America's Bread and Circuses

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Watching CNN’s “Inside Africa” this morning, as they cut away from normal programming about Africa to bring us live coverage of a fatal railroad accident—two dead and at least 70 injured after a major passenger train collided with a freight train.  It was the second deadly mishap involving a prime train route in that country in the past week, the latest in a series of accidents averaging two a month. Those accidents, of course, took place not in some “shithole” third world country, but in the United States—this morning’s in South Carolina, involving an Amtrak train travelling from New York to Miami.

Indeed the American Society of Civil Engineers lamenting the woeful state of America’s infrastructure, has calculated the country needs to spend roughly two trillion dollars just to be competitive.  Apparently, the U.S. can’t afford it. Too busy upgrading their nuclear weapons and cutting taxes.

In any case, the attention of 110 million America’s is riveted today on a much more vital happening--the Super Bowl, where prime tickets are going for $65,000 a piece, and major corporations have lavished $6 million dollars for slick thirty second adds.

Actually, if the U.S. were an African State it would probably have Chinese laborers, engineers and capital and working to upgrade their infrastructure. Instead, they have Bread and Circuses. And Donald Trump—who now seems intent on destroying the fundamental governing structure of America itself.