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~EDITOR’S NOTE~

Here at WRD we strive to not only entertain the content hungry masses, but educate as well. In a world of fake news and real olds, it’s nice to have a source of reliable information from the young, totally diverse and unbiased team here at your favorite wordpress.com blog. That’s why we are pleased to introduce our latest guest writer, 720 Dave, all the way from California. 

Modern America: Too Many Guns, Not Enough Bullet Trains

720 Dave

Our  topic for today is US infrastructure—more specifically: Bullet Trains. Ohhhh yea. You guys are infra treat. I don’t get going about bullet trains all that often because it doesn’t really come up in casual conversation, but if it did I could go off like a bullet train on why we need more bullet trains in this country, and you would want to put a bullet (train) in your head. Luckily, you guys are here on your own free will and are open minded scholars who enjoy the spirit of traditional one-sided debate, so unload your train guns and listen up because the stuff I learned from Building America’s Future: Falling Apart and Falling Behind—a 2011 infrastructure report authored by Mayor Bloomberg and the Governator himself—changed my life. I hope it changes yours too.

Let’s start out with the basics. I’m going to provide a few sample sentences below and you can vote out loud to yourself at home like a lunatic which you think sounds the coolest. The following are responses to the question “Omg what a surprise! How did you get here?”

Response 1:

“Well, against my better judgment, we got up at the crack of dawn this morning and drove my beat to shit ’98 Honda Accord 12.5 hours from New York to be here in Chicago for your birthday! The Honda died upon arrival and I’m not sure how I’m getting back, but it’s worth it to be here for your special night!”

Response 2:

“Oh, we took the Amtrak! We left yesterday because the trip takes 22 hours and we didn’t get to sit next to each other, but it was worth the day next to a stranger to be here for the birthday of someone who’s about a half a step above that.”

Response 3:

“We flew here on Spirit Airlines! The plane out of JFK was delayed two hours, and Chuck here is a Nervous Nelly so we had gotten to the airport two hours early anyway, so we got to spend four hours in the airport then two more hours on a flying transit bus. This had better be the best fucking birthday party every, Becky.”

Response 4:

“We took a Bullet Train bitch now give me a shot while we wait for those other losers to arrive.”

Now I don’t know about you nerds but Response 4 is definitely what I voted for out loud in my apartment alone (I’m sorry I called you nerds, I know you all voted for that too cause you guys are cool and love ripping shots and riding bullet trains…just like me.) It was the obvious answer, but unfortunately is also the only scenario of the four that is impossible at this time.

If you didn’t know by now, there are a total of zero (0) high-speed railway/bullet train systems in the United States. To put that into perspective, here is a list of countries that do have them:

• Belgium
• China
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Japan
• The Netherlands
• Poland
• Russia
• South Korea
• Spain
• Sweden
• Taiwan
• Turkey
• United Kingdom
• Uzbekistan

This list is exactly what I’m talking about people. Let’s break it down for a moment, shall we? Poland is a known joke country. They’re literally the Eugene from Hey! Arnold of countries. Japan and China are no surprise, and neither are Europe’s starting five (Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and the UK [though I hear they’re up for free agency next year]), but Russia is a kick to the nuts. Turkey is surprising given their recent history of political turmoil, and Belgium is impressive for a buncha waffle pushers, but honestly, I was pretty thrown off when I saw Uzbekistan on that list. Say what you will about the -stans, but at least one of them has a fucking bullet train. Let’s step it up people, seriously.

I hope all of the red-blooded American’s reading this article are as enraged as I am right now, and if you’re not, then try this on for size. During the transportation renaissance that gave shape to the modern world we know today; the US was at the forefront of infrastructure investment—boasting a highway system that helped our nation build the strongest and most successful economy the world had ever known. Unfortunately, that transportation network has struggled to keep up with the times and cannot fully satisfy our economic needs moving forward. Everywhere you go—whether it’s the airport or the highway—you get stuck in a gridlock. Maybe I’m biased because I live in LA, but if it weren’t for people like Judge Doom knocking down Toontown to put up a highway system and running the LA Pacific Electric Railway (aka Cloverleaf) out of business, we might have a decent and efficient railway system by now to clear up all this bullshit traffic.

Now, I could explain to you further how inefficient it is to continuously shut down roads and highways for constant repair, how much of a mess our airline system has become in the wake of 9/11, and how our current railway system doesn’t come close to being a suitable alternative to either—but I’d rather show you in brightly colored graphics pulled from the very same report I cited like a gentleman and a scholar earlier:

Like the girls we used to know in high school, I’m sure those figures have only gotten worse in the last nine years.

Quick mafs tells us that 1/6 of all flights in the U.S. are unnecessarily clogging up the works when they could and should just be a train ride instead.

Like many of its citizens who claim they could’ve gone pro after high school if it weren’t for that damned rotator cuff, the US is living in the past. And if at this point you are still not convinced that we as a nation should invest in a high-speed railway system, the following graphic is my last-ditch effort to show you the light:

100 less miles, 12 more hours. Pretty embarrassing stuff.

So, there you have it WRDies. The next time some jabronies come around the block all hot to talk politics, shove some 2011 infrastructure knowledge down their throat and preach the gospel of bullet trains. Maybe if enough of you did we could make some serious change in this country and it would somehow get traced back to me and I’d at first be all modest and stuff, ya know, but then I’d like, totally embrace the attention as the revered orator who spread the teaching of high-speed railway transit to the youthful masses and brought about the second biggest economic boom in our nation’s history. That’d be pretty cool.