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L.A. Artist Contemplates Future Traffic Flow, With Hot Wheels
John3 writes "American artist Chris Burden is finishing up his latest work titled Metropolis II for display this fall in Los Angeles. There's a fascinating five minute documentary on YouTube about his miniature city and the traffic that flows through it. He comments 'The idea that a car runs free, those days are about to close.' Whether you agree or disagree, he certainly has built one of the coolest Hot Wheels layouts I've ever seen."
Since it doesn't serve the ultra-rich, the right wing won't support it, no matter how much it might possibly help everyone.
As for the left? They've long since given up doing anything big and useful, and have mostly turned into a reactionary set of frightened groups, who couldn't even begin to imagine doing something like Roosevelt did, losing all the progress they made, chunk by chunk, weeping all the while, but not actually doing anything meaningful enough to save the things they care about.
We're too busy giving our car industries sweetheart loans, while they outsource as much labor as they possibly can, to ever expect any meaningful change like this fantasy.
Sure, we make noise about raising fuel efficiency standards every couple of years, but that's more to convince voters that we can at least pretend to act in their interests.
We used to be able to do big things - but the only big things we do now, is wage useless wars against token enemies for bogus purposes. That, and protest taxes when they are the lowest they've been in living memory for most people.
But for science, for basic infrastructure, for human rights, lower-than-upper-class living standards, for helping the bulk of the American people - progress on those fronts is now dead for a generation, given away by the democratic party that used to stand for them.
Ryan Fenton