No Way to Run a Railroad

[Daveparts]

An optimist it is said sees the glass as half full, the pessimist sees it as half empty. So how can I rate myself on this scale, I want to be an optimist yet I know that it’s foolish to do so, inviting heartbreak, naively waiting for superman to fly in the window and save the day. Yet I don’t want to be a pessimist, I want to have hope, to believe that we can turn things around. Even that though is a cynical hope, like a gambler who knows he’s not going to win and won’t allow himself to consider any belief that he might out of a fear that he might just as well jinx any chance he actually has for victory.

For I don’t see the glass as half full or half empty but as shattered and leaching, the water polluted with splinters and the pavement littered with jagged shards. Let me see, what political euphuism can I use here, a spoonful of political sugar to make the ugly reality go down. I got it! I’m an expectant realist, I can dare to dream and expect good things but deep down in my heart of hearts I know that’s all nonsense.

I was once on a train headed to Chicago from Southern Illinois that developed a defective coupler, we would be whizzing along admiring the scenery and suddenly discover that the scenery was admiring us. The locomotive would charge ahead until it became aware of its lightened load and then would return to rescue us from that great corn desert. Then a grand strategy meeting would be held, and parliament would be seated at the scene to legislate what corrective actions should be taken. After this episode had been repeated four or five times each greeted with a collective groan of the choir.

I began to take notice of our long-suffering conductor who would tour the length of the broken colossus explaining to its victims our predicament along with our expected time of arrival. In the beginning he was an optimist, however as his feet grew weary and his tongue tired and his ears bent back from hearing that Aunt Minnie was at the station waiting, he became a pessimist. Finally his patience at and end he threw the company manual out the window and disregarding all prospects for retirement he became a model expectant realist. He would march through the cars his hands up in surrender saying, “I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!”

I say he was a model expectant realist, because he was certain and unwavering in his belief that we would arrive like Moses of the rails, if the railroad Gods said so, it would come to pass. But as to how long we would wander in tarry in the green corn desert he was clueless. Through verbal abuse and repetition his will to resist was broken until he had lost his position as our Shepard and became just one of the flock. His predicament gave me insight as to why Moses is always pictured with a great staff and having to answer only to God would surely respond to all others, “So help me if you ask me that again I’ll brain you with this stick!” I am of course assuming that Moses would be an expectant realist.

Sadly or clearly witch ever definition suits your fancy I feel like I’m still stuck on that train. The first part charging ahead happy and contented there is no defect here that they know of. The stock market in ancient times was said to reflect the future economic activity of the country yet now holds no more relevance that the conductors estimated times of arrival. Most all government statistics collected and correlated to determine the truth are now so subverted and inverted they should begin with once upon a time. If you become unemployed in ten weeks you are saved you are no longer unemployed but a discouraged worker. So if the conductor told me we would be there in two hours an hour and a half ago and even though the train hasn’t moved, we should be there in thirty minutes!

But in the real world unlike the government world the goal is to arrive at a destination to get someplace our destination is the reward. Our government works toward destinations as well but their reward is the trip not the destination. They paint scenery and frescos of our anticipated destination but we never arrive to see what we were promised in the brochures. No matter how high the fare in blood or treasure we are assured the goal is worth the cost but we are the ones paying the fare and they are riding for free. And they don’t seem the least bit concerned if the train is broken.

Our government has become like NASCAR, just going round and covering the same ground over and over with no concern for actually getting anywhere, just finishing first. While they rev their engines and talk of their great plans their only real goal is to be in the lead car. And were it just bent up sheet metal that would be fine. But we are talking about broken bodies and cardboard boxes that contained the life of some ones child. The playing of chicken with nuclear stakes and always willing to charge off through the infield to try and bully or threaten some one and then act as an indignant drunk refusing to talk with any we choose to disagree with because they’re assholes.

But NASCAR has some admirable traits that I wish the smiling psychopaths in Washington would learn. In NASCAR when someone gives you money they paint their name on the car and wear a patch on their fire suit. That’s an idea to be considered in deed! Our congressman coming to the lectern in their multi colored jacket to announce his new detergent initiative and we could clearly see the Tide patch on his jacket.
In fact NASCAR has a lot of fine traits the smiling jackals could learn from,
The race is fair, the race is honest and most of all they really don’t want to see any one get hurt. But in NASCAR each driver has one publicist and ten or twelve mechanics in Washington its ten or twelve publicists and one mechanic.

Yet they sit at the front of our American train and when it breaks they are resentful, after all it’s not they’re half of the train falling behind. Why don’t the cities and the states take care of those problems? Why must my half of the train be held up? The conductors on this train explain we have not broken down we are having a scenic adventure your not unemployed your economically disenfranchised. The Titanic just took and under sea detour and the Hindenburg had a temporary thermal anomaly. They trouble with being an expectant realist is that you want to follow the path of peace and resolution through reasoned discussion but you reach a point where if you hear bullshit called organic matter one more time you find it hard to resist the urge to punch some one in the nose.

It is said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result if that’s so what would you call watching them do it time after time? Giving your money to the con man day after day and expecting that maybe today he will return. How bout we call it anticipatory reality? Or maybe just fantasy or even an inconvenient organic discharge.

We are broke; our military is battered and ground down, the standard of living for the average American is in freefall. Or as the President says, “We face challenges,” we meaning you and me, not me and him. One million homes in foreclosure with one and a half more expected and the media asks? Whose raised more money so far, Hilary or Obama? The dollar has lost 35% of its value in five years but who will raise Anna Nicole’s baby? The insulated candidates ask, “Can Iraq be saved before we set out to destroy Iran? Ignoring the more pertinent and thorny question, can we save ourselves from the train wreck of an economy hemorrhaging two billion dollars a month?

I ask as an expectant realist, can anyone grab the handles of reality, to wake the slumbering engineers lulled to sleep by the lullabies of all will be well, their tummies and pockets full of good things. Is this anyway to run a railroad?