US attitude toward cars? Dude, consider two things, consider three three things
1) It's a BIG country
Sure , but a lot of the pieces aren't that far apart.
2)One you get to East BF on your high speed train you're still 19.5 miles from where you
really want to be
Using your, for want of a better term, "logic", nobody would ever fly anywhere
because you end up about 30-50 miles from where anybody could possibly want to
be, instead of right downtown. High-speed rail between the Bay Area and LA would
end 90% of the Bay Area to LAX flights for a vast enviromental improvement.

3) Nobody wants to pay $XXB for something they're not going to use. It isn't
attitude it's utilization, we don't live or work anywhere near one of the three make that four
terminals designated as destinations.

This may be true, but we do it all the time. I pay for roads in places like Redding
that I'll never use. We all subsidize airports in ridiculous place like Ontario, CA
that most of never use either.

High-speed (and conventional) rail work really well in places like Spain that have
similar population densities and comparably geographies. If we can just stop spending
money on expanding freeways in the naive belief that somehow you can always build enough
lanes to avoid congestion (it hasn't happened yet) and spend that money on something
sensible and proven, like high-speed rail, we'd be way better off.