Falling off the fiscal cliff can mean, as Randy Clarke of WMATA said, “death by a thousand cuts or it’s death by a big sword” for the agency’s operations. Such operational collapses have happened elsewhere in the world before — but during wartimes, severe regional depopulation, or economic collapses. The United States and its biggest cities are not experiencing any of the three, and yet its transit prospects are under existential threat. And for what exactly, other than ideological differences animating enmity to brinksmanship?