"Drown me just as deep as you please, Br'er Fox," said Br'er Rabbit in a particularly racist Disney film, "but for Lord's sake don't fling me in that briar patch."

So goes the attitude of certain freedom-loving patriots who've taken to social media hoping to goad the MAGA crowd into supporting God-fearing, burger-eating, city-connecting public transit with some good old reverse psychology.

The bold new strategy comes from an X-formerly-Twitter post by Hayden Clarkin — an American transit advocate who goes by "The Transit Guy" online — showcasing a CGI Shenzhen-style electric bullet train zipping through the American heartland at speeds of up to 200mph. The kicker? In Clarkin's render, the train is decked out in red, white, and blue, while the locomotive engine is tagged "American Pioneer 220."

"Introducing the Trump Train: an American built train capable of going up to 200 mph!" reads the MAGA-inflected post, which has quickly spread via reuploads to Reddit, BlueSky, and Instagram. "We need these trains to connect all major cities in the country together so that everyone can get on the Trump Train."

Others piled onto the bit, posting riffs like "I, a scary leftist, hate the idea of high speed rail and we should definitely *not* do this, or I will soy rage."

If that doesn't convince the right, it's hard to imagine what will.

Satire aside, Clarkin's post underlines a grain of truth: manufacturing the political will for passenger rail in this moment is almost certainly a matter of vibes, as opposed to purposeful legislation, which is constantly struck down or undermined by GOP apparatchiks (though we'll definitely need that too.)

And as vibes go, any true patriot who wants the best for the people of the United States should jibe with the idea that transit makes us a freer, more prosperous country overall, as transit activist and author Jarrett Walker lays out in his 2011 book "Human Transit."

Much of the world has affordable, efficient rail systems. But in the prosperous America, decades of efforts by corporations and the government have converged to keep travelers locked in cars as their only mode of travel. For the overwhelming majority of Americans, the car payment is an unquestionable fact of life. And the only alternatives that get any attention are pie-in-the-sky ideas like the hyperloop or autonomous pod startups — instead of trains, which are an extraordinarily safe and efficient way of moving people and cargo.

Reached for comment, Clarkin summed it up concisely.

"In a world where Dallas and San Antonio, via Austin, are connected by a daily train that takes 10 hours — compared to other global economies like France, which boasts 32 daily round trips covering the same distance in under 2 hours — America's rail system is no longer the envy of the world," he told us. "I believe any president or elected official would want to fix that."

More on transit: Europe Plots High Speed Rail So Fast It Could Replace Airlines


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