The Best High-Speed "Internet" May Not Be The Internet

Instead, it may be high-speed rail, which, slowly but hopefully surely, may be coming to America at last.  Let me explain why.

If history teaches us anything, it is that every revolution in both communication and transportation has brought people in closer proximity to one another.  While the short-term results of that have not always been peaceful, the long-term benefits have ultimately been enjoyed by everyone--an explosion of commerce, an expansion of knowledge on almost every front, and (perhaps best of all) a greater understanding of different cultures along with a deeper appreciation of our dependence on one another.  The Internet age, perhaps the ultimate revolution in communication, is now a little more than a generation old (thank you, Al Gore, who really did help make it happen), and the long-term benefits of the World Wide Web in commerce, knowledge and cultural understanding are obvious.

Is it possible to have a similar revolution in transportation?  Yes, it is, and high-speed rail is the key to taking the benefits of the Internet age and expanding them into our day-to-day lives.  Right now, each of us is able online to communicate, to trade, to share ideas and experiences all over the entire country in seconds with a high-speed connection and a few keystrokes.  Imagine being able to do something similar on a physical basis by way of high-speed rail.  In a matter of hours or less, you could be in the same room or rooms with those same people, building even deeper and stronger relationships with them.

The Internet would become more than just a modern-day Matrix for corporate America.  It would become a launching pad to interacting, networking and associating directly with people all over the country.  The implications would be as obvious as they are enormous, especially for politics.  It would be even easier for blue-state liberals to offer support to their long-suffering counterparts.  It would truly begin to equalize the distribution of support for political campaigns across all fifty states.  It would be harder to marginalize progressives, if they have the ability to literally be almost anywhere in a matter of hours.  And none of this even begins to touch on the benefits building a national high-speed rail system would bring to employment, investment, and energy conservation.

Small wonder, then, that conservatives hate trains so much.  It's a delicious irony.  Once upon a time, in nineteenth-century America (the original version, and not the twenty-first century one), railroads were a visible symbol of the nexus between capitalists and politicians.  Today, however, railroads scare capitalists and their friends in the punditocracy to death.  Less oil profits!  Less automobile profits!  More union jobs!  A lessened ability to manipulate the public through mass media!  I'm telling you, it's a conservative nightmare!

And, if the American people had their way, those conservatives would never wake up.  Here's hoping that the building of a national high-speed rail system becomes a major project of the next Clinton Administration.  And let's see 2014 the way we should see it--as a chance to launch this dream while Obama is still in office.