Trump, partisan politics and bicycles
Why most of us wish that the bomb throwers in life would square off somewhere else with unlimited firepower and just leave the rest of us alone.
First, some announcements. Science Friday, due to scheduling difficulties, will be Science Saturday this week. My apologies for the delay.
I am going to expand video and podcasts on Howlin’ beyond Science Friday. I am setting up a series of interviews with public figures in science, music, and the media that I believe many of you will enjoy and find informative. As Substack currently provides no mechanism for live streaming, these will be recorded and uploaded like any other video/podcast, but I anticipate that Substack will provide a platform for live streams soon. In the meantime, we’ll produce these with Streamyard. It will be a blast.
Many of you have Substacks of your own. Others who find their way here are writers or public figures who, I think, have something interesting to say. I’m quite amazed at your work. If you would like to be my guest on a Howlin’ podcast, please DM me via Substack, and we’ll set something up. You choose the topic, and we’ll come up with a time for the interview. I guarantee that it will be a lot of fun. I will be happy to reciprocate.
As always, thanks for reading and subscribing. I never imagined that this would grow as it has. but I’m sure happy that it did.
I got home from a bicycle ride today just in time to hear the breaking news about the verdict in the Trump trial. Guilty on all 34 counts. I’m amazed, but not surprised. I posted a one-sentence response across my social media: Be careful what you wish for.
Since 2016, I've heard a lot about “threats to democracy” from the left. These have ranged from the absurd claims that foreign agents significantly influenced the 2016 election to ominous claims that Trump was a one-man doom cycle who would bring about the end of life on Earth as we know it. None of that panned out, but the doomsayers haven’t given up. When the left figured out that they may not be able to defeat Trump with their candidates, ideals, and overwhelming hysteria, they weaponized the legal system to take him off the board.
It’s truly the stuff of banana republics. I expect this to get overturned at the appellate level, but it’s still a travesty of justice. I’m a bit ashamed today.
If you are one of the happy ones right now, well, be careful what you wish for. I suspect that it won’t be long before those cheering right now will rue this day. Anyone who thinks that this stops here is a fool. I’m going to grab some Bourbon and just watch as local DA’s start ginning up charges against former presidents that they don’t like. It’s about to be a thing.
What if the Dearborn, MI, DA decides to prosecute Barack Obama for his 2009 decision justifying indefinite detention in Guantanamo Bay, despite that being a violation of international law? Obama, after reviewing detainee files upon assuming office, announced, “We are going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantánamo who pose a danger to our country. But, even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States.”
Lock him up! Yeah, I know—what would possibly convince a local DA to assume that they were somehow empowered to prosecute crimes well beyond their legal purview?
Oops!
Back in the early ‘80s, my friend Bob Baker and I summited Half Dome in Yosemite Valley via the Northwest Face Route. While I was belaying Bob up the last pitch, a tourist who’d come up the Cable Route wandered over to ask about the climb. As I was talking with her, the screw-off lens cap for my 35mm decided to take flight in a wind gust. “Oops! Dammit!” I remember watching the errant lens cap take off on the big ride to the valley floor and hearing her say, in the most solemn possible tone, “Oops! sounds like a bad word in mountain climbing.”
It kind of is. It’s also bad in politics.
I have made several things concerning Trump completely clear here. The first is that I loathe and despise Donald Trump. The second is that I do not loathe or despise anyone in the roughly half of the country that disagrees with me concerning Trump (at least not for just that). No politician (or, for that matter, any public figure really) is worth the cost of being a good neighbor. I can agree to disagree if you can. The third is that I consider Trump to be far less of a “threat to democracy” than the lawfare-deploying leftists who have taken his downfall, by hook or by crook, as their guidestar.
These things trouble me more than a little. Yet, despite all this, I still believe in American exceptionalism. I still believe in the American Dream. I still believe in the ideals stated in our founding documents. I still believe that our country is the greatest living experiment in the history of democracy and has been, despite its flaws, for two and a half centuries. But I also think that we just may be on the precipice of some trouble. And if we don’t get our act together, maybe we don’t make it to our tricentennial as the America that we are all fortunate enough, right now, to know.
I've long maintained that a charismatic megalomaniac won't destroy America. This country is too strong for that, and much of that strength lies beyond the DC Beltway, in the good hearts and minds of ordinary Americans.
It’s not likely to be a foreign adversary either. The Russian military is a joke, and so, I suspect, is China’s. Everyone else should fear our military a lot, even in its current woke doldrums.
No, what could bring down America is a critical mass of people deciding that what they want is more important than what our system of government allows for. Laws be damned. When a nation founded on the rule of law abandons or distorts the rule of law to bend events to their will, then we’re screwed.
That, in my opinion, happened today.
I love things with two wheels. It’s been a lifelong affair. I got my first bicycle in second grade and have racked up miles and miles every year since then. In my late 30's, I discovered motorcycles (and lots of new ways to get thumped). Two wheels R us.
My kids and I ride bicycles a lot—just about every day that the weather is nice. I consider a bicycle to be a method of transportation as much as a vehicle, literally and figuratively, for good times. There are only two things about the cycling experience, both bicycles and motorcycles, that I don’t like: people in cars and other riders. I am, due to decades of bitter experience, a misanthrope when it comes to my fellow travelers and brethren on the roads.
