There is no doubt that the world is changing and doing so at en ever-increasing rate. Countries once considered to be "Third World" have made wholesale changes to their political, economic, and educational systems. It has not been easy, and there have been problems. However those changes have lifted millions of people out of poverty and offered hope to millions more. The transformation from an agrarian to an industrial society which occurred over the course of century in America is taking place in the span of a single lifetime in some parts of the world.
Meanwhile America is stuck in neutral, hobbled by a hidebound minority which views change as capitulation to the forces of evil and which calls government investment in infrastructure socialism.
The missing train in the Tom Toles cartoon is the perfect metaphor to illustrate just how far off track America has gone from its traditional role as the world's leader in industrial, educational, and social innovation.
I offer two pictures of some very real trains to make that point.
Chinese bullet trains
Link to Source: National Geographic article published October 5, 2012]
Fast as a Bullet?
Photograph by Michael Yamashita, National Geographic
The CRH 380 model (pictured at the CSR Qingdao Sifang train factory) is the star of the Chinese high-speed rail fleet-a program moving very quickly, despite occasional safety concerns, to connect China's population centers.
Some Chinese trains can reach cruising speeds of 217 miles (350 kilometers) an hour—and when pushed to top speed can exceed 300 miles (482 kilometers) an hour.
Such advances may come at a cost. Development of China's high-speed rail has been wrought with unanswered questions about safety as well as the origins of China's quickly attained technology, according to a new National Geographic investigative report.
For instance, Chinese executives who run the country's rail development have been accused of pushing the though rural areas with little thought to the affected communities. But some Chinese technocrats see trains like the 380 as symbols of how China can "leapfrog" Western countries.
—With reporting by Ian Johnson
More Chinese bullet trains all lined up and ready to go - 2012.
USA! USA! That's the all too familiar sound of Americans figuratively pounding their chests and proclaiming to the world, "We're Number One!"
But are we? Or, more to the point, how long will it be before that chant becomes little more than a hollow echo of past greatness?
As the developing world modernizes, pressure mounts on the already developed countries to up their game or risk being overtaken and passed by countries willing to ride the current of change and invest in the future.
The world is changing whether conservative Americans want it to or not. Retreat from the uncertainty of that changing world into the womb of ideological purity will leave us standing at the end of an unfinished track in a cartoon version of reality as the train of the future picks up speed and leaves America behind.
If that happens, some members of our hidebound minority may ask about the future and what it holds; and someone standing with them at the end of that unfinished track may mutter, "The future? You can't get there from here."
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