Suspension of disbelief (is required)
The modern world is a rough place for anyone with an allergy to bullshit.
The photo collage above is from one fabulous July day, 48 summers ago. I’d recently purchased a beat ‘62 VW Beetle for $500—my first car after several years of riding bicycles everywhere. I took three weeks off from my job at the University of Kentucky and made my first trip out to the mythic, to me anyway, West.
As a teenager growing up in a small town near the foothills of Appalacia, I would occasionally go out at night when there was little traffic and stand in the middle of US 60, gazing westward. I imagined following a single ribbon of highway all the way to my longed-for promised land somewhere out beyond the sunset on the western horizon. If you've ever heard the Chris Rea song Texas, that was me looking west all those years ago.
So in the summer of 1976, armed with a rudimentary ride full of climbing gear and some money I’d saved, I headed west for a few weeks to live the dream. My 1.2-liter German econobox just might have been capable of 55 mph if you dropped it out of an airplane. So it was a long two days from Lexington, KY, to Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. I arrived at the trailhead to Longs Peak, my first destination, late at night and slept in the car. The next morning, 4 am, I was on the trail.
It was a fabulous day that I remember very clearly, almost five decades later. On my own in my first full day in the west, armed with far more determination than skill, I managed my first alpine route, my first fourteener, my first mixed climb, my first activity of any type at over 5000', and my first climb longer than the 150’ routes in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge on which I’d cut my teeth. I soloed Lambs Slide to Notch Couloir on the East Face of Longs Peak and summited at 14,255'.
Not too shabby for a skinny greenhorn from the east. It left an impression on me.
Most climbers then (even today) would rope up for much of this climb. I did not use a rope, though I carried one in case I needed it. The route begins with the steep (50 degrees) couloir known as the Lambs Slide. Although the couloir is not particularly technical, if you do fall and are unable to self-arrest, a boulderfield awaits you at the bottom of the superslide, ready to abruptly and catastrophically end your high-speed exit.
About 800 feet up Lambs Slide, there’s an exit north along a spectacular ledge known as Broadway, which spans the lower east face of Longs high above Mills Glacier. Most of Broadway is fairly casual to cross, though the drop that eventually grows to 800’ off your right elbow as you traverse north commands some attention. But there is a point where “Broadway” becomes a misnomer as the ledge narrows from a few yards to a foot or so. Here, it’s necessary to gingerly traverse around a large bulge with one’s heels hanging over lots of empty air that’s the only thing between you and Mills Glacier 800’ below. Here’s a photo of the exact spot.
This is the visceral definition of “touch and go.” It’s the antithesis of the layers of bullshit and fakeness that permeate the flat world. Here, you’re on your own. There are no nannies or commisars to save you from anything. You are in command of your own destiny (mostly—there are, in the mountains, objective dangers that you can mitigate but not eliminate). There is a direct connection between effort and outcome. Live or die is mostly up to you.
The mountains don’t care about your “vibes.” They don’t care if you are rich and influential or a lowly climbing bum. They don’t care if you believe in gravity, avalanches, or rockfall. They’ll kill you no matter what you believe (or not) if you aren’t careful. The suspension of disbelief that’s necessary to get along in the flat world doesn’t work for long in the mountains. The mountains reward critical awareness, boldness, and skill. They are a counterpoint to the illusion of decorum that conceals the reality of the flat world. That’s why I have always felt at home in the mountains. They are an anditode to bullshit.
Suspension of disbelief just isn’t my thing. If I could have figured out a way to spend my life on a single long, big wall or alpine climb, I’d have been just fine. In the vertical world, the things that I care about the most—truth, integrity, courage, commitment, and effort—are rewarded with success. I understand the rigor of the vertical world. The layers of bullshit of the flat world, not so much—despite decades of trying.
Two stories emerged this week that made me think a lot about this long-ago adventure and how my time in the mountains affected my world view. The first is the very prominent story about President Joe Biden’s unconditional pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, for various crimes. The second is a much smaller story about collegiate athletics. Both, in my view, are connected by thick, sinewy cords of illusion and bullshit.
The news broke late on Sunday evening that Joe Biden was issuing an unconditional pardon to his troubled son, Hunter, for all crimes charged or otherwise going back a decade. As usual, I like to go to the source for things that are likely to have bits and pieces lost in the cracks with repetition. So, from the president himself:
Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted. Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.
The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room – with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.
No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.
For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded. Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.
Though I have little concern that you know generally where I stand on Hunter Biden and his misadventures, have a look at Lies, damned Lies, and Hunter Biden’s laptop for a refresher. Yes, that is a manure truck on its side in the middle of a road.
This story of the Biden pardon has set the chip sets that run the Interwebs on fire. I shall add but one minor note to this flaming cacaphony. This is exactly why I am unable to suspend disbelief long enough to believe that we are in good or able hands when it comes to who’s pulling the levers that run things. This is why I lack sufficient trust to even watch a movie or TV program unburdened by the knowledge that it’s a fake reality created on a sound stage.
After years of Biden unequivocally promising no pardon for Hunter, it's happened. It’s just another brick in the wall of COVID, Biden’s fitness for office, and the rest of the bullshit we’ve been fed about our country for nigh on a decade by most of the media. The fastest way to destroy a modern democracy is when no one believes that anything about it is real or true anymore. I don’t know about you, but I’m struggling with this.
