A Bridge to Fear

Among mankind's more enlightened inventions was the bridge, which became both literal and metaphorical symbols of cooperation and achievement. The concept of the bridge as a connecting span is powerful in our imaginations, so much so that a "bridge to the 21st century" was a successful theme of a recent Presidential campaign. The word "bridge" is rarely used with any negative connotations. This is why it is hard to grasp the significance of the bridge collapse in, of all cities, Minneapolis, one of our most "habitable" urban centers.

Thornton Wilder, in his seminal story "The Bridge over San Luis Rey," tries to analyze the cosmic consequences of chance mixed with human endeavor that led to the seemingly arbitrary deaths of five unfortunates crossing when the ropes snapped. Now editorial writers--and bloggers, heh heh--are attempting to do the same, while suppressing the horror of the event, lest it affect our attitudes regarding all high-rise spans we transverse daily. Time hasn't given us enough distance to view with clarity, as they are still digging up bodies of victims. But already some predictable reactions have emerged.

A news feature yesterday focused on the "positive," that is the relatively fortunate who avoided total calamity. These included dozens of students on a school bus who missed annihilation by about twenty feet. I am very glad for them, to be sure. But others voiced specific opinions that they were saved by the Grace of God, which made me, of course, want to spit. If God had so much grace, why did he knock over the bridge in the first place, then kill as many as twenty or thirty unaware motorists? Did they all merits such a sudden, awful, fate while the students were innocently deserving of more time on earth? I personally think God has a lot of 'splainin' to do. If you get the credit, you gotta accept the blame.

I think it is equally as likely that God, not wanting my rotisserie team to win, caused a bridge near the Twins' ballpark to collapse so that the ball game would be postponed and my pitcher, Johann Santana, would not face the lowly Royals but rather the tougher Indians today, and their pitcher C.C. Sabathia, also on my team. This is an idea that the late Kurt Vonnegut might have liked, as in his "Sirens of Titan," when the Tramalfadoreans created all sorts of famous earthly structures just to send a message to a galactic mechanic. If God is everywhere all the time, why would he not be following my Rotisserie fortunes as closely as anything else. He managed to destroy ouu chances two years ago when he had my entire pitching staff sit in the last week, allowing the team named "Jesus" to overtake us.

The true significance of the bridge disaster was, in the reality in which I choose to reside , that it signified a deterioration. And in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Our national infrastructure, our systems of roads and bridges, is mostly sixty to a hundred years old, and is badly in need of repair, if not overhaul. Just as our executive leadership has been eroding our civil liberties and our intellectual and scientific standards, it has ignored the erosion of our structures (see Katrina, ad nauseum), and now they are beginning to founder. One would imagine the list of Bush's failures could not get any longer, but here's one more ghastly oversight. And I'm sure he will ride to the site and utter some lame bromides that will be of no comfort at all to the stunned residents, and finally tie it all into Al Qaeda and how the terrorists in Iraq must not follow us home.