(Originally posted on Twitter June 19, 2023).

In September of 2019 before the madness started, I took a trip to New York for a concert. I flew in because I wanted to take a helicopter from the airport to Manhattan where I was staying, but for whatever reason the app I used at the time (I think it was Uber) didn’t have the option available that day. So I took a cab. The trip itself wasn’t that great. I ended up having to leave the show early because I stood in line so long that my poor back couldn’t hold out anymore, and I cut my hand pretty badly on the rock shield of a car I was exiting on a trip out to Queens for some tamales. Basically the stay in New York was not that memorable or pleasurable.

However, the thing that I truly enjoyed about this trip and the thing that I will always remember is the journey leaving New York because I decided to try the train for the first time. I boarded an Amtrak and took a ride from Manhattan to DC and it was an unbelievably enjoyable experience. I basically decided at this point that I would try to take the train whenever available and that I would never fly again.

I took this picture of the sunset somewhere in Maryland (I believe it was the Elk River). I look at this picture and am glad that the train runs in some places, America for all of its faults has such incredible natural beauty.

I’m thinking about this today because as much as I oppose him, and think the worst of him, and have suffered under his regime, and have witnessed everything continue to deteriorate under his reign (including race relations being that it’s Juneteenth), the one redeeming quality that Joe Biden had was that he was a train guy. He was Amtrak’s champion when he was Senator, and when he became President, he could have really advocated for it.

He had a golden opportunity with the infrastructure bill to pour an unprecedented sum of money into the rail infrastructure of this country and really get trains to be a fantastic mode of transportation here in the US. Instead he handed the money over to an Alfred E. Neuman-esque charlatan whose only accomplishments appear to be serving as Mayor and being completely absent during one of the worst transportation and environmental catastrophes in US history.

It’s such a shame that this awful President completely squandered the one cause that could have united the country and been a Great Works Project that would have left a legacy and served future Americans incredibly well. Instead he has doubled down on social deviance and persecuting his political enemies in front of red soaked backgrounds surrounded by soldiers, a Maladroit Mussolini, stuttering and guffawing his way through his mean-spirited soliloquies, all the while the infrastructure around the US continues to rot. We could have had trains that served all Americans and ran on time, instead we got citizens who were basically subjected to chemical attacks.

Maybe he has more in common with Benito than we thought.