute from New Jersey. A distance of less than twenty miles. Their daily trips combine trains, buses, and subways. Traffic horrid on each of the tunnels and bridges crossing the Hudson River. The Federal government had planned a third rail tunnel to alleviate the strain on the 100 year-old midtown tunnel, however the GOP governor of New Jersey tried to ax the $8.7 billion project to avoid inevitable cost overruns. Commuters from the Garden State were uniformly opposed to his detour from the future as well as his proposal to build more roads, as if 2010 was 1950.
China is spending $40 billion on new high-speed train systems and the International community is constructing a space station in orbit, yet the USA is struggling with a dilapidated infrastructure and derelict cities. No one in our government has a vision of the future that might interfere with the military-industrial complex’s trillion-dollar war on terror.
We have seen the enemy and they aren’t who we thought they were.
They are everywhere and until they aren’t everywhere, then we will remain stuck in 2001.
It is time for America to look past 9/11.
And more at 2051.
I’ll be 99.
One year from 100.
Hopefully living on the Moon or my farm in Thailand.
Either way far from the backwardness of the American donut-eaters.