[lbo-talk] is law enforcement a way to raise money for localeconomies?

[Alan P. Rudy]

On Wednesday, May 9, 2012 at 11:00 PM, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
> Now's the time to remind everyone of the classic "Repo Man" -- available in the cult section of your video store or from Netflix.
>  
> One of the characters says "Have you ever noticed how driving makes you stupid?"
Repo Man is awesome, the quote makes no more sense than saying surfing the internet makes you stupid.  Someone once told me that people drive the way they walk, if they're generally unaware of or indifferent to the rates and patterns of movement in their personal surroundings as bipeds, they're almost assuredly going to be generally unaware of or indifferent to the rates and patterns of movement (whether cars, bicycles or pedestrians) surrounding their vehicles.  Personally, between the immediate spatial sensitivity I developed as a wrestler, the spatial reading I learned to do playing soccer and ultimate, and the visual, otic(?) and physical sensitivity my dad helped me cultivate as a silent-as-possible hiker, I drive accordingly.  If you're spatially stupid in everyday life you'll almost surely be a stupid driver… driving's not the key, its spatiotemporal stupidity.
>  
> In my mind, one of the main problems of driving is that it gives people the illusion that they're free.
As opposed to all those folks I've known who've felt infinitely freer riding a motorcycle or bicycle?  Depends on how you operationalize freedom, doesn't it?  It isn't driving that give people the illusion that they're free its the cowboy masculinist cultural representation of driving as freedom.  At the same time, driving gets me to the places I feel freest - another historically masculine territory associated with hiking mountains, canoeing lakes and rivers and camping on coastlines - and, a good portion of the time because of my commute, represents my time in between/free of immediate professional or family obligations.  The cultural snobbishness of this position is remarkable since most folks don't drive to be free but drive for deeply instrumental reasons they'd often just as soon avoid.  Who the hell feels free in traffic on 280 in South San Francisco or on 80(?) between Berkeley and Sacramento, or on any of the congested highways in BosWash, or in effing Atlanta, or on the Dan Ryan "Expressway"?
>  
> Joanna