freeways
ah! 1950s technology! in Dwight Eisenhower's time, we imagined that personal vehicles and commercial vehicles had achieved their acme. how could you improve on the family automobile? or the eighteen-wheeler? it was kinda like evolution, which had reached a dead end in humans. just so, transportation had reached dead ends in the family automobile and the eighteen-wheeler. oh, and the bus. so we built a magnificent set of highways all across the continent! you could get from anywhere to anywhere else on those highways, or using tributaries to them. people came from Europe and other places to admire our highways. they did. but then the damned Germans built autobahns. hmpf! so we devised freeways, and built them. they were like highways, but wider, smoother, and stronger. vehicles could have traveled faster on them, except legislators, with good reason, doubted our ability to travel faster than 55 miles per hour. slowly we convinced them that we could be trusted at speeds up to 65 miles per hour, really, we could. we even claimed that in remote-enough places, we could be trusted at speeds up to 70 mph. evidence shows that we sorta can, so that's where we are today. but the freeways! they were built to take the kind of pounding we'd've given them if we could travel at 100 mph, so they've lasted decades! and it's a good thing, 'cause we've shown we're not smart enough to maintain the highways, much less the freeways or the bridges. someday they will crumble under our continued pounding on them, and we'll stand around, looking surprised, wondering what happened. meanwhile, we can get from anywhere to anywhere else, not only with our family automobiles and eighteen-wheelers, but with our military vehicles! yes, if we ever need to fight a war inside our borders, we can get military vehicles to wherever we need them! well, unless a bridge collapses, or a highway gives out, or a freeway crumbles. then we can cry and wonder where Eisenhower is when we need him. maybe he'll come back.
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