Krafter's Thoughts

Here in the good ol' United States of America, we have a dangerous culture that is leading the world (well, mostly the Western World, or maybe just ourselves) into a place of desolation and despair. We waste food, money, resources, and land. Why? Because we're 'Muricans, and the world can't tell us what to do.

But before I get into this, let's step back for a moment. Recently, I visited London, Paris, and some smaller towns in between. I've never been to Europe before, and I have to say I fell in love with it. Now I'm not claiming that London & Paris is a full taste of the entirety of a continent — just that I loved what I saw. As an American, I was amazed by a few key things. First, the compactness of everything. The streets, the cars, the buildings—all the space was used so well and effectively. Even that cute little garden across the Thames from Westminster serves to tuck away a parking garage underneath it.

The second thing I loved about my short excursion in Europe was how, even in subtle ways, there is (or it at least seemed like there was) a push to maintain, upkeep, and better the world we live in. Like how bottle caps are attached to the bottles so you don't loose the lid somewhere and can recycle it. Or how there are plastic bottles made of 100% RECYCLED PLASTIC. I could almost guarantee you that if you walked up to a random American on the street they would confirm that you can't make 100% recycled anything, because it “doesn't hold together” or whatnot. But that's clearly just not true.

The last big thing I noticed is the thoughtfulness. So many little things seemed so thought out, things that here in the States people would either just live with, or our two party system could never stop fighting long enough to amend. From small things, like the striped poles at the “zebra crossings”, to big things, like the quality of the public transport.

But why am I saying all this? Because we need to do better. If you look at the United States today, we're tearing ourselves apart in many ways all at once. For starters, we've been doing this “urban sprawl” thing where we have everybody spread out. Well, that seems to work well for only one group, in a country without public transport, and that's the automotive industry. For the everyday person all this does is require them to invest in this huge financial liability, a car, and have to learn to drive it, and upkeep it, forever. This means many cars on the roads, which is dangerous for everyone (especially people outside of said cars).

Even then, with everyone driving on our roads, most of them aren't super well designed. NotJustBikes points out in various videos on his channel how these dangerous “stroads” are ugly, don't solve traffic flow, and are dangerous for pedestrians trying to cross them.

How do we solve this? We need to convince people that things can be better. We need to push for quality public transit systems that make sense, and then get people to use them. We need to design our roads better, so people drive safely on them. We need to make our cities walkable, so people can walk for short trips instead of taking their car. We need to fix this, like the rest of the world did. If anyone really intends to “make America great again”, I can't imagine a real way to do that which does not include actually fixing these problems with our country.

In order to make America a truly beautiful place (in terms of how we live in it), I believe we need to take heed of what has started in Europe, and take better care of our environment, make our cities usable without the mass polluters that are cars, and generally use what we have more wisely.

Note: I wrote most of this awhile ago, and only just finished up and posted it now, because I realize I have several posts I've started but never finished. My trip to England and France took place in Spring this year (2024).