Traffic jam
As I sat one recent afternoon in that glorious never-ending traffic nightmare where the BQE joins the Battery Tunnel discharge to form the Gowanus Expressway, I started musing about how such affairs might be resolved if we lived in a slightly less compassionate society.
Taxpayers, fed up with the traffic, might fund the maintenance of huge flying car-smashing machines that would arrive at the focal point of the snarled traffic and bulldoze all the idling cars off the roadway without concern for fault, life or limb.
I suppose there would be initial outrage from some quarters, but people would eventually grow used to this and begin to assume a fatalistic air.
“Did you hear, Aunt Selma had her car swept off the highway last week.”
“Oh my, that’s too bad.”
“Well it just serves her right for trying to get to the airport in the middle of rush hour.”
Perhaps this is how the once-civilized people of Baghdad are learning to cope with their new reality.