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  3. It is hard to pinpoint the date at which Americans developed an Indian—or perhaps British fatalism about the declining quality o

It is hard to pinpoint the date at which Americans developed an Indian—or perhaps British fatalism about the declining quality o

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问题     It is hard to pinpoint the date at which Americans developed an Indian—or perhaps British fatalism about the declining quality of their infrastructure. When my British mother spent several months in the US in the 1950s, it was dazzlingly futuristic. There was air conditioning, an icebox in every fridge, ubiquitous neon lights and an open road on which even the working class could afford to drive. But bit by bit over the past 30 years, the world’s first truly modern infrastructure has shown its age. It has been starved by a generation of under-investment. And Americans have adapted around it.
    At some point in the next 12 months, we will discover whether the US has the will to bring its infrastructure into the 21st century. If all goes well, Congress will take steps to avert a fiscal cliff before January 1. As part of that deal lawmakers will schedule another ticking time bomb for late 2013, before which they will have to strike a larger bargain or hit another fiscal cliff. The likelihood is that Congress will shrink the already meagre federal investment budget. The hope, as the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Center puts it, is that Congress will "cut to invest" rather than doing so crudely across the board.
    There are three reasons to worry. First, there is remarkably little public outrage over the dilapidation in the power grid, public roads, domestic airports and waterways. This means that lawmakers will be feeling stronger pressures in other directions(such as defending the existing low level of capital gains tax, for example, or maintaining job-creating defence budgets). It is hard to fly domestically in the US and not at regular intervals face heavy delays, cancellations or being bumped off your flight. It is also hard not to miss the impressively stoical reaction of most passengers.
    Second, most Americans are unaware of how far behind the rest of the world their country has fallen. According to the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness report, US infrastructure ranks below 20th in most of the nine categories, and below 30 for quality of air transport and electricity supply. The US gave birth to the internet the kind of decentralised network that the US power grid desperately needs, yet according to the OECD club of mostly rich nations, average US internet speeds are barely a 10th of those in countries such as South Korea and Germany. In an age where the global IT superhighway is no longer a slogan, this is no joke. The budding US entrepreneur can survive gridlocked traffic, but a slow internet can be crippling.
    Third, it may be asking too much of Washington in its present state of polarisation to give the green light to an ambitious infrastructure plan. In a departure from their party’s traditions, many Republicans are now ideologically opposed to any serious federal role in infrastructure and want to decentralise it to the states. It is thus also a stretch to imagine Congress setting up a public infrastructure bank, as President Barack Obama has requested. The bank would use $ 10bn in seed money to leverage a multiple of that in private money for cross-state projects much like the European Investment Bank. The chances are it will stay on the drawing board.
The word "stoical"(Line 5, Paragraph 3)is closest in meaning to______.
选项 A、impatient
B、persevering
C、proud
D、disdainful
答案B
解析 本题考查考生根据上下文揣摩生词意思的能力。“stoical”一词出现在第三段最后一句，第三段讲述了关于美国基础设施更新能否顺利进入国会预算的令人担忧的三个原因中的第一个，即：美国基础设施的破败，引起的公愤少得出奇。作者举例，搭乘美国国内航班时，你很难不每隔一段时间就遭遇航班严重延误、取消或超订。而面临这一情况时。大多数乘客都有着超强的忍受力，这就印证了前面所说“引起的公愤少得出奇”．因此B项正确。A和D是恰恰相反的选项．跟前文所述美国人的态度刚好相反，C从道理上讲不通，跟上下文也无关．因此均不正确。
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