> SOUTHERN INDIANA — When urging a presumably beaten and battered foe to throw in the towel, proponents of questionable positions often cite “inevitability” as the crux of their argument, usually falling prey to flights of derisory condescension, as sprinkled throughout Michael Dalby’s essay in Sunday’s Tribune, titled “There is no ‘highway fairy.’”

Seemingly exasperated, Dalby characterizes opposition to the Ohio River Bridges Project as “demonstrably small” and “delusional” in scope, transfixed by “pretty pictures,” and stubbornly unwilling to accept the irreproachable certainty, the inviolable necessity — the sheer inevitability — of the Ohio River Bridges Project’s two spans, concurrent remaking of Spaghetti Junction, $4 billion price tag, and literally, whatever is required (read: tolling) to facilitate funding for what oddly resembles the totalitarian scale of a Chinese dam project more than transportation solutions for 2060.  

Never mind that polls consistently show a majority of respondents on both sides of the river rejecting the “all or nothing” bridge project in favor of an East End bridge. Forget transportation studies contradicting Dalby’s glib factoids on congestion, bottlenecks and toll payment rates. Ignore the reality of Portland, Ore., which looked into a different mirror, eliminated its riverside expressway, installed light rail and now represents palpable reality, demonstrably illustrating 8664’s platform as workable, and not at all “delusional.”

When it comes to mass transit and light rail as options for efficiently moving people in urban areas, Dalby chortles as he proposes someday using automotive traffic lanes on bridges as places to accommodate light rail and bicycles — although only for those sissies who insist on seeking green and healthy alternatives to the real, red-blooded American’s doctrine of one man, one car — forever and ever, amen.

Naturally, the ridiculously inflated price tag for the Ohio River Bridges Project has rendered moot any conceivable plans for sensible mass transit options. Dalby doesn’t mention that. Rather, he deposits all of it into 1si’s exurban landfill, because hey, didn’t you hear it the first time? The Ohio River Bridges Project is inevitable.

You needn’t be a philosophy professor to grasp that Dalby’s argument from inevitability is a form of intellectual bullying. The forces of economic “good” are righteous and immense, conveying iron certainty and superior strength, in this instance not with tanks or guns or fighter planes, but through the massed weight of 1si’s nattily attired cadres of movers and shakers.

If these many bankers, power company executives, realty magnates and construction company owners are united in this faith-based belief of nirvana as added capacity of automotive traffic lanes, who dares stand in their celestial path?

Certainly not you, a nominal plebian, one so far removed from these seats of legitimacy and authority as to have no fundamental concept of such matters as “modest” tolls, which truly successful people should have no trouble paying, especially if they live in the proper gated community and worship at the correct church.

Rather, malcontents like you need to accept wise counsel from your societal elders, line up at the trough when commanded and do as you’re told. It’s a scenario eerily reminiscent of medieval Europe (or Monty Python’s Holy Grail), when flesh-and-blood working men — not gods from afar — built huge, towering cathedrals in the sky, and then watched as their leaders pointed to the very immensity of these structures, to their own handiwork, as irrefutable evidence of a higher power’s inevitability.

How could mere stone cutters and brick layers fathom such grandeur without supernatural sanction? How can mere Hoosier working people driving across the Ohio River to be taxed yet again in Kentucky argue with “modest” tolls to enable the sheer scale of the Bridges Project? How can they disagree with plans conceived and consecrated by the shimmering exurb’s best and brightest?

And why does it matter that the people giving these tolling orders never once appeared on a ballot?

If it was good enough for Charlemagne, it’s good enough for Dalby and 1si’s chairman, Kerry Stemler, who also serves as co-chairman of the extra-governmental, unelected bi-state authority established to foster inevitability by regularly proclaiming it, and who recently responded to tolling reservations on the part of Louisville mayoral candidates with this gem of an all-for-one, one-for-Jonestown thinking:

“This project is too big and too important for any one individual to stand in his way.”

It’s doubtful that Bob Knight knew he was providing a bullet point for Stemler, but when Knight expressed those famous sentiments about the doctrine of inevitability — suggesting that prospective rape victims relax and enjoy the experience — he was giving knee-jerk supporters of the Ohio River Bridges Project an attitude to cop, one sadly endorsed by New Albany city council members Bob Caesar and Kevin Zurschmiede at last Thursday’s meeting.

Both argued that the bridges project is so big, so impressive and so very irrefutable that smaller minds like theirs could have no place in the discussion even if they, not Dalby or Stemler, were elected to do precisely that.  

And so we cower in awe as Dalby admonishes us for thinking independently. We humbly bow in simplistic terror as the earth is moved around the river banks and millions of cubic yards of concrete are poured, and we dutifully lower our trousers as we smile and grin at our good fortune to have lived (and most of us surely died) only slightly prior to the happy day when the bridges are finished, and we have achieved the solution to the problems of 2010.

Except that it will be 2060, and for our grandchildren, still dutifully queuing to join 1si and network their way to well-scrubbed success, it’ll be a whole new round of inevitability as our communities rewind, tax, toll, lube and go through the whole shortsighted boondoggle yet another time.

That’s the reality. It is far from inevitable.

Who decides?

Roger is compiling a list of local people and organizations opposed to tolling and the bridges boondoggle. To view it, visit the NA Confidential blog: www.cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com