Merry Christmas and Happy Saturnalia, everyone!
Saturnalia is that joyous time of year when we look back over the previous 12 months and think about what we’d like to do to the individuals and groups responsible for those months.
I can’t remember if it was Alabama Gov. George Wallace or one of my next door neighbors in the 50s or a lady on a laundry detergent ad on the TV that said, “If only they were all white.” But whoever said it, I think they spoke for a lot of people we really would like to talk back to.
But it hasn’t all been about the police, corrupt prosecutors, congress-people, bad judges and bad juries. There’s also been Bertha. In the entire year Bertha has only moved vertically by inches.
Here’s my theory about Bertha and the viaduct replacement project: We are doomed.
It’s just elementary game theory. The state will win. Seattle will lose. The state’s best strategy is to go forward with the tunnel no matter what it costs, because it can safely count on sticking us with all of the cost overruns, and state legislators, most of them, don’t live here and don’t need our votes.
As matters stand, the state has no incentive to stop the project, because by calling it to an end they would automatically relieve us of any responsibility for the project and its added costs.
Therefore, the only way the state is going to shut the tunnel project down is if Seattle buys them off. We might agree to pay the state a couple of billion now to forget the whole thing, in order to avoid paying five times that in the distant future, whenever an army of $300-per-hour contractors finishes digging the tunnel with dessert spoons. Because if we don’t pay them to stop they will finish, whatever it takes, whatever it costs.
Which brings me back to Saturnalia. It’s too late to do it this year, but I’ve been thinking that Saturnalia is an idea that needs resurrecting now more than ever. I’ve been doing some research, and I think it would bring a positive dynamic to our world of hurt.
The basic ingredient of a good Saturnalia, as I understand it, is that there’s a period of time every year where all the masters become slaves and all the slaves become masters. Now, some people would say we don’t have masters and slaves anymore. I think they’re just out of touch with reality, but fine, let’s go with that idea. So we won’t do it exactly that way. We’ll call them something else, like rich people and poor people, or executives and workers, or cops and citizens.
The main idea is: He or she who is usually in control has to be subject to control by those who usually get controlled. Not all the time, but just a few days or a week. Long enough that some real lessons could be learned, but not long enough to leave lasting societal scarring. Oh, I suppose a few people could be choked to death if they resisted too much, but it’d be their own fault.
This would help so many ways on so many levels, even in areas where we ordinarily think matters are not under anyone’s control. Because that’s never the case.
Power is always playing out in some way in all of the dramas we endure. For every act of nature running rampant and out of control, there’s always a Gov. Chris Christie, from New Jersey, ordering someone into isolation, just for show. I’d like him quarantined.
I guess you might say the goal is to go to the rich and powerful people and make their places rough. I would like to see the people who expect me to pay for their pet municipal improvement projects to pay to improve my place with a new big screen TV. Even if I only got to use it one week a year, I would feel I’d made my point.