Getting Over the Hump

Garrison Keillor is fond of pointing out that, when you get to the end of the sidewalk at an intersection, sometimes there is a little ramp there, and sometimes there isn't. If you're walking with a rolling suitcase, shopping cart, or if you are in a wheelchair, it's much better for you if there is a ramp. And, since those ramps don't inconvenience anyone, why shouldn't we put them everywhere, so that people in wheelchairs don't have to deal with the hassle of trying to get over a bump?

Keillor's point, though, is that we have to pay for this. We have to pay for the sidewalk, and we have to pay to make the sidewalk better, and we have to pay for other people to pour the concrete to make the sidewalk better. We also have to pay people to sit in boring meetings and decide which contractor they're going to pay to pour that concrete.

Now, sometimes the contractor who pours the concrete does a terrible job, perhaps because he's the unqualified nephew of a city councilman. Sometimes he's not the nephew, but he bribes the city council or gets his hands on photographs of the city council in flagrante delicto with livestock. Sometimes, even when everybody behaves ethically, the ramp still doesn't work out, because of bad weather, or vandalism, or this that and the other thing.

This frustrates some people to no end. In their frustration, they begin to question whether we ought to build the ramps at all. Maybe, they think, we don't even need sidewalks! This line of thinking gets very exciting. And it's probably healthy; societies should always be wiling to reevaluate their priorities.

But we've got to remember that, even though we're mad at the city council for taking bribes and hiring its nephews, the original idea is not a bad one. It's good to have ramps for people in wheelchairs. It's a polite, decent, human thing to do. And it's not the fault of the people in wheelchairs that the people in charge of pouring the concrete turned out to be incompetent or corrupt.

Another important thing to remember is that, as Molly Ivins says, "The Government Is Us." Those city councimen who tooks bribes were not imported from Mars. We elected them, and if they're doing a bad job building ramps, the buck really does have to stop with us. It is difficult to get rid of them, but it is our job, as citizens, to do it. Complaining about how corrupt they are feels nice, but does nothing for the guy in the wheelchair who just wants to get to his girlfriend's house. You throw the bums out using your hands, not your mouth.

Finally, some people, who are frustrated to the point of prolapse, wonder what it would be like to just get rid of the city council altogether. The answer is it would be like Somalia. So there you go.