Not to Decide is to Decide: The Mississippi River Bridge That Can't Get Built

Not to decide is to decide.

Harvey Cox

 Interstate 10 is a transcontinental highway running from Jacksonville, Florida, to Santa Monica, California. Thousands of trucks are on this road 24 hours a day, dominating the highway during the nighttime hours. Sometimes the 18-wheelers are packed so tightly that they appear to be a long, endless convoy.

Along this 2,400-mile stretch of road, there is one major bottleneck: the Horace Wilkinson Bridge that spans the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge.  Every day, a traffic jam stretches for two miles or longer. I used to cross the bridge daily, and it often took me half an hour to creep over the Wilkinson bridge.

The need for a new bridge to route transcontinental traffic around downtown Baton Rouge has been apparent for over 30 years. And yet that bridge has never been built. Indeed,  as of this week, the site has not been selected, and state officials estimate that the bridge won't be constructed for another nine years.

Surely, the United States, the wealthiest society in the history of humankind, can get the job done faster. Using nineteenth-century technology, New York City took just 14 years to construct the Brooklyn Bridge. The Russians completed the Kerch Strait Bridge, the longest bridge in Europe, in only two years. 

The Americans are no longer a people who can get things done quickly and efficiently. Planning for the "Big Dig," a project to improve traffic flow in Boston, began in 1982, and the project wasn't finished until 2007. 

California voters approved the construction of a high-speed rail line connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles in 2008, to be completed by 2020. Yet the rail line is still not finished.

Americans have become a people who can't make decisions. We cannot even determine whether boys should compete against girls in varsity sports. The Supreme Court will decide that question for us in the coming months.

To borrow a phrase from the movie Lawrence of Arabia, Americans have become "a little people, a silly people--greedy, barbarous, and cruel." Our adversaries--Russia, China, and radical Islamism--know this about us. If we don't toughen up, our enemies will one day bring us down.

The Kerch Bridge, Photo credit: The Moscow Times

Are we having fun yet? The Ukraine war intensifies, and Americans are enthralled by Barbie

Ukraine’s war with Russia has dragged on for 18 months and shows no signs of ending. It's like The Walking Dead series; it ran on and on long after its audience became bored. General Milley warned Americans that the war would be a long one; perhaps the only honest thing he's said about it.

The mainstream media casts this war as a barbaric act of Russian aggression. However, pro-war columnists neglect to mention that the United States provoked this war when it helped overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected pro-Russian president in 2014. American meddling alarmed the Russians, and they quickly seized Crimea, where a substantial Russian naval base is located.

Pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists, aided by the Russian government, have been fighting the Ukrainian army in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine since 2014--resulting in a stalemate. Then in February 2021, President Vladimir Putin decided he's had enough and ordered the Russian army to invade Ukraine. 

So far, the Ukrainians have held their own, aided mightily by high-tech weapons and money donated by the NATO countries and the United States. The US alone has invested $100 billion in the Ukrainian Project.

Ukraine launched its highly publicized counteroffensive against the Russians in the late spring of this year. It is now August, and it is clear that the Ukrainian counterattack has failed.

Now Ukraine seeks to heat up this war against Russia by other means. Earlier this year, the Ukrainians launched missile attacks against the city of Moscow. They also attacked the Kerch Bridge, a critical land link between Crimea and the Russian motherland.

Russia retaliated by canceling the grain agreement that allowed Ukrainian wheat to be exported by sea. Russia also began bombing Odessa and other important grain ports on the Danube River.

Now the war has spread to the Black Sea. Ukrainians have attacked at least three Russian military vessels and one civilian ship. Russia promised to retaliate and began intensifying its aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities.

Perhaps Americans should be grateful that the Ukrainian counteroffensive failed. Some military analysts believe a successful counterattack might provoke the Russians to use tactical nuclear weapons.

Biden apparently believes attacks on Russian shipping, the Russian heartland, and the city of Moscow will force the Russians to abandon the war. If so, he is delusional. The Russians will never surrender Crimea or the Donbas.

American foreign policy is directed by nincompoops. Our NATO allies are beginning to realize they were snookered when they agreed to back Biden’s foolish war in Ukraine.

No one can predict the event that would prompt the Russians to use tactical nuclear weapons, but we may soon find out. President Biden seems determined to drive Russia to the breaking point.

The United States is courting mortal danger by meddling in Eastern European geopolitics, and the mainstream media is complicit in this insane behavior. Meanwhile, Americans are mesmerized by the new Barbie movie, a fantasy flick for people living in Fantasy Land.

Psst: Have you seen the new Barbie movie?