For context, the total length of high speed rail in the world is 59,000km. So China, which makes up 17% of the world’s population contains 2/3 of the world’s high speed rail.

The closest comparison would be Europe, which has about the same land mass and half the population of China has around 11,000km of big speed rail.

All good points. Sorry I’m coming from a non US perspective where climate change denialism is present, but less fervent. I like your definition of “truth from a rarified point of view”, though I might also considered non-rarified or pervasive, and factually well substantiated truths can be used as propaganda as well. The 95%+ consensus of scientists on climate change is both factually/meaningfully/importantly true and also used with a propagandistic flavour in many examples of political persuasion for example.

My post was more aiming at acknowledging propaganda as a vehicle of persuasion for any and differing representations of reality (political groups) that exists in parallel with the the establishment of facts of reality. Some representations will adhere more or less with the factual arguments.

An interesting exercise is to replace “Communism is bad” with “Climate change is coming” and interrogate how we feel about that and why.

It is interesting to reflect that propaganda is involved for all kinds of policy application, including science. As someone trained in sciences, it’s always a bit uncomfortable seeing folks extolling science as the exclusive solution to everything. The role of science in society is deeply tied up with values, norms, and policy. I think it’s always good to have a healthy dose of critical self reflection, so we can engage better on the level of humanized reasoning, rather than on the level of regurgitated propaganda.

Let me rephrase on infrastructure. Car and Air infrastructure is obviously as developed (footprint, accessibility, sophistication, etc.) in Europe and China compared to the US. Utilization proportions is going to be different because US lacks HSR. That Americans use cars more than other countries doesn’t mean those countries have less developed car infrastructure for the needs of their populations.

Perhaps you should reread those points

And again, other US infrastructure projects that deal with the same obstacles show they don’t prevent development. So they’re weak excuses. I am very open to reasonable or more specific explanations as to why HSR development in California is justifiably dead.

Oh, do you “enjoy” air and car travel in California?

I think it’s a little strange to say Europe and China and even Japan lack the car and air infrastructure the US does, car culture sure.

My response was more asking to clarify what your response to OP was. The OP meme points out an embarassing gap between how other places have built HSR much to the benefit of its people while California has yet to lay a single line after a decade of promises for a people who want and stand to benefit from HSR. You pointed out obstacles that China doesn’t face, but none of these obstacles are insurmountable and have been overcome in other US projects, so how is the decade of broken promises not an embarassing tragedy?

If your point is that it’s harder and more expensive to build HSR in the US than in China, so what? The US builds massive infrastructure that’s more regulated and more expensive than the equivalent in China all the time. None of your points adequately explain why no HSR has been built in California and has only just started being built in the US broadly compared to what’s been built around the world in the last decade.