A Kind of Stupidity

One evening we were stopped, along with lots of other cars and trucks, just before the exit ramp to go from I-90 onto I-55. There was an emergency vehicle up ahead holding up traffic, but we could not see any other activity near it. As the wait passed 10 minutes, horns honked occasionally and some drivers got out of their vehicles to try to see what was going on.

I tuned our radio to a big AM station that provides traffic updates every 10 minutes. When the highways were listed according to their geography, from north to south, it was if an invisible scan had passed over us but could not evince our situation. As my attention waned after perceiving this slight, a mention was made of a temporary closure of south Lake Shore Drive due to the passing of the Vice Presidential motorcade.

It reflects a limitation of the craft of traffic reporting that the impact of a moving shutdown was not conveyed in the report I heard. Perhaps this is due to the nature of the scan. Though it moves, it only records a static set of data regarding the flow of traffic. A sense of motion can only be perceived from multiple scans, so to speak. This lack of perspective prevented any possibility of bringing out a predictive capability from the report.

When the entourage passed, we could not see the vehicles themselves. Instead we saw bright blue lights seemingly strung together, floating by. The sharp, vibrant color was striking and attractive, but fleeting. There were some red lights flashing as well, but they did not demand notice like the others.

At that, the VP had passed. As we slowly moved ahead, I heard a report on NPR still referring to blocked traffic on LSD. It seems ultimately a kind of stupidity that renders a busy highway inoperable for 20 minutes just to let a politician pass. At a moment like this, I think of the term, potentate; a politician who is given extraordinary authority. Without regard for the impact on the lives of thousands, even for a relatively short interval, a singular man passes by.

But at least the politician who passed had been elected and the only place we have to see his face is on the television or computer screen. Since I voted for him, I had a dog in that hunt as well, in a manner of speaking. Besides, at least I could think of him as having stopped for an Italian Beef or slice of deep dish pizza before his motorcade got rolling to the airport.