{"id":5885,"date":"2011-03-04T16:13:58","date_gmt":"2011-03-05T00:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=5885"},"modified":"2022-03-02T08:09:25","modified_gmt":"2022-03-02T16:09:25","slug":"idiocy-express","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/idiocy-express\/","title":{"rendered":"Idiocy Express"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"George F. Will<\/strong> is an @$$. I say this because he claims to intuit that my desire to travel to and from Las Vegas<\/strong> by rail is motivated by a desire to make my fellow Americans “more amenable to collectivism<\/em>.” No, I just happen to like trains more than cars and enjoy the travel-by-rail experience, even if it is an anachronism to some musty pedants in Foggy Bottom<\/a>. To put it in language that Mr. Will would understand: Poppycock! Piffle! Pish-tush! Persiflage, sirrah!<\/p>\n

Perhaps wrongheadedly, I think facilitating rail travel between Sin City and, oh, Los Angeles<\/strong> might help resolve traffic problems that have proven insoluble for, lo, these past 12 years at least. (I-15<\/strong> might actually be more<\/em> anachronistic, at least to those who’ve navigated its weekend bottleneck or been turned back when snow closes its mountain passes.)<\/p>\n

However, Will natters nonsensically<\/a>, “To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they — unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted — are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make<\/em>.” (Mind you, this is the same George F. Will who complained about Vegas’ traffic congestion seven years ago.)<\/p>\n

Gosh, if railroads are<\/strong> a medium of collectivism, what would George F. say about airlines (never mind buses)? To go to an airport these days is to well and truly realize that we are not “masters of our fates.” (The TSA<\/strong> is.) However, even the snobbish Will* knows better than to pursue his anti-mass-transportation argument to its logical extreme: that we should all have our own private airplanes, too. What a douche.<\/p>\n

(* — Given what we’ve seen and heard of Will over the years, I suspect his real objection to mass transit is a fear of having to rub elbows with the Great Unwashed. Man up, George. Ride a subway, you pantywaist<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

\"\"Incidentally, among the roll call<\/strong> of state governors proclaiming their aversion to high-speed rail, I do not see the name of Lousiana<\/strong>‘s Bobby Jindal<\/strong>. You will recall that, in a prime-time speech (left<\/em>) whose Mister Rogers<\/strong>-like manner momentarily de<\/em>railed Jindal’s political career, he uttered bogeyman rhetoric about federal money being spent on a train “from Las Vegas to Disneyland<\/strong>.” Yeah, we were gonna scoop all those little tykes and turn ’em loose to spend their allowances on the slot machines. (Luckily, Jindal didn’t suss out our equally nefarious plot to kidnap all the white suburban moms in Anaheim<\/strong> and enslave them in the brothels of Pahrump<\/strong>. Whew!<\/em>)<\/p>\n

When the penny dropped<\/strong>, it turned out that Jindal coveted those high-speed-rail dollars for a choo-choo route between Baton Rouge<\/strong> and New Orleans<\/strong>. Last time I checked, both of those cities had multiple casinos … and the Big Easy wasn’t exactly famous as a hub of piety, either. Hypocrisy’s a bitch, ain’t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George F. Will is an @$$. I say this because he claims to intuit that my desire to travel to and from Las Vegas by rail is motivated by a desire to make my fellow Americans “more amenable to collectivism.” … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,133,28,84,9,100],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5885"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5885"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30806,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5885\/revisions\/30806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}