Mini Exasperation #4
Safety is woke now.
It1 seems like for the time being one Executive Day feels like a whole decade of shit flooding. I’m amazed that this narrative has unconsciously flown under many front-and-center narratives from our most insurgent reporters. I’m not saying it’s not happening. Instead, I’m saying I can’t recall a take calling out this playbook as the main goal of the first few decades weeks of 47’s stupid tenure. Lots of outlets and take machines (including this one) have been exasperated about the fumble-through-fiat Executive Order2 issuances that have quite literally confounded courts and policymakers and, to the detriment of all Americans, stopped or stymied payment or reimbursement on so many projects and entitlements that is somehow doing the thing conservatives claim to want but, you know, not like that.
Steve Bannon—peering from the depths of hell for this round of democracy deathmatch3—is not the first person to instruct an insurgent polity4 to “flood the zone” with an overwhelming amount of shit, but he’s certainly the most memorable:
While watching the news coverage of Steve Bannon’s initial appearance in federal court on Monday, I kept thinking about his 2018 confession to the acclaimed writer Michael Lewis. His quote is like a compass that orients this crazy era of American politics. “The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon told Lewis. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
—Brian Stelter, This infamous Steve Bannon quote is key to understanding America’s crazy politics, CNN Business, 11/21/21
The media is the enemy—give them so many competing stories and make sure the entire Overton window and beyond is full of conflict and “news.” The courts can’t keep up. Public Opinion not only can’t keep up, it can’t be formed. Scatter the ashes of words—1984 that shit. For every dozen Executive Orders the White House issues, each of which is mired in socio-populist language and a legal grey area, a judge/court needs to approach these hammers to the swirling plates of government with due process. An injunction here; a stay there; a retraining order way over there.
All while The White House and its merry band of debuilders continue to issue more orders with the intent of breaking normal process in due time. These orders and memos and court filings come out at all times of the day and night. Stop work orders—and we’ll get to transportation in a minute—come on Friday or Saturday but they’re not enjoined or reversed for a few days leaving millions—billions—trillions—of dollars in the vague control of the world’s richest doofus while the rest of us, working across all levels of dogooder government in the worst possible position. Uncertainty.
The playbook is to make “truth” unknowable and to offer a solution through strong leadership. Daddy will make it better—we’re from the government and we’re here to help.5 But soon there’s no more government and aid is conditional on fealty to the throne.6 Thanks for the help, CNN:
Okay, you’re asking yourself what does this have to do with transportation and infrastructure? As I’ve briefly reported on over the past month,7 the Executive Orders that target transportation are not bad8 so much as inconclusive: what projects are/would still be funded? What does “under review” mean? Can the9 government break its contract to pay for the thing it promised to pay for—in transportation parlance (and other parlance) called a Full Funding Grant Agreement (FFGA)? Which parts of projects can move forward, while others cannot? Where does preemption come into play here? Should we be having more sex?10
One of the consequences of the flood-the-zone splooge is unintended consequences—when you’re not thoughtful at all, on purpose—even your “allies” feel the facepunch. Are we directing less Federal money to states with historically low birth rates—solid red states—or will USDOT find a way to just not follow its own guidance? Or will people in these states, often transit-starved or non-car-mode-starved, accept their beating as long as blue states also get hurt? Is this where we are?
Is safety “woke?” Over 40,000 people die annually on our roads. The message this government is sending to its people, by issuing a STOP WORK ORDER11 on all “Road to Zero” projects is that these lives are not worth saving, individually and collectively. Pick one of these deaths out of a hat—each one is preventable—and you’ll find a real person there; you’ll have no idea who this person is or where they’re from; or their reason for traveling. Poorly designed roads and drunk drivers don’t discriminate, though. They’ll kill you the same no matter how “woke” you are.12 Is this where we are?13
Yes. Flood the zone with shit and we’ll all eat it forever.
Some articles from the last few weeks I’ve liked.
Paul Salama, the author of the above post brings a much-needed perspective to congestion pricing to fill out the pockets of “how could we move forward differently?” given its vulnerability to Federal frickery.
Exasperation: No this is good actually, we need to make sure that there are structural platforms in place to ensure that this policy runs its course based on sound economics and data. We need stories. Go subscribe to Paul’s page to keep up to date with a very smart technologist and urbanist. Here’s another outstanding piece of work from Paul during his time at Cornell Tech.
Safe Streets: Working to curb road deaths by Max J. Krupnick for Harvard Magazine
This is all you need to know from this article: “Those unable to upsize, like bikers and pedestrians, suffer the most: pedestrian deaths have doubled since 2009.” But read on for a pretty well-researched and presented argument for safer streets. Urban design, car design, and policy design are all factors in the war against car death.
Exasperated: Despite the intent of this expose, I do not understand why road safety and urban planning principles, in general, are treated by general-audience reporters as this big black box of mystery. The problems we face generally are neither confusing nor delicate: 40,000 people die on our streets every year, inside and outside cars. They’re preventable, and yet; specifically and contextually I understand where planning and engineering can get overly technical for a general audience, who don’t need to know the specifics of a curb-cut slope or the data behind the data-driven decision-making. Honestly, who is self-selected into reading Harvard Magazine and can’t figure out from context what these concepts are? Am I being naive now?
I also didn’t really get a lede from this article besides the one quoted about halfway down, which dampens the urgency of this article. It feels a little effete does it not?
Big shout out to Beth Osborne for the inspiration for this post.
Here’s something to think about vis-a-vis the Trojan Horses stupidly stupided in these EOs: who defines what “merit” means—isn’t any means test a form of DEI?
Thanks for platforming and normalizing the shit, WSJ. If you’re not aware of the larger scheme, which this interview does not call out or push back at all, Bannon comes across as a reasonable, thoughtful commentator and interpreter of the first few weeks of this administrator. Why, yes, we have tried everything in the Middle East. Why, yes, we do spend too much money. But the reporter doesn’t dig deeper to seek for some larger truth as to why these are the talking points and force Bannon to defend his position, not from the lonely position of neutral, but from either the right or the left. It’s strawmen and rejecting the premise of the question—the overall narrative—all the way down. His curt and rehearsed answers to very complicated questions are unnerving at best and world-ending at worst. The goal is populist chaos.
The endgame feels cloudy to me, but that’s because I refuse to accept that his answer is a hard reset on America.
Think hard about who pioneered this technique in modern politics and the whirlwind/pool of shit comes into clearer focus.
Oh how we miss thee, Ronald.
Let me make it clear this has always been the case but at least our wealthy have had the decency to wrap it up in a museum or something. Indecent!
Actually, shout out to the reporters in the space trying to keep up with the flurry of nonsense and provide support to the recipients of Federal Aid in any capacity. It’s helping especially because Steve Bannon told us what he was doing. Jesus Christ, Dems.
They’re bad.
We have to stop asking this question for now, until any jurisprudence drops under the new normal, and even still is a law/ruling worth anything if no sane person is willing to defend/enforce it?
I wouldn’t necessarily advocate for this, but well, AVs could be…nope not going there.
Or did they? Why are we complying in advance?
I know the DEI/DUI paradigm is there, but I’m not going to use it because this is not the place to joke. I did not miss this opportunity, and you’re not clever for thinking of it.
In a truly confusing menagerie of confused policy goop: lots of the safety programs include more funding for enforcement, often, if not always carried out by police, which MAGA claims to love except when they do their actual job? Make it make sense.