Trust me it’s embarrassing for a lot of us that have traveled to countries with decent rail travel. Part of it is the shamelessness of the car industry for lobbying for decades to shackle everyone to a car. Now the car is an engrained part of American culture and makes our cities much more ugly, isolating, loud, and dangerous than they need be.
You must not travel very often then. European public transit is extremely unreliable due to strikes. I, as a tourist, have been screwed over countless times having to pay $150 to take an Uber to an airport that is nowhere near the city it's meant to service. It's so unreliable that in some cities the brand new trains have displays that show which lines are currently having strikes. Now that's embarrassing.
You can just say Germany
Hey, at least we're ahead in self-driving cars!
But yes, public transit in the states is rather pathetic.
They can even go through specially bored tunnels! Oh wait...