Racial Harmony - An Old Freedom Rider Tries To Relive Ebony And Ivory But Finds 'Whites Need Not Apply'

Vicki Batten was an old Freedom Rider - on the busses to Montgomery to march with Martin and Ralph across the Pettus Bridge in Selma.  Ah, what a heady time! she remembered. More like a camp jamboree than serious business until, of course they were set upon by Bull Connor's dogs, beaten like tramps by his thugs, thrown into jail with nothing but bread and water. 

'I would never have had it otherwise', she said, reminiscing about those times, the halcyon times of racial integration, ebony and ivory, black and white, arms linked singing 'We Shall Overcome'.  She still wore an amulet given to her by a young black boy, a gri-gri he had been given by his former slave grandmother, given by her grandmother as she was loaded aboard the slave ship taking them to America. 

'Dis keep dem evil sprits gone fo' evah', the boy said to Vicki as she set off on the long march for freedom.  'Now Olodumare is wif you'. 

She had tears in her eyes as she remembered that day, that boy, and the sun rising over the Pettus bridge, the stink of the tannery on the far banks of the river, the solidarity, the camaraderie, the brilliant, unalloyed hope for a better future. 

She and her classmate were on their way up to Poughkeepsie for their Vassar reunion.  It had been many years since she had visited her old school, and she was filled with fond memories of girlhood, first love, and the intimations of her professional calling.  When visiting professor Harold Bloom read from Blake's The Tyger, she was moved to tears and knew at that moment that her life was to be dedicated to beauty. 

'Do you think Felicia will be here?' Vicki's classmate asked as they made the final turn onto the campus, already festooned with welcome Class of 19___banners, white tents put up in the quad, caterers already fussing with tablecloths and silver services. It was a beautiful May day, and the weekend promised to be a memorable one. 

Felicia had been Vicki's first love and the two were an item during a year together - strange, unique, and a curiosity since those were the days when that kind of love was far more undercover and not supposed to exist, especially not at such a high-toned campus like Vassar. 

'A flirtation', snapped Vicki, hoping that she would not have to be reminded of her sexual dalliance under the covers at Stratham House; but the thought had crossed her mind.  What would she say to her after so many years? especially since Vicki had gone on to marry, have children, and lead a quietly traditional life - except of course for Selma. 

To her surprise and pleasure, Felicia was at the reunion and even more surprising, she too had been in Alabama during the time of civil protest. Now she was in a different political place, a different emotional country, and far from Selma, but she had been moved by the same integrative spirit at the time.

Now, the paths taken by the two former lovers had diverged significantly after the Freedom Rides.  Vicki had followed her heart and joined the civil rights movement, but for one reason or another meandered into redistributive wealth, climate activism, and world peace.  She had never once lifted her nose from the grindstone, and was as passionately committed to these existential causes as she had been for the black man. 

Felicia on the other hand had turned the corner, looked at her sexual and political dalliances as youthful fantasy, and become a corporate lawyer who was proud that she had defended both Amazon and Microsoft in famous anti-trust cases. She came to the reunion dressed to kill, all Armani and Arpege, a fashion plate looking like a well-tailored Catherine Deneuve, desirable but aloof. 

Vicki felt shabby standing next to her.  A life of social commitment did not pay well nor was it expected to.  Money was the root of oppression, racism, and climate denial; but still and all, she wanted to look like Felicia and in fact be like Felicia who warmly invited her to their summer home on Nantucket or their winter place on St. Bart's. 

Vicki had heard about Felicia, Amazon, and Microsoft - the Vassar Alumnae Magazine literally gushed with pride over her achievements - but Felicia had heard nothing about Vicki.  A life in the trenches meant keeping your head down. 

'When this shindig is over' said Felicia, warmly embracing her old friend, 'we must have lunch'.

Other than that fortunate, happy occasion of meeting Felicia again, the reunion was a routine affair. Quiche, chardonnay, girl talk, chatter about children and grandchildren, a few noteworthy alumnae talking about art, the human genome, chips, and rare earths, but nothing more.  Vicki was glad it was over, thinking more about her coming lunch with Felicia than the affairs of her classmates. 

'Why are you still in that rat's nest', asked Felicia when the two met a month later at the Four Seasons.  'As corrupt as can be. BLM LaShonda whatever in prison for fraud and embezzlement. Your inner cities sinkholes, rabid, disgusting....Oh, I'm being too forward, aren't I, darling?'

Felicia, however forward and intemperate her remarks, had hit the nail on the head.  When Vicki thought to reup her allegiance to the cause of racial justice and made overtures to the Black Women's Social Caucus, Washington's most prominent civil rights non-profit, she was met at the door, shepherded through metal detectors, frisked and asked to empty her pocketbook. 

'Sorry 'bout that', said her host. 'Can never be too careful these days'.  On the walls of Letitia James' office there were no photographs of King, Abernathy, Rosa Parks, or even Malcolm X, Rap Brown, and Stokely Carmichael, icons of the black cause, heroes of the movement. "We don't do that shit no mo'" said Letitia. 'Them's history and we's the present'; and from that moment on Vicki knew she didn't belong.  Better not to mention Selma, Bull Connor, Montgomery or any of the rest of it.  

