Two decades ago, I was told that I should not fly anymore due to the internal-ears issue. Over the years, I see that pronunciation as a blessing for many reasons.
Since then, I have crosscross the US via countless times the train-trains that often carry the economically challenging and diverse cross-sections of passengers. In my opinion, these men, women and children, are certainly more “educated”, who are aware and compassionate compared to self-declared intellectuals living in high-floating bubbles living on high-floating bubbles at Washington, DC, New York City and any other place, where half percent gather to determine the future of the working class, disinfected and small-shaped-chittees to determine the future of the working class.
Meeting such real people is the main attraction of every long distance train journey. As a one who grew up in removing poverty and was often homeless as a child, each trip reinforces the decency and character of these Americans, while also works as a clear reminder of daily conflicts that they simply faced to survive.
The complete low light of these long-range train trips is that once surprisingly lively small cities-their regions, state and even our nation were back These cities were truly the personality of “American”, but there are no more, including large minorities or even minority-major population.
As the train threatened the back of the boarded-up stores and the latest range of deserted roads, I closed my eyes for a second to imagine the city at my peak. Town Square plays Stands Crossstown rival to see the local restaurant, farmers’ markets or their local high school football team. When I opened my eyes, the desolate continued waste.
“Ah,” but many have said. “This is progress. It is just like that.”
This can be “progress”, but at what cost?
I suspect that many of our nation’s aristocratic power-centers never heard of these cities, never heard of the circumstances that killed them-and most never cared. Or worse, some of the power-sensors were directly or indirectly involved in increasing the “unavoidable progress” sword, which killed towns, small businesses, livelihoods and countless futures. This “Big Box” stores, online shopping sites or deals made in DC, secretly disappeared between lawyers and corporations on ropes, it was once disappeared to lively small cities.
Business can be cut, cool and ruthless. Mega-business often reduces their prices to crush the competition. Whether that competition is a small town business or “mother and pop” establishment. Unfortunately, when such vast corporations attempt to destroy low competition, the desired destruction flows from those who now get out of “competitors” like a toxic waste, covering other small businesses associated with the goals of those huge corporations – they are local restaurants, gas stations, beauty shops or car dealerships. Bankruptcy and “out of business” signs extend far away.
This is not about the journey of “memory lane” and it will not be “just cheerful” if everything can be like the “Main Street” America of the 1950s. No. It has been destroyed by small businesses, small cities have been extinguished, collectively lost millions of jobs and are only looking at human life to pay bills and have changed normally in a nightmare of despair by “unavoidable progress”.
Surely there is a lesson. The line between unruly unavoidable progress and their lives is different from such “progress”? Who takes responsibility for the disadvantage of these small cities and the pain experienced by those who once lived in them? Or, is it just a shrug of shoulders with thoughts, “My radar is not on screen and not my problem”?
Okay, what if it becomes your problem very soon? What if “unavoidable progress” is now your business, your career and your city in its crosshare?
The irony here is that karma finally plays no favorite and has evil feeling. Soon, the “shrugs of the shoulders of businesses and very career, not my problem” residents of high-Kamai and “power-sensors” inhabitants can be disappeared by artificial intelligence and ruthless “unavoidable progress” of robotics.
And when this happens, the victims of the small town of the previous wave of cruel “unavoidable progress” may have been thrown on one side, there may be two immediate ideas: “When we were you needed, where were you” and “You are looking at community soup kitchens, AA meetings and funeral houses, because we could not mourn it anymore.”
“Unavoidable progress” can be so much and so disruptive with a value tag that no one can tolerate it. Even the clans in their bubbles do not exist in the luxury high bubbles above the public above such “progress”.
Douglas McCinone is a former White House and Pentagon officer.
