“The light you see at the end of the tunnel is the front of an oncoming train.” David Lee Roth
? ????
We have right now in America all the makings of a spectacular Hollywood train wreck. The convoy is going too fast and the conductor is blithely ignoring advice and signals from railroad workers. It is a confusing situation for observers who know that something terrible is going to happen but cannot look away.
I have never witnessed a train wreck, but I have seen pictures of it. It can be horrifically spectacular.
But how could this happen in the first place? Didn’t the conductor realize he was going too fast? Did he misread the signals? Or worse, ignore the signals? Did he inhale some prohibited substance? Was he texting or twitting? Or (gasp) was he unqualified to drive that train?
No responsible grownup would behave that way… but does a grownup always reach an advanced stage of mental or emotional development? Not always it seems.
A train is only as safe as his conductor’s good judgment. Ignoring even a single signal puts the entire train and its passengers in jeopardy.
A good conductor does not scream at people to get out of his way. Neither does he threaten to run them over if they don’t move. He slows down, even stops to get a better appraisal of the situation.
But it seems that sometimes a George Custer syndrome is afflicting a train conductor. In a relentless pursuit of self-aggrandizement he disregards any warnings and forge full speed ahead toward a disaster waiting to happen.
Some lucid passengers noticing the reckless speed of train bail out as soon as they can. But it takes guts to jump off a speeding train (especially when some passengers personally vouched for that conductor) and some VIPs hesitate. They secretly hope for a divine intervention, but it is well known that God only helps those who help themselves.
Sometimes a mad train can has to be stopped.
In Hollywood fashion gutsy stuntmen board the train (maybe by helicopter) and forcefully remove the engineer who is subsequently sent to Longwood House, St Helena to mull over his narcissistic past.
Is this going to happen to the American Mad Train? Many people are starting to lean toward this James Bondish denouement.
Alain