'What did I tell you?', Felicia said when she and Vicki met again.  'Not that you've spent your life for a lost cause', Felicia went on, 'because of course you did what you thought was right, but still and all in all, you were barking up the wrong tree'

A pause for reflection.  What had started off as a happy, unified, collegial, and happy event - blacks and whites together, singing in unison, arms locked, embracing, and just happy to be together - had become a racially divided, racist, identity-flaunted nightmare.   How did this happen? 

'Is Harold Bloom still alive?', Felicia asked.  Vicki was unsure but after checking found out that he wasn't.  How she had been impressed by him, by Blake, and by the deliberate parsing of those few, spare lines of Tyger! Was it too late to return to the fold?  Of course it was.  She should have retired years ago, but hung in there. 'Sunken costs', said Felicia.  Too much invested regardless of the innocence and yes, ignorance of the investment. 

Florida beckoned.  Vicki knew that she should not be thinking condo in 'The Free State', the fascist state, but she was tired of northern winters, slush, and potholes.  She would have preferred to go out in a blaze of glory, the signing of another civil rights bill perhaps, something to mark her efforts; but she couldn't shake that niggling comment of Felicia - she said sinkhole but she really meant shithole - and decided that a Tampa beach would be the anodyne appropriate for a tired warrior. 

Felicia was in the news again, arguing corporate interests before the Supreme Court. Vicki was happy for her, Frost's the road not taken Vicki's fate, but let bygones be bygones.  Those camp songs on the Freedom Rides were something, weren't they?

The Daydreams Of An Eternal Idealist - Hitler, Stalin, And Mao Were Just Bumps In The Road

Taken together Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were responsible for one hundred million dead; and yet Vicki Parsons was still optimistic.  Bumps in the road, she said.  The road to the peaceful, verdant, and communal society of the future is all but guaranteed.  History does not always repeat itself.  Humanity is not consigned to perpetual war, ignorance, selfishness, and there resides in all of us a natural reserve of goodness, generosity, and good will. 

 

Just whistlin' Dixie, of course, but if it weren't for optimists like Vicki the world would be even more corrupt and venal than it already was - or so said her colleagues and friends, all united in their belief in the natural, inborn, and ineradicable goodness of Man and his ultimate utopian future. 

In the mean time, the world kept up a drumbeat of violence, mayhem, terrorism, and war as if there were no tomorrow.  Pol Pot mandated forced marches out of Cambodian cities into the countryside and executed shopkeepers, bureaucrats, doctors, and teachers to cleanse Khmer society of all traces of bourgeois, capitalist society.  'This is the Year Zero', he said, the first of a new history of a perfect world.  Millions died of execution, starvation, and disease until he was stopped by the Vietnamese army.

Mao's Great Leap Forward was the inspiration for Pol Pot. Millions were sent into the countryside in forced labor collectives, mini-gulags which produced little and consigned all to poverty and death by starvation. 

Stalin's totalitarianism was brutal and universal, and tens of thousands died in Siberian gulags.  Hitler's death camps are well known - unconscionable, unbelievable horrors of mass ethnic extinction. 

'History is not the sacred shibboleth you make it out to be', Vicki said to her conservative Vassar classmate whose husband was a favorite of George W Bush who rewarded him with a senior diplomatic post.  'We are not under the yoke of the past. Things can change for the better.'

The classmate, a friend since the old days and used to Vicki's remonstrations, said only, 'Well, dear, let's see'.  

The Twenty-First century was starting off badly, Vicki had to admit.  Perhaps not with the same rigorous cruelty of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, but with a violent entitlement nonetheless. The current wars in Iran, Gaza, and Lebanon were but minor league skirmishes compared to historic conflagrations, but violent nevertheless.  What did that mean?

'Let us pray', said Reverend Archibald Pender of the Westmoreland Methodist Church of Christ, and then with his spiritual invocation put aside, he launched into his familiar sermon about Donald Trump, 'Predator in Chief', usurper, unlawful inhabitant of the White House. 

The congregants of the church attended Sunday services just to hear the Reverend Pender call out the evil in the White House, to expose his villainy before the faithful, and show his godforsaken evil intentions. 

There were many Sunday services like the Reverend Pender's but none so forceful, accusatory, and brutally honest as his.  He virtually thundered with righteousness and saw himself as Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Jacob all put together. 

 

Vicki was completely taken by him.  His words touched her deeply and strengthened her resolve.  The interloper would soon be out of the White House, peace would again reign, and goodness would prevail. God was her spiritual lover, her soulmate, her congregational husband. 

At the same time American and Israeli rockets were reducing Tehran to rubble, eliminating the imams and ayatollahs, destroying missile silos and underground drone armories, blowing offenders of the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz out of the water as the air forces of both countries ruled the skies.  

