The state of US transport infrastructure. Given our national aversion to reinvestment in shared resources we have the airports and transit systems we deserve, but it is a regular shock for me to return from Europe or Asia to a US airport that is dilapidated, understaffed, overcrowded, cracking and leaking, etc. and then use a train system that is literally crumbling before one's eyes. Londoners in particular complain endlessly about the tube and regional rail, but stand them next to nearly any US system and they look like gleaming Asian modernity. And the Asian systems? Japan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, China? They look like science fiction.

Our national boosters chanting U-S-A, U-S-A! who keep insisting we are the greatest country in the world by every measure... are ignorant, willfully or not. On infrastructure and other counts, we are falling apart and heading for third world status. It amazes me how we not only live with so much decay, decline, and neglect, but eagerly defend it as the world's best. Only international travel brings this truth home.