Two posts back Don Shank mentioned his (and I think many people's) vote for the most jaw-dropping moment of the Bellevue meeting: when the lawyer with Wilbur Smith Associates (a Mr. Fred Kessler, whose actually with the high-powered L.A. law firm Nossaman Gunther Knox Elliot LLP that Wilbur Smith are contracting out the legal work to) encouraged the audience to consider the great tragedy that might have befallen our nation if the 250-mile long Los Angeles Aqueduct running from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles which begun operation in 1913 had never been built. (Some history is available here: http://www.usc.edu/isd/archives/la/scandals/owens.html )
If not for the aqueduct Mr. Kessler suggested 'L.A. might still be a sleepy little pueblo.' His implication that we should embrace the commerce corridor in the hopes of becoming the new Los Angeles was so ludicrously out of touch with local concerns and interests that it is tempting to question both his sanity and his intelligence. In the past week I've found myself repeating this incident to people as a handy way of describing both the towering arrogance and the staggering absurdity of this push for a Commerce Corridor project.
Of course, this was hardly the only example of arrogance on display, perhaps just the most public. In the hallway I also overheard a well-dressed gentlemen (who did not speak but was seated throughout the comment period with the consultants) expressing at a whisper to a colleague a wish that they could have "obviated" this part of the process. Now my dictionary defines obviate as follows:1. To prevent or counter (an objection, difficulty, ect.) by effective measures 2. dispose of.
Dispose of? Prevent or Counter? Dear God this bald fellow, whoever he is, who is in some way affiliated with the consultants and the Dept. of Transportation, thinks that they can threaten to obliterate hundreds of rural communities, and plot to uproot the lives of tens of thousands of people, and reshape the entire region and they don't have to take public comment? Just who in god's name do they think they are working for? The Chinese government maybe?
It's easy to lose sight of the fact that Mr. Fred Kessler and this anonymous wannabe Chinese politburo member, though they are acting like perfect idiots, are obviously highly educated, highly capable, and highly paid people.
So What Gives?
I admit I've been puzzled by their strange behaviour ever since the meeting. Then this morning I was digging in to The Unconscious Civilization by John Ralston Saul. On page 9 Saul writes:
The reaction of sophisticated elites, when confronted by their own failure to lead society is almost invariably the same. They set about building a wall between themselves and reality by creating an artificial sense of well-being on the inside. [For example] the French Aristocracy, gentry and business leadership were never more satisfied with themselves than in the few decades before their collapse during the French Revolution...One of the trick which makes this sort of closet delusion possible is that the very size and prosperity of the elite permits it to interiorize an artificial vision of civilization as a whole. Thus, ours takes seriously only what comes from its own hundreds-indeed thousands-of specialized sectors. Everything turns on internal reference. Everything is carefully measured, so that the heartening "body counts" of growth or job creation or whatever can be produced. Truth is not in the world, it is in the measurements made by professionals.
And we have a growth and transportation crisis that at least iin part is artificial to match.
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