Hamas, resurgent after months of Israeli bombing, was once again 'referred to the underworld', blasted to within a fraction of survival; and Hezbollah, thinking it had a military advantage because of Israel's involvement with Iran and Gaza, stepped up its attacks on Haifa and Jerusalem but was summarily 'excused from this earth'. 

'Bumps in the road', Vicki insisted, nothing but interruptions in the journey forward.  The new world - the one of gender reassignment, the replacement of the black man on the pinnacle of the human pyramid, and the redistribution of wealth concentrated in Wall Street - would not be deterred.  The very goodness of the new American century would not only result in domestic unity but international peace. 

Vicki had given her all to the movement, even as unlikely as it was to come to fruition.  She was a passionate, lifelong, true believer in the progressive mission for a better world. 

Her conservative friends tried to dampen the fires a bit, if for no other reason than to prepare Vicki for the comedown, the intrusion of Trump on her marvelously innocent dream; but there would be no such thing.  No matter how many rockets rained down on Tehran, no matter how many Hamas and Hezbollah operatives were eliminated, peace was in the air, ephemeral perhaps but there to be grabbed. 

How someone like Vicki could stay the course, hold true to communalism, world peace, and the world community and diversity in the face of such Machiavellian ambition was a puzzle.  She must have known; and yet there she was, still in the choir loft, singing the same hymns, praying to God with no reward.  There must be a place in heaven for such faithful. 

'La Lucha Continua', Vicki shouted on her way to the National Mall to protest the bombing of Iran. There was no way that this inconscient, inhuman, barbaric assault on innocent civilians could continue; that the bullying ape in 1700 would have his way.

 

Peace was the answer, but of course Vicki was just singing hosannas, as far removed from human enterprise as the man in the moon. 

Life couldn't possibly be the way Trump saw it, Vicki concluded, an existence as bad as Hobbes had offered - short, nasty, brutal, and ugly - but there it was, unmistakable and undeniable, and this throwback was taking advantage of it.  That was the irony of it all.  Good people like Vicki came up empty after years of righteous protest while the brute prospered.  

'What hath God wrought?', Vicki recalled from Bible study; but God was an extra in this drama, an offstage prop, a fill-in from central casting. 

Vicki's children were fighting again - Bernoulli's principle gone awry. Only smashing and breaking had value. 'Haven't I taught them anything?', Vicki wondered. 

'Mom, something's burning', her daughter shouted; but Vicki's mind was elsewhere, in that hopeful never-neverland of dreamy promise.  She yelled at her daughter, 'Well, take it off the bloody stove', but immediately regretted taking Trump frustration out on Baby Dolly.  This is what life had come to, trapped like a fly in molasses, buzzing but impotent.  Donald Trump would go on killing just like Genghis Khan, the Crusaders, and the English soldiers at the siege of Agincourt. 

'I refuse', she said.  'I absolutely refuse', but for an instant she realized there was nothing to refuse. All her caterwauling, her chorus of defiance, her bellowing demands were just blowing in the wind. 

Epiphany? Cause to turncoat and cross the aisle? Yes and certainly, but not yet.  'Takes time', Indians say. Siva's cycle of creation and destruction although endless does not revolve in a day; and so it was that Vicki gradually pried herself loose from the grasp of her handlers and became her own woman.  Not that she cheered Israeli missiles blowing Iranian shelters to smithereens or American precision laser-guided bombs taking out an imam, but inwardly applauded their resolve and then capitulated to old 'let it be' Epictetus. 

Spheres Of Influence, Donald Trump, Taiwan, And Latin America - Machiavelli And Regional Hegemony

'This is my sphere of influence', Harper Flynn said to his wife who was once again rearranging things on his desk after dusting, 'which means hands off. 

'But dear', his wife said. 'It wanted dusting and it is a part of the household after all'; and so it was that a discussion of Taiwan, the President's trip to China, and the question of regional hegemony turned into a marital squabble. 

That always seemed to be the case.  Women simply couldn't keep to themselves, couldn't keep out of it despite themselves. As a young child whose room was a ruckus of boy things - toy dump trucks, soldiers, dinosaurs, comic books, and baseball stirrups, he couldn't understand why his mother was always in their picking up.  'Because I know it's there', she said to her son when he asked why he couldn't keep his room the way he wanted. 

In the Ondaatje book, The English Patient, Count Almasy insists on a world without maps, a world without ownership and belonging, a simple world as God made it with no national boundaries, no claims, no deeds, and no definition.  The desert was never one place, said Almasy, but always shifting.  What was here today will be gone tomorrow, the desert's own and no one else's. 

Of course this idea as noble and elegantly simple as it was, was untenable, and before long Almasy was claiming Katherine as his, and to save her life he gives away secrets to the Germans. 

There is nothing new or particularly unusual about staking a claim.  This is what the first settlers of the American West did - simply marked off the perimeter of their land, fenced it and kept off interlopers and intruders with a shotgun. 

