Parallel Universe

Last night I was walking down the sidewalk, on my way to the store, when I saw a guy trying to back into a parking spot along the busy four-lane boulevard in front of my building. He wasn't doing a very good job. His first attempt had left his car sticking halfway into the right lane, causing a backup of about a dozen cars -- most of whom were trying unsuccessfully to get around him. Naturally, the cars in the left lane weren't having any of that, because LA. So, the hapless motorist pulled forward again to get a better angle on the situation and wound up backing into the curb at a nearly 45 degree angle -- creating an even bigger obstacle to the flow of traffic.
At this point there were at least twenty cars stacked up in the right lane, stretching all the way down the block and into the next. The guy looked flustered and panicky. His car was a new Lexus, and I couldn't help wondering why, with all the fancy 'driver-assistance' technology, the guy still sucked so bad at parallel parking.

 I continued walking down the sidewalk and crossed to the next block -- by now there were probably thirty cars stuck behind this moron. I thought about my dad teaching me to parallel park and how he wouldn't let me use the car until I'd learned how to execute the maneuver in one seamless move. It was part of the driver's license road test -- you couldn't pass if you couldn't parallel park. I thought everyone had to learn how to do it. How is it possible that a grown man driving in a major U.S. city could be unable to parallel park?
It turns out that California, along with several other states, no longer requires parallel parking in their road test. Why? The short answer: Because it's too hard. People kept failing the tests and had to come back and retake them over and over again, creating a backup at the DMV. You see the irony, right? To alleviate the backup at the DMV, they dropped parallel parking from the road test, thereby creating a backup on my street -- and probably hundreds of thousands of others.
More and more, we live in a world where being competent is no longer a requirement. The chief executive of the (formerly) most powerful nation on earth has literally no idea what he's doing at any given time. Having skills and knowledge and expertise are quaint notions that only exist in some parallel universe in the minds of a disappearing few. But it's cool, because now we have cars that can parallel park for you -- if you can figure out how they work. Or you could just take an Uber and not have to park at all. Soon we'll have cars that will do all the driving for you. Won't that be grand? We won't have to know how to do anything for ourselves. Just sit back and let the machines take over. What could possibly go wrong?
As for me, I think I'll just keep walking.