I fear for America's future.

This isn't administration specific. The decay is real and it's bipartisan.

This morning I began my pointless 2.5 hour commute. The office is located in a city on the edge of bankruptcy, which keeps raising taxes, a little bit here, a little bit there, to stay afloat. It's residents are like frogs in boiling water.

There are two pathways to this metaphoical Gotham. You can drive and pay $10 in tolls on roads that are always “under construction”, and thus ensure a soul destroying commute.

(Don't forget we gotta pay people to hold up the “slow” signs. In fact, I saw four people just holding “slow” signs in the short commute to the much closer train station.)

Or you can take a train which is equally depressing. The parking lot is not maintained. The station itself, no longer functional, basically boarded up. Wait in your car or freeze.

Only 3 of the 8 payment machines still work, and barely. Everyone queues up in front of the remaining machines.

Then you board a train that tops out at maybe 50 mph and sit in a car that's perhaps 40 years old. Loud, creaky, and uncomfortable.

The conductors still come around and check tickets just as they did decades ago, almost as if the digital age passed and they never got the memo.

Don't get me wrong, things could be worse. There are bright spots. But as someone who spends his morning writing about the future and the possibility of a better tomorrow, seeing all this is painful.

Too often, I fear that Americans have deluded themselves into believing they are the “best” with everything, such that they don't realize when they are falling behind.

And when they do “feel” they misdiagnose the problem. They blame immigrants, they blame trade,….they blame change itself.

The solution they peddle is to turn back the clock, everything will be fine when we go back to coal, incandescent bulbs, if we “protect you” from change.

That's precisely the wrong direction.

We must BE the change, to lean into forward advancement, to lead, not stubbornly look backward.