The Lewis and Clark expedition was the first step to land titling, legal ownership, and capital.  One's land had value when titled and could be mortgaged, sold, or rented; and that alone was the key to westward expansion and Jefferson's Manifest Destiny. 

The territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific was America's, Jefferson said, European America's and over the course of the next hundred years ago European Americans tamed and settled that land and crisscrossed it with railroads.  The Indians - Native Americans - were in the way, and by the early Twentieth Century were either eliminated or in reservations. 

There was nothing new or special about this territorialism. Genghis Khan and his Mongol-Turkic armies burst out of the steppes with his ten thousand horsemen, and conquered territory from Europe to Japan. He was known for his savagery, and the roads between conquered villages were lined with severed heads on spikes as a warning to all in his path. 

 

The Crusades were organized by Pope Urban II to rid Jerusalem of the infidel, but they were no different than the armies of Genghis Khan, territorial in intent, and bloody in execution.  Jerusalem is ours! said Urban, western, Christian, civilized and European. 

The history of territorial expansion is long, consistent, and predictable; so the desires of Russia for Ukraine, China for Taiwan, and the United States for Venezuela and Cuba fit a pattern.  American with military force ousted the Communist dictator in Venezuela, Russia will eventually regain the Donbass region of Ukraine, and Taiwan will become part of greater China.  It is the law of hegemony or spheres of influence. 

The United States has always been territorial.  Manifest Destiny was an expression of territorial right.  Texas belonged to the United States, not Mexico; Chile and is copper mines were well within America's sphere of influence so President Allende had to go.  The United States supported the military regimes of Brazil and Argentina because they were always to remain America's allies; or put another way, America's foreign properties. 

 

While not in America's immediate geographical sphere of influence, it intervened militarily in the Philippines and took it over as colonial ruler for years. The US fought a long, bloody, and ultimately losing battle to keep Vietnam and all of Southeast Asia within its sphere of political influence. Its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, similarly failed enterprises, were to keep those parts of the world under American control. 

Ronald Reagan intervened militarily in Nicaragua,  the Dominican Republic, Haiti,  and El Salvador for the same reasons.  They belong to us, said the President, if not by Constitution and title, then by right. 

So those in America who find Donald Trump's warning to Taiwan to keep its missiles in their silos, and to make no public pronouncements of independence from China, do not understand history.  The assimilation of Taiwan into China is a foregone conclusion just as Hong Kong and Macau were; and there is no way that the United States will engage in a bloody no-win war with China to defy it. 

Trump is a true Machiavellian and his foreign policy is based on national self interest. What would America gain by confronting the Chinese over Taiwan?  Nothing.  By the same measure what does America gain by perpetuating the war in Ukraine at a cost of tens of thousands of lives, the destruction of the country's infrastructure, and billions of US treasury dollars when a Ukrainian victory, as impossible as that might be, would gain the US nothing.

The Biden Administration insisted that democracy was at stake in Ukraine, an extension of American exceptionalism; but as Machiavelli pointed out centuries before, it is folly to get involved where there is no tangible, observable, quantifiable reason to do so. 

American liberals are howling, beating their chests in righteous indignation.  How could he? they sputter? How could he give away a sovereign country? Toss it into China's hamper with nary a second thought.  The answer is easy, they say - billions of dollars of trade with China that will benefit his cronies and American oligarchs.  Another example of the crude insensitivities of this rube, this barroom brawler, this fool. 

Of course billions are at stake in the US-China negotiations, and that is the whole point of the new Machiavellian foreign policy of the United States.  And Trump, the ultimate deal maker, knows that China holds all the cards.  It owns our debt, is a country of a billion and a half Confucian-inspired patriots, has progressively and deliberately rounded up the world's rare earths, and is in a geopolitical position of supremacy. Throw it all away out of some exceptionalist principle.  Read Machiavelli's The Prince. 

Harper Flynn got the geopolitical picture easily - life was a series of territorial disputes, ownership was not only the basis of capitalism but a feature of human nature and his office was his.  

His wife not surprisingly also took the office dispute as a metaphor.  There were principles involved here, contracts of marital communalism, the right way to behaves within larger contexts.  Machiavellian territorialism was just a convenient academic cover for taking and holding what is mine regardless of the larger world.  

The world if filled with One Worlders, Neville Chamberlain capitulating idealists, peace at any price accommodators who put a fictious value over reality.  Anyone in their right minds should have seen Hitler's intentions; and it should not have taken an outspoken Churchill to call out Stalin's hegemonic ambitions. 

Taiwan for the time being will remain quiescent, unobtrusive, and no obstacle to profitable deals to be concluded by the world's two greatest adversaries.  As it should be.  Foregone conclusions should never be challenged, and above all, a la Machiavelli,  moral principle should never get in the way of geopolitical self interest. 

The Cult Of The Black Man - A White Woman Seduced And Bilked By A Canny Nigerian Scammer

Vicki Cabot gave unusual love a try - not today's meme of lesbian and transgender love and Folsom Street Fair S&M - but love with a Nigerian.