The problem with cars, as any bicyclist will tell you, is the insanely inattentive nature of most drivers. I live in a small mountain town in the west. There are boundless opportunities for recreational cycling in my area, but paradoxically, commuting is a nightmare. There are few bike paths or bike lanes on most of the roads that go from one end of the city to the other. Anyone who wants to ride to work or take a cycling trip to the store around here needs to be ready for a thrill every minute in local traffic. It’s no better for motorcycles. Just today, a young man was killed here when he was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light.
Humans, as it turns out, are really good at pattern recognition. When things fall into expected patterns, it’s possible for us to perform rote functions without much attention. Most of us have experienced the sensation of getting home from work with a lot on our minds and realizing that we don’t remember a single thing about the drive. It’s because the drive home is so routine that it doesn’t require much cognition.
But drop something unexpected into a routine pattern when someone is paying minimal attention, and things can go awry quickly. That’s why a lot of people get creamed at train crossings each year. In a car, the routine pattern around you is that of other cars. A train doesn’t fit that schema. And when one is not paying attention, that unexpected part of the pattern might as well not exist. The same thing applies to bicycles and motorcycles, except that physics works the other way.
So, yeah, I hate all of the cell phone-wielding, fast food munching, and makeup-preening dingbats who try to kill me every time I go for a ride. I have learned, as a matter of survival, to assume that every car coming at me while I’m on a motorcycle or bicycle is being driven by a vindictive ex with murder gleaming in stereo from both eyes.
I have as much disdain for my fellow cyclists.
Everyone is aware of the crotch-rocket loonies lane-splitting at high speeds, dirt-bike stunters doing wheelies in traffic, and loud-pipes-save-lives crowd who tend to rile up the rest of the motoring public. I ride sport bikes myself, albeit responsibly. Nonetheless, I can feel your look in that SUV.
There’s a bike shop here that organizes large group rides every Tuesday night. It’s a parade of lycra, shaved legs, and arrogance for miles. I have learned not to ride along any of the routes that they frequent the next day, lest I encounter someone who’s still pissed about having had to follow a group riding down a major highway four-abreast right next to a bike lane.
Most of the folks on those rides seem to fall victim to a specific type of temporary memory loss where they forget that they, too, drive automobiles and would probably lose their minds over someone, say, driving the speed limit in the left lane on the freeway. But while they are with their posse on that ride, they own that lane. Screw you very much. As a result, you don’t want to be the next solo person on a bicycle that the drivers they made angry encounter.
A few days ago, my kids and I rode into town one morning to visit our favorite coffee shop for breakfast. There’s road construction that has forced all traffic along our route over a congested and dangerous overpass. My kids and I ride on the narrow sidewalk to stay out of traffic on the bridge.
On this particular ride, we encountered a lycra-clad rider on an $8000 bicycle coming at us on the wrong side of the bridge. “Serious” cyclists generally can’t be bothered with the hoi polloi interfering with their Strava split. So rather than dismount to properly yield the right of way to oncoming traffic, he clipped my handlebars and ran my son, behind us, into the concrete retaining wall. He’s lucky that I’m all about modeling good behavior for my kids, or I’d have tossed his sorry ass off that bridge.
That, in a nutshell, is modern life. For me, and I suspect many of you as well, my cycling experience is a lot like the contemporary political experience we are all suffering through. I don’t give a shit about having the lightest bicycle, recording the fastest segment time on Strava, or having the best wax job on my legs. I just want to go riding with my kids. I don’t want to worry every ride about being run down by inattentive drivers or those trained to not especially appreciate cyclists by other cyclists. I don’t want to be run off the road by Joe Lycra for impeding his race training, either.
I’m the guy caught in the middle of warring factions who’s trained himself to ride for miles along that last inch of pavement before the ditch as a matter of self-preservation. I shouldn’t have to, but it’s the lay of the land. I’m just doing what I have to do to get by.
I feel the same way about both Trump and his treacherous, illiberal opponents. I just want the country that I value and appreciate to continue in prosperity for the benefit of my kids and everyone else for whom it has provided so much grace, peace, and opportunity. To that end, it would benefit the rest of us greatly if you political cage fighters, the ones who are determined to die with your hands around each others throats, would all go off somewhere and settle your bullshit without slagging the rest of us down.
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.
Good-natured curmudgeons with the word sense to elicit laughter in the face of brain-dead inanity are too few and far between. Road paranoia is patently and truly sane, literally and metaphorically. Ride we must, while we can, but with hubris and keeping one’s lane and with an eye on the mirror. In our physical world at least, the right-to-life of bicyclists is not a hill you want to die on. Ride on. Be safe. You are needed.
I have heard some well-meaning folks say that bicyclists are not bound by the same rules as the rest of us e.g. one claimed that if cyclists are burning rubber flying down a hillside and coming to traffic lights that change against their favor that, nonetheless, drivers with the green lights MUST yield to the descending cyclists. While I think mere prudence should deter drivers from entering that intersection I find it hard to accept being told that a bunch of entitled wealthy folks on bikes have license to ignore the rules of the road binding the rest of us.