The Old 3 C Highway and the New 3 C Highway

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 23:28

There is a strange route here that no one seems to say anything nice about called the “Ah twahlf” (A-12) which connects Brussels/Brussel/Bruxelles to Antwerp(en). It’s a road to nowhere sort of road that looks much more like a large multi-lane road in say Dallas, Texas than a European roadway. Imagine seemingly endless concrete, tarmac, the typically Belgian over use of electric freeway lights to ward off the threat of the dark of night. Alongside the tarmac stretch are various industries overtaking charming small rural farms, the kind of old time agricultural settlement with a sway back barn attached to the house and the barn taking up a good two thirds of the building all contain underneath heavy, last a lifetime, terra cotta roof tiles. The little farms, usually with a more modern less interesting detached new house nearby give way to a forgotten row of brick houses attached to one another before giving way to shopping stretches to house the Wal-mart of Europe: Ikea. When the rectangularity of aluminum shed architecture, nothing more than a modern military-esque quonson hut to house shopping, industry or heath facilities give way to deluxe family saunas, garden stores, furniture stores, or even a brewery of some devilish Belgian brew; when you have passed even a car showroom that features “smart” cars stacked like pasteries inside a turning display case you know the other city Bru-town or A’pen depending on your direction isn’t far off. In the odorama department American fast food culinary smells await mixed in with the omnipresent smell in Flanders of diesel. This roadway for the driver features cameras to monitor traffickers speed with the promise of an expensive future post and traffic lights at the regular interval of cross streets just when you maintained a swift velocity... It’s the sort of pace that sends over caffeinated commuters here to the nearby E-19 for a non-stop effect without traffic lights of the super highway except that road is usually twice a day stop and go bumper to bumper parking lot disguised as traffic. When you live in Brussels and you have to travel by car to Antwerp(en) you can pick your poison with the A-12 or the E-19`, personally the A-12 is more interesting if you take a breath relax and pace yourself. It’s all more evidence that the metropolitan regions of Brussels and Antwerp have collided so that Antwerp has defaulted into being Brussels North: A conclusion which begs the question is Charleroi then Brussels South? The subsequent inevitable question is Leuven Brussels East then? To which one must then ask what about Gent? Is Gent nothing more than a provincial upper economic class suburban west side story of Bru-town? My guess is that sometime in this century Belgium, if it sticks together, will be the largest city in Europe. Take my advice and take the train if you are lucky you will end up on a old Belgian train which has the unusual charm of something bought on sale from the economic demise of the old Soviet realm. But really riding these trains can transport you via imaginary expressways back in time to behind the old Iron Curtain and instead of just taking a short trip to Antwerp(en) you can imagine yourself en route from Moscow to Chernobyl.

Back home in Dollville there was a strange road that angled off the typical north south transportation and power grid in a North-East/South-West direction called the Old 3 C Highway. The old 3 C is something of an Ohio version of the old A-12. Like the A-12 there is an alternative to the 3 C that is considered better, faster, the I-71 but then taking the old 3 C is an anachronistic choice for the anarchist at heart. I’ve heard the 3 C's stood for the three large cities of Ohio; connecting Cincinnati to Cleveland by way of Columbus. It's a road of former tract houses converted (by way of paneled over windows) into Adult Bookstore's alongside forgotten strip malls and former gas stations now used car lots. Lots of wide open spaces between rusty chain link fences lined by weeds. At intersections the ubiquitous “fast food” fry pit ensemble of the same monotonous choices. Occasionally a depressing oddity occurs with a strange church appearing in a converted failed fast food establishment. This old highway is a dusty sort of forgettable place connecting tarmac lots to gravel filled fields not even of interest to the student of Commercial Archeology (not too many rusty old neon signs to photograph). The old 3 C must have had its hay day during some post war (World War II) McCarthy era ideology of a senseless compulsion towards a sort of diluted economic expansionism across the land of a people that once belonged to a non European society.

In the world of today we blindly contend with a different sort of 3 C's. They are a variation on the same theme and yet one would think these three new words would be part of every Anglophones everyday vocabulary: Corporatist, Corporatism, Corporat-ocracy. There were days these suffixed ideas were used to articulate difficult threats much like the word Islamist is thrown about currently. But why these 3 C’s aren’t part of the talk of the day from the 24-7 media outlets to the arbitrary conversations of passers-by within electronically monitored and climate controlled aisles under the stark white of fluorescent lights of mega retail establishments? Certainly each of the new 3 C's can be applied to the state of the states.

Corporatist: One who works for and believes in the trickle down pyramid economic theory where money is confined to a small number of people at the top and meanwhile the large hard working base is maintained at slave wages.

Corporatism: Similar to despotism, fascism or Nazism except rather than the criminal wielding of power being confined to one individual it is controlled by an invisible board of directors who like puppeteers employ Corporatists to be the brawny puppets.

Corporat-ocracy: The end result of Democracy when corporations become large enough to buy all the political representation necessary to utilize a Nation as a corporate smokescreen to cover corporate economic exploitations i.e.) the United States of America Inc.