Her mother warned her against the relationship.  'They are scammers to a man', she said.  Her husband who worked for the World Bank had a No Nigeria clause in his contract.  So many of his colleagues had negotiated the same codicil that finding loan officers for the multi-million contracts concluded with the Nigerian government was well nigh impossible. 

'A shithole', said Frank Cabot who had learned his lesson the hard way, traveling to Lagos as a Bank intern, harassed and shaken down at the airport with not enough money to pay the bribes demanded by the taxi driver and hotel clerk, he sought refuge in his embassy after he had given up his silk ties, Rolex, and Armani suspenders.

The reputation of Nigeria was well deserved.  No one came out of there in one piece, thousands were conned by online fraud every day, and most savvy Washingtonians checked cabs for Nigerian drivers before getting in. 

Lagos was a stinking, festering slum.  Whatever money had been realized from the sale of Niger delta oil - before Exxon, Shell, and Gulf had pulled out, went into offshore bank accounts with nothing left to run the country.  In short order the whole country had become a toxic, gang-run, miserable, lawless place. 

'He's a professor', Vicki told her father who was unmoved.  A scam too, he said, informing her of the thousands of fraudulent CVs the Bank got every day from Nigerian 'professors'.  'They scam you coming and going', her father said, 'corrupt, dishonest, shady and nasty from the word go'; but Vicki had been charmed by this suave, polished African who treated her like the Queen of Sheba, and who was as far from the stereotype painted by her father as the man in the moon. 

Or so she thought.  The man, Adrian Adebayo, was as crooked as they come, in the United States on an overstayed tourist visa, and on the prowl for susceptible, credulous, and naive young women like Vicki.

'I hit the jackpot', he told his friends back in Lagos, for Vicki was the heiress of a considerable fortune.  Her father might be an international civil servant on salary, but her inheritance was unimaginable.  The offspring of one of Boston's finest families, first in line among the grandchildren of the patriarch of the family, she was the jewel in the crown. 

Now, why Vicki got caught in this tender trap is a simple story of doing the right thing. At college she had been convinced that the black man was at the top of the human pyramid. but because of slavery, Jim Crow, and persistent racism, he foundered at the bottom.  With effort, desire, and hard work, American society would be soon reconfigured and the black man would be restored to his primal place. 

Nonsense, of course. Brown University was not exactly an unbiased institution of higher learning, and had been coopted by social reformists and was now fully in their hands.  The administration, the faculty, and the students were all part of the same political cabal. The whole campus marched to the same drummer, flew the same flag, and prayed to the same gods. 

Where possible young white girls hooked up with black men, admitted to the university under a liberal affirmative action program, and who like every pimp from the ghetto were on the prowl for nubile white girls. There was a pecking order among the student body at Brown.  At the top were girls dating black men, then girls in lesbian relationships, then gay men together, and finally bi-sexual students who were testing the waters but had not yet committed to one side or the other.

Vicki, was an unfortunately homely girl who might have inherited Grandfather Cabot's money but none of the patrician, graceful look of the women of the family. Somewhere along the line she got a Jewish look - sallow skin, prominent nose and lips, and untamable hair.  She was often asked by her Brown classmates if she had changed her name. 

She was the perfect mark for Adrian Adebayo - a homely woman trained in the fantasies of cultural diversity and the myth of the black man.  The way into her treasury was as simple as could be.   

Vicki was not Adrian's first score.  He had been quite the man about town, showing up at progressive conferences, seminars, and public events.  He had enough money to keep him above water until he hit the jackpot - his second cousin had made his fortune in a devious but impressive Somali-like fraud in Atlanta, a Ponzi scheme where millions were invested in shell companies, and all of it siphoned off to Aruban banks. 

He had almost made it.  If it hadn't been for an annoyingly investigative father, he would have tied the knot with Alison Parker, a girl like Vicki born and bred in a culture of privilege and wealth and a graduate of Duke (where she had been immersed in the same cauldron of diversity and black idolatry as Brown).  

To her tears and flapdoodle, he left town before the old man called in ICE; but he had learned his lesson.  Chicanery has its limits, and the careful plotter must cross all the American t's and dot all the i's. 

Adrian and Vicki got married over the wild protests of her parents. His visa was regularized, the path to citizenship assured, and the marriage contract concluded without punitive codicils.  In short order he was legal, free, and rich, and was never heard from again. 

Now, Vicki, chastened, humiliated, and shamed should have at least admitted her 'miscalculation' as she called it, apologized to her father for having dismissed his warnings, and gone on to a more stable emotional and political life.

But she insisted that Adrian was a good man, and to throw him in with a bunch of thieves and worse to condemn an entire country and a whole continent was wrong, exactly the kind of racist opinions that set back the cause of the black man for decades. She had been blinded by his attentions, his demeanor and yes, although the hated to admit it, by his extraordinary sexual endowment.  

This had always been the worst racial stereotype in the white grab bag, but when it turned out to be true, she was as surprised as any white, liberal woman would be, but quite happy about it.  Serviced by this black man every night was a pleasure few women could imagine. 

