Monorail

The fictional people of Springfield are well known to be rubes. Perhaps that is why they were so easily taken in by the slick presentation of Lyle Lanley. The townspeople, their hope-filled eyes gleaming, imagined that building the monorail would create jobs and put Springfield on the map as Lanley claims it did for towns like Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook. They sacrificed time, labor, opportunity cost and the city treasury to fulfill that novel dream. Of course, the monorail turned out to be a grift and the project a failure. But, even at its best the monorail was little more than a publicity stunt: a support to buttress the civic pride of Springfield's rubes.

The Olympics aren't much different. They're expensive, time consuming and fiscally draining. They're basically a multi-billion dollar, bloated photo-op for the host city. I love my city and its people, but we've exhibited time and again a capacity for being rubes with a depressed sense of civic pride. Chicago did not need the Olympics. Perhaps Beijing needed them to demonstrate that China is more than just smog and political repression. Rio can show what is has to offer besides scantily clad women, violence and homeless children.

Meanwhile, at home, we still need to improve our transportation infrastructure, build affordable housing and the city still has that new piece of lakefront property to develop. Now we should look forward and work up to our potential as a community. Not so that the world will come to Chicago, but for the world that is already here.

Society Must Be Defended

I'd like to clear up an important point that has arisen in the wake of the health care debate.
The reason a "public option" for health insurance is anathema to some opponents of the plan is because they recognize a fundamental truth about our country: namely, that we are not a society. It is a common misconception that the founding fathers formed this republic for the benefit of the commonwealth. On the contrary, our nation is simply a venue for the socioeconomic competition between individuals. It is organized primarily for the purpose of protecting the material and ideological sanctity of private property. Of course, there are various other rules and obligations such as the prohibition against murder or other deliberate injury not sanctioned by the state, but the values of private property are sacrosanct.

In light of this reality, we can dispense with the notion that any citizen is entitled to goods, commodities, or services simply by the fact of citizenship. No government can provide and no individual is entitled to that which can be acquired otherwise by means of competition in the marketplace. To do so would be to interfere with the competition for resources between individuals that is the function and purpose of the nation. Further, such intervention typically occurs in favor of those individuals who have failed to become or remain competitive within the marketplace. This kind of policy making is antithetical to the concept of competitive fairness.

There are those who will argue that because 87% of the nation's wealth is possessed by only 25% of the population,¹ many Americans face a kind of competitive disadvantage from the outset of their existence. This argument, however, is immaterial. After all, there are no rules in sports designed to render the most gifted athlete less dominant in competition by taking away the natural advantages of speed and agility. Instead, the less gifted athlete must succeed at overcoming his disadvantages or else leave the competitive world behind.

It follows then, that health care is not a right. It, like all other commodities, is the spoil of competition for those who succeed in the marketplace. It is not an entitlement to be provided at the expense of the private property of the victors to those individuals who fail to succeed in the socioeconomic competition for which we are organized as a nation. Ultimately, we did not form this Union so that we could take care of each other; we formed it so that we could compete against each other.

alpha charlie bravo, for no discernible purpose, presents:
The Five Creepiest Movies of All Time (as far as I'm aware).

5. Tideland
Okay, so there's this 10 year old girl named Jeliza-Rose who lives in an abandoned farm house with the corpse of her recently deceased father. Her only companions are her imagination and the doll heads (yes, only the heads) she talks to. That is, until she meets and develops a friendship with a mentally handicapped man who likes to blow things up and his hyper-religious aunt who likes to keep a corpse or two around the house herself. Brought to you by the director of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Enjoy.

4. Crumb
You might well expect this documentary about the cartoonist R. Crumb to be kind of creepy given the sort of things that spring from the mind and pen of its subject. But, what really makes this movie creepy is when you meet R. Crumb's family and discover that he's the normal one.

3. Gummo
Cinematic wunderkind Harmony Korine, who wrote the movie Kids at the age of seventeen, gives us in his directorial debut a plot-less cavalcade of freaks; some played by actors and some played by townies, which makes it all the more creepy. The boys in the town spend their days spitting off the overpass or killing stray cats. Werner Herzog cavorts in his underwear. There's a gay midget and Chloe Sevigny. Need I say more?

2. Mulholland Dr.
David Lynch originally made this as a Tv pilot, but when it was rejected he re-cut it into a feature film. It's filled with creepy scenes. For example: this one; made creepier by the fact that the scene has nothing to do with the plot (whatever the plot is) and features two characters that do not appear anywhere else in the movie. But don't watch that scene, because if you do you won't forgive me in time to watch this one. It's the final scene of the movie and sums things up nicely with a rousing: Wtf?

1. Crash
No, not that Crash. This is the David Cronenberg movie about people who are sexually aroused by car accidents (oh, yes). I believe I have mentioned before that this movie features the single creepiest performance ever recorded on film. But, it's not just Elias Koteas that puts Crash atop this list. Watch this movie, but make sure you have enough soap to take 3 or 4 showers afterward.