The sheer moxie of the media in aiding and abbetting the obfuscation of the decades-in-making Biden mafia empire, President Biden’s obvious cognitive decline, lies about COVID and Russian collusion and misinformation, and much more have put me in a foul and surly mood when it comes to faith in the powers that be. I’m just about, in fact, out. It’s nearly all bullshit. Worse, there is, for me, little succor in fact that our next political act is Trump. It’s the bullshit in a different flavor just to make it a bit more palatable—not unlike menthol in cigarettes.
A few days ago, I came across a Washington Post story about Arizona State Football. The story, a poorly-written rant about a former coach, was unmemorable, except for a single paragraph:
When Sun Devils linebacker Jordan Crook posted a video of his high-mileage Nissan Altima smoking from the hood, Dillingham (ASU’s current head coach) immediately responded on social media with a direct, no-nonsense call to boosters and fans to find an NIL deal for Crook to receive a reliable car. Sure enough, it happened within days.
One of the biggest illusions in all of American culture for nearly a century has been the pretense of amateurism in big-time collegiate sports. Major college athletics are now and have always been, first and foremost, about money. Colleges, in collaboration with the NCAA, have dedicated decades to cultivating a dazzling facade of enthusiasm and school spirit to conceal the underlying greed that drives big-time college athletics. From a marketing perspective, it’s a genuine wonder.
There are three main cohorts in collegiate athletics: the schools (and their boosters), the NCAA, and the student athletes. The student athletes were typically the ones who drew the short straw out of these three cohorts, while everyone else made bank from their efforts.
I served for several years on the athletic board of the university where I spent most of my career. It was an eye-opening experience. At one point, we had a young woman, a varsity athlete on a team that required student-athletes to purchase their own uniforms, who was sanctioned by the NCAA for using her image and likeness on a poster for tutoring. It was completely clear to me that NIL should belong to student athletes—a belief not shared by the NCAA or the university. This eventually happened, but not in a manner that I ever imagined.
Our judicial system, which is generally winner take all, is a terrible place to hammer out deals that are beneficial to all sides. Almost always, it is more beneficial to negotiate outside of court. Yet because of the intransigence of both the NCAA and universities over the potential loss of income, this is exactly what happened with the NIL (name, image, and likeness) issue. Now that NIL is a money machine that mostly belongs to student athletes, it’s everyone for themselves. The shiny veneer of rah-rah college amateurism is gone.
That’s why Nick Saban left college football (on Saban’s influence on the sport, I’m agnostic). That’s why the college football standings are in unrecognizable chaos. Have a look at this list of NIL valuations in college football. It’ll blow your mind. As of this year, I have absolutely no interest anymore in college sports. There’s only so much suspension of disbelief I can muster. College athletics is now beyond this threshold by orders of magnitude.
When you combine this new world of lightly restricted chumming for cash with the involvement of very young student athletes and with legal wagering on both game outcomes and player props, what could possibly go wrong? Imagine that you are the right guard on a team with skill position players making hundreds of thousands in NIL, and you’d like a taste of the good life for yourself. It’s not hard to see where this is going.
Right now, professional football fields, if you will pardon the pun, much less of a facade than their college counterparts when it comes to integrity. Professional teams understand the risks associated with inappropriate gambling and are adept at preventing it from happening. To its credit, the NFL has heretofore demonstrated little humor when it comes to issues of player, coach, and staff gambling. There’s a lot left to criticize when it comes to sports gambling, but the NFL seems to be doing what they can.
Colleges are a different story. Does anyone really believe that the same university administrations that have encouraged massive amounts of student debt to enrich themselves, have spent outrageous amounts on DEI bureaucracies, and have twisted science into an unrecognizable progressive pretzel are going to figure out how to deal with the nefarious aspects of gambling on their sports?
So, when it comes to football, I'm now fully invested in the NFL. The biggest illusion in professional football is that the Dallas Cowboys are America’s team. America’s team is the Detroit Lions. Name me another franchise in all of professional sports that coaches and players are willing to make sacrifices to be a part of. The Lions are the one thing in all of popular culture that I can believe in and root for at the same time.
As for everything else, get me back to the mountains.
Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com
Among the rest of the BS in pardoning Hunter, the thing that annoys me is how one barely realizes in the coverage that that man is in his mid-50's - not a "child" (i.e., Amy, Chelsea, Barron during their fathers' first terms) that it is not fair to attack; in other words just a few years younger than myself, and so why is he playing the victim behind daddy's coattails? Grow up already, jerk, is what I say to myself when I read the coverage. And I have always thought that the very worst judge of a criminal is always the parent "he was such a sweet, thoughtful son, he could never have done such a thing!", so it strikes me as media malpractice to put parents on the spot when an atrocity happens; but of course in this case the principal parties were all in the deals together as a family business, so it is even more annoying to hear people trying to justify Biden Sr. trying to justify pardoning Biden Jr. and make it about some cloying father-son love. Blah.
I need to get to sea every so often for the same reason. CSN Southern Cross, you understand the truth you can find under a quiet midnight sky.