No, Adrian might have had his faults; and yes, she was bilked and deceived by him, but all the more reason to blame colonialism for the persistent underdevelopment of Africa. He was a victim of oppression and racism, and it was white people's duty - her duty - to fight for the black man wherever he lived. 

Vicki was a defiantly unreconstructed liberal.  The roots of progressivism planted during her Brown days were still deep and strong.  Other weaker, less committed women might have turned conservative, tossed aside the whole idea of cultural diversity, and stuck to their own kind; but not Vicki. Political commitment and the philosophy which provides its foundation are not so easily dismissed.  She would be lifelong progressive, a believer in racial justice, and the lover of a proud black man. 

Why Hate Feels So Good - Social Justice And The Happy Jamboree Of Trump Loathing

Vicki Marks hated Donald Trump with a passion, and so did her friends, neighbors, and colleagues.  It was a friendly cabal of hate - nods on streetcorners, stories over the picket fence, knowing smiles, and bus rides to rallies.  

It felt good to hate, and never before in her lifelong progressivism had it felt so good.  This time around it was a soul-cleansing release.  After scouring the pots for so many years, rasping away at conservative backwardness and ignorance, now she could be as mad, foul-tempered, unrestrained like never before.  There was evil in the White House and nothing but exorcism would do. 

Each one of her venting moments with Margot down the street or Beatrice in the office or Henrietta at the gym was satisfying in a way simple political commitment was not.  There was a fire in her belly like never before.  Her life had new meaning, a clear and present purpose, a clear line of fire, an unquenchable desire. 

She was a glutton for news about Trump and flipped channels between CNN and MSNBC every morning over coffee, watched the news on the monitors at the gym, surfed the dark web for information about Trump's insider trading, collusion, corruption, and moral failure.  She fueled her hatred from the moment she woke up until the moment she went to bed.  Even her dreams were feverish with hatred. 

As counterintuitive as it may sound, hatred was happy time, an emotional orgasm for a crackly, older single woman who had been too picky to settle for second best, and a first best man had never come her way - not in the coffee houses of the East Village, not in her 9th Street non-profit, not on the barricades, and not in holding pens.  Politics is not simply a matter of preference or logical conclusion, it is the heart and soul of a person, and enhances or deforms as if it were a magic potion or vile poison. 

Vicki's hate was oxymoronic - it both rotted and corroded her insides and twisted and deformed every aspect of her outer self but gave her unlimited joy.  She might be as unappealing as a Wicked Sister, but she was bursting with joy every time she sallied forth with one of her untethered, bitter attacks on those who strayed from the progressive canon. 

The more bile that built up, the more venom that filled her viperous sacs, the more hate she felt, the happier she was.  Such hate was not a perverse obsession but the emotional force behind her sense of identity, self-esteem, and worth. 

Today was No Kings rally day on the National Mall, the biggest, most exuberant anti-Trump jamboree in the nation.  It would be featured on national television, covered widely in the press.  Thousands of women like herself would join hands and lock arms in solidarity and in mutual hatred for the incarnation of the devil. 

She couldn't wait, got up early, fed her cats who were surprised at getting fed before sunup, took her morning run under the streetlights, and waited on the stoop for the bus to come by. This was to be her day, a day like no other, a halcyon day. 

It felt so good to be with her sisters on this sparkling clear May day that she wanted to kiss them, hold them tight, go off with them and be happy forever.  They shouted, waved banners, chanted in a chorus of powerful women's voices, so much so that they almost forgot the object of their calumny, the beast in the White House.  The thousand voices ringing out from the Capitol to the Washington Monument was life-affirming, joyous, and spiritual. 

There was nothing like it.  Hate had become a raison d'etre, an expression of personhood, existential worth, and faith.  Vicki, tired but fulfilled after hours on the Mall and pub-crawling with her sisters up and down K Street, she went home. 

Few if any of these women could articulate exactly why they hated the President so much.  His policies and programs were classically conservative - closed borders, small government, private sector, strong military, traditional social values, patriotism, and individualism - and while he demonstrated a particular and unusual resolve in implementing them, he was well within Constitutional limits.  It was his opponents who resorted to fictitious claims, frivolous, unfounded lawsuits, left field impeachment attempts, and baseless information. 

Most of Vicki's friends when asked gave that 'Are you kidding?' look and railed on about racism, misogyny, homophobia, and mindless crony capitalism.  They refused to be pinned down because no pinning down was necessary.  The man's villainy was obvious, uncontested, there for all to see. 

Vicki's house seemed particularly empty this time around, perhaps because of the unbridled joy of such a large gathering, an epiphanic moment of solidarity and pure happiness; but there was a shadow of a doubt that fleetingly darkened her mood.  She was alone with her cats.  The plants needed watering. 

She shook off these morbid thoughts, rattled uncharacteristically around the kitchen, emptied the refrigerator and ate leftovers, put her head in her hands, and cried. 

