On the drive back from Salt Lake City yesterday, I noticed a great deal of abandoned and closed symbols of bygone eras. Whereas the landscape along I-15 once boomed with hotels, eateries, and gas stations, it's now lined with the empty and dilapidated hulks of buildings whose broken marquees declare they once hosted scores of travelers.
The trip up to Salt Lake was once one in which you enjoyed the journey. I try to enjoy it as much as I can, but without anyone with whom to share it, I tend to lean towards destination over waypoints. Abandoned buildings are a sign of changing focus as well as changing economic fortunes. People just don't have the money to make the trip unless they must, and then they cut any pleasure spending along the way.
Cars and the trips we take with them are about freedom. If we had more money, we would go places. If we had more money, we would travel more. In turn, that would bolster the economies of places, like Las Vegas, whose lifeblood has been tourism. Instead, parts of places like Las Vegas look like the vacant but still named locales that line the Interstate corridor. The bureaucracy marches on.
Obama doesn't care. Even if the government had 'shut down' ten days ago, he would still draw a full paycheck, travel wherever he pleased, eat whenever and whatever he felt like, and continue to impact your life. He is so far from sidewalk or rest stop level that almost all of America is flyover country for him except the places where he goes to court votes and donations. Govern this people? How can you? You don't even like them. You certainly don't know them.
If the policies in place continue, the number of ghost gas stations will continue to rise. There will be fewer places to stop, and even fewer at which we want to stop. We'll be too worried that we won't arrive. Give us our money. Let us see our country. Mr President, let my people go. Let them go wherever they like and spend as they please. That would be a very American thing to do.
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