The America Train
Why can’t we stop this thing?
by Mike Meyer
We need to get off this capitalist train. This thing is a late 19th century steam engine burning fossil fuels at an astounding rate. In the last fifty years it has been accelerated to a speed beyond even Casey Jone’s most outrageous dreams.
Needless to say it is so far over its design limits that it’s a wonder it has held together this long. While most other post industrial nations replaced the most dangerous parts of these things starting in the 1950s the US was too busy shoving coal into the boiler and screaming in glee to do anything.
This is probably the best analogy for the out of control, monstrous rolling disaster that represents America. The collateral damage from speed, flying parts, and flaming debris works pretty well also.
Most of the American people riding this thing are riding in fifty year old cars with no air conditioning and few services. This is obviously stupid as these are the people that have been working for years to feed this beast and keep it going. But the owners were able to cheat so they have a special club car that is sealed and air-conditioned with full service. Only a few of the richest are allowed in there and thy never come out. So they don’t see any reason to change even though the old train cars are falling apart and people are dying younger and younger for lack of health services and with all the heat.
How do we change this and get into the 21st century? The owner’s car is locked and the train is being driven remotely. That makes it hard to change. In fact we may not be able to do anything but hope it runs out of fuel before it explodes or crashes killing us all.
People once had a way to tell the engineers who ran this train where to go and when to stop but those controls were removed. Only the owners are controlling it. What options do we have?
There are really only three: Break into the owners car and take them hostage and then drive this thing into a repair yard to redesign; or storm the owners car and throw them off the train; or start uncoupling the cars and see if we can get them on different tracks.
None of these work very well even as analogies but they represent our basic options. The original controls no longer work having been smashed by the owners. We can pull the levers all we want but nothing is going to change.
I suppose we could add the option of asking the owners to reconnect the original controls but the owner’s representatives in control now don’t even understand what they are driving and they allowed an infantile idiot to start playing with the controls. He just wants to go fast.
My preference it to start disconnecting the cars and let them proceed on theri own and under their own power. We don’t need a monstrous steam engine belching smoke, spreading fire, and blasting pollutants into the atmosphere. We have alternative energy systems that aren’t as fast but will last a lot longer.
And we won’t need to ride in the old cattle cars. That brings up too many very bad memories. We can start building and buying new cars with the money the owners were stealing from us.
We could begin spreading out and adding the things we need to make life better for all of us. And maybe link up with some different cars for more diversity and innovation. The idiot driving this thing is crazy. I really want to be somewhere else when the old steam engine blows.