'What am I doing?' she shouted, embarrassed, chagrined, and angry at herself for letting such pedestrian emotions overtake her.  She needed no man, no towheaded children, no backyard barbecues, not church dinners to make her happy.  She was as fulfilled as any woman could be. 

She looked at the calendar and saw every day filled with appointments, events, conferences, and seminars.  Every day was metro, boulot, dodo - yes, with more purpose and meaning than her neighbors who hopped on the N6 and spent laborious days at meaningless jobs; but somehow missing something, something she sensed was important but couldn't put her finger on. 

For the first time in months, she felt the bilious hatred for Donald Trump slip away.  She tried to conjure up images of him as a destroyer, a child killer, a Gestapo thug, a tyrant; but the old vaudevillian shtick was falling flat. Thank God tomorrow was the climate conference. 

Life went on like this, desultory, passionless, and increasingly morbidly without respite or recourse.  The die had been cast years ago and there was no wiggle room now.  A leopard cannot change its spots. Too many sunken costs, too much water under the dam. 

Furthermore, hate had become her personal zeitgeist.  It was as hardwired as any exogenous factor could be.  It was part of her persona.  How could it be dwindling away like this?  How could her very lifeblood be trickling from her veins?

'Is it too late?', she wondered, but could not finish the question.  Too late for what had never had to be asked; but too late for something other than this! A cat jumped on her lap but she threw it off into the corner, screeching and climbing up the curtains.  'So this is what it feels like', she thought; but there was still time to regain her footing, to rekindle the old fires, become a social justice warrior in the avant garde, the first phalanx. 

Yet, the next morning the funk had not disappeared and she had to face the day without that marvelously joyous hatred that greeted her as soon as she opened her eyes. 

'I couldn't have wasted my life', she said to herself, but that niggling doubt was there.  If after years of fighting the good fight for civil rights, gay rights, the climate, redistribution of wealth, diversity, and equity, conservatism was now the ethos of the land, the zeitgeist, the meme, what were her struggles worth?

Very little of course.  Epictetus had been right all along.  Take what comes, let it be, what goes around comes around.  La Dolce Vita is not so bad after all; but these a posteriori thoughts didn't do Vicki much good.  'You made your bed, solie in it' her mother used to say, and that was as pithy a nostrum as there ever was. 

Which didn't do Vicki any good whatsoever. 'I'm stuck'. she said; and like many old spinsters before her, fixed herself a lovely cup of tea. 

Trump In China, Haters Delight - Egg Foo Young, Chop Suey, And How Was I To Know? They All Look Alike

President Trump landed in Beijing yesterday (5.13.26) to fanfare, ceremony, and high expectations.  With him were thirty of America's top businessmen, the most influential leaders of the tech and information revolution in the country if not the world.  This was a delegation of import, weight, and influence, and it made clear that the President was bringing the captains of the new industry not only to advise him, but to show the Chinese that America was a world tech power and that concluding a favorable economic and political agreement would be in China’s interest.

 

As soon as the trip was announced, Trump haters raised a ruckus. Crony capitalism, they shouted, a Jewish cavalcade of stars, an adolescent-minded buffoon sent on a man's errand, a fool who thinks egg foo young is the jewel in the crown of Chinese cuisine, an idiot who said that he was unsure who to shake hands with 'since Chinese all look alike'. 

Maggie Flynn was well-armed for her anti-Trump screeds.  After saturating herself with every bit of damaging evidence that the trip was only in Trump's self-interest, and concluding that he was simply paving the way for post-Presidential deals for himself and his family, how could any reasonable person doubt his treachery?  

He had corralled the big men of Silicon Valley and strong-armed them to come on the China trip, threatening them with sanctions and federal investigation if they did not comply. With The Gang Of Thirty in tow, he set off on Air Force One. 

Of course he was in it to make money but for America. What else was there?  China held all the cards.  They held a whopping big piece of America's debt and could pull the plug at any time, thanks to the trillions in foreign currency and gold they held in reserve.  They, in a short space of time had become a world economic and military power, and thanks to Confucianism, their Mandarin empires, and a long history of racial and social unanimity they were strong, unified, and impregnable. 

As much as the American president at home was rolling back the worst of the divisive, corrosive, and damaging Leftist woke agenda, the country was still a side show of freakish identity politics - a clown show, the venality of Congress reeked with smarmy self interest, and the nation had lost its moral ethos.

Trump was going into the Chinese negotiations behind the eight ball and with not much of a leg to stand on.

Yet, who better to try than Trump, a man who made his living out of threat, intimidation, coercion, quid pro quo compromise, and favorable deals.  The best man to have in a card game where an opponent has all the cards - a card sharp, a bluffer, an intimidator - and Donald Trump, billionaire victor of the most brutal battlefield in the world, New York real estate, is just the man Americans should want at the table. 

 

And yet, but not surprisingly the Left wants him to fall on his face, to shame himself and the country, make ludicrous, outrageous statements far beyond the pale of diplomacy and making backroom deals with Chinese oligarchs.  

'Jews', said the haters.  There was no better sign of the international Jewish conspiracy than this stable of of Jews Trump was bringing along with him.  Icons of high tech? Yes, but in a conspiracy with Jewish bankers and financiers in collusion to establish a sub rasa power cabal of unimaginable proportions. The military alliance between the United States and Israel was no more than a cover for the expansion of world Zionism for the benefit of the Jews and the President of the United States. 

Maggie snarled at her husband who wished the President well.  'So do I', she said, but meant not a word of it.  The sooner the fool was exposed as the bigoted, capitalist tool that he was, the better.  She was as glued to the television as Nixon haters were in the days of Watergate, watching for, hoping for the stake that would be driven into the heart of the vampire of the Oval Office. 

She flipped channels and surfed the web.  CNN and MSNBC were not enough, BBC was too compromising. Commentary, The Nation, Politico, and the Daily Kos went straight to the point - the moral corruption of the President and his sycophantic family - but they too pulled their punches; so she went deep web and found arcane sites barely visible but untamed in their exposure of the President as man in the clutches of the international Jewish conspiracy, an autocrat in waiting, a bulldozing enemy of the people.  

The comments heard in Maggie’s neighborhood - a universally rock solid progressive enclave - were not surprisingly anti-Trump but this time their scorn and bilious hatred was completely unhinged.  'How will he know whose hand to shake', they laughed.  'All Chinese look alike'.  

His parade of high-tech entrepreneurs was nothing less than Robber Barons redux - a collusive billionaire cabal of men with no restraint, all marching together to engineer an AI takeover of industry, destroying the working man and his unions, creating financial instruments that beggared those of Enron, Jeffrey Skilling, and Bernie Madoff, deployed data centers in the heartland sucking energy and water, and helped engineer a two tiered American society - they, the billionaires, and everyone else. 

'Where's the egg foo young?', they chortled, 'and the chop suey?', imitating the President, a man who had not one sophisticated multicultural bone in his body and was bound to make a fool of himself in front of the world.  Yes, it would be embarrassing, but if it hastened the end of this bottom-feeding goon the better.

The Chinese politburo, reviewing the state of affairs in America had a good laugh over the No Kings rallies, the march of the transgenders on the National Mall, the hoopla over former slaves who were touted as the world's best and brightest hope, and the campus political frenzy which eroded any ethos of learning and academic excellence. 

Kowtowing to a race of racist pigs', Maggie’s neighbors said, referring to the Chinese Han hegemony.  'Tell it to the Uighurs', they said, unaware of the Muslim fundamentalism of the region which as everywhere else in the world threated civil order and social unity.  Trump wants to join the international cabal of dictators, Putin, Xi, and Trump, in an unholy alliance of soulless Machiavellian ambition, they added.   'Down with Trump', these otherwise recondite neighbors shouted.  

This China charade was the last straw, the neighbors agreed.  Destroying the federal bureaucracy in an attempt to distort and finally eliminate democratic, popular rule was one thing; sending SS Storm Troopers into American communities to round up and deport peaceful asylees was another, but this...this blatant, outrageous international collusion was more than they could take.  The guillotine was too good for this pretender, this usurper, this morally deformed creature. 

Maggie panted, breathless with the anger and hatred which had overcome her.  She stood there, open-mouthed, trembling, and lost in feverish apoplexy.  

She slowly made her way back home, but it - in all its quiet suburban charm - now seemed out of place.  Trump had defiled it, had corrupted it, had robbed it of any decency.  'What's a mother to do?' 

She rummaged through the medicine chest to see if any of her husband's hip replacement Oxycodone pills were left over, accidentally knocked the Tylenol and witch hazel into the sink, scrambled on the bottom shelf for that familiar brown plastic CVS container, and finally found them, a bit past their expiry date, but who was counting.  This day could not continue as it started. 

Trump didn't seem so bad after two Oxy, nothing did actually, so why not top it off with a stiff drink. 'I know it's a no-no', she said, 'but what the fuck', and with that she headed off into never-never land as happy as could be. 

The Success Of A Simple Man In Troubled Times - The Vacancy Of The Dull, Danglers On The Bell Curve

Doug Brandon was a simple man.  Born and raised in the shadow of the Tuscaroras to a simple family, he never lost his stolid approach to life.  'Hard work is all there is' said his father, echoing that philosophical vacancy that had characterized the Brandons for generations, a kind of unschooled nihilism which sheltered the family from the hardships of poverty and isolation.  They had been dealt a bad hand from a stacked deck, but took life as it came, the good with the bad, days sunny and stormy. 

As such Doug was never filled with unrealistic expectations or vain hopes. Someday he would leave Barkerville and make something of himself, but that something would be necessarily modest and down to earth. 

Doug was not the brightest boy in his class by any means, and he managed to make his way with some effort through the grades, ending with some distinction as the top mechanic at Lewiston juncture high school.  Dougie, as his parents knew him, was good at fixing things, especially small motors - outboards, lawn mowers, hedge trimmers - and he