A View From The Bridge
Neoliberal Globalization Disaster
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – MARCH 26: In an aerial view, the cargo ship Dali sits in the water after running into and collapsing the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, 2024 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Playwright Arthur Miller’s 1955 play “A View From The Bridge” is metaphor:
In his own brilliant way, Miller touched upon almost every basic emotion – love, desire, obsession, jealousy, and betrayal with the Italian characters reaching for the elusive American Dream.
Miller’s play was the origin of one of my favorite movies, the classic On The Waterfront:
The stories of the making of On the Waterfront are legion. That the film was originally a scenario written by Arthur Miller, who fell out with director Elia Kazan over Kazan’s political choices, and whose own research on waterfront crime would later see light as the distinguished play A View From the Bridge.
[Clarification – a friendly reader rightly takes me to task for obscuring and burying the real story of the conflict between Miller and Kazan (“fell out”) – a mistake I should never have made (with a lazy Google clipped quote, not my own words), especially given that I’m now reading the classic on the McCarthy period Ellen Schrecker’s “Many Are The Crimes”. My friend wrote:
On The Water Front was Elia Kazan answer to Arthur Millers The Crucible – It was a justification for the McCarthy period and for Kazans betrayal of friends and rationalization for his naming name. He put numerous friends on the black list and unemployed .The real irony it was the Communists that battled the mob on the water front in the 1940’s and kicked them off – More Ironic blacklisting of Communist Union members let mob back in control of the docks
The immigrant working class experience in search of the American Dream is something we’ll know nothing about for the six working class immigrants killed while working on the Francis Scott Key bridge that was knocked down by a massive container cargo ship in the Baltimore Harbor.
That accident creates a comprehensive view from the bridge of the disaster of Neoliberal global finance capitalism.
The 6 workers killed on that bridge were immigrants from central America, working the night shift on a dangerous low paying nowhere job – filling pot holes.
The gigantic cargo ship that killed them – and the international manufacturing and logistics supply chain it serves – is the perfect symbol of an out of control global trade regime that has devastated the US working class and the American Dream: from deindustrialization, to low wage Walmart jobs, to Wall Street profits, to a consumption and growth driven climate catastrophe.
The failure to mandate basic port safety requirements – like tug boat escorts and redundant power (propulsion) and navigation systems – on these behemoth “economy of scale” cargo ships – is another egregious example of Neoliberal hostility to government and regulation, in favor of free trade and open markets. Some academics call this “regulatory capture”, but the reality is far worse.
The existence of caps on liability for the maritime shipping industry – just like massive corporate subsidies under the Price Anderson Act for the nuclear industry – shows how corporate interests own government.
President Biden’s pledge to provide full federal funding for bridge replacement – with no mention of the US Justice Department seeking full cost recovery for all damages – is just more evidence of another multi-billion corporate bailout.
Had this been an oil tanker spill, the focus would have been on the cost of pollution damage and government lawsuits to recover the damages. The fact that there is literally no mention of that in news coverage speaks volumes about the corporate lapdog role of the mainstream media. Global trade is immune from scrutiny.
In the wake of the Boeing plane crashes, there really could not be a greater sequence of events that more perfectly illustrates all the corrupt elements of Neoliberal global finance capitalism – what Biden perversely praises as “the rules based order”.
[End Note: I wonder who the local Baltimore Port political broker is, like this one from NY Port:
Bill Wolfe, the head of NJ-PEER, an environmental group that has monitored NJ Transit, is critical of the deals for lacking “competitive bidding, transparency, and robust ethical restrictions, which are particularly important given the many real estate and development interests among Wolff & Samson clients.
Update: 3/28/24 – just read The NY Times coverage. The Times very briefly mentions the tug boat escort:
At 1:25 a.m., after the two tugboats detached and turned back, the Dali had accelerated to about 10 miles per hour as it approached the Key Bridge.
But the Times fails to ask the obvious questions, which I submitted as read comments:
Why did the tug boat escort detach when and where they did?
Why don’t Coast Guard and/or Harbor Safety Plan MANDATE tug escorts past all critical infrastructure????
The NY Times story also misleads readers with the Biden Sect. or Transportation Buttigieg quote that those responsible will be held accountable.
I listened to the press conference and he said that those “responsible AND LIABLE” will be held accountable. He knows liability is limited.
Update #2 – as expected, The NY Times did not print the above reader comments that were critical of their reporting.
I just posted another, which, of course, they also will not post:
NY Times reporters should read the LA – Long Beach Port Safety Plan and findings regarding risks and tug escorts. Apparently, Baltimore Harbor Safety Plan (which I was unable to find online) and the US Coast regulations do not mandate tug escorts outbound. Then ask the Coast Guard and NTSB to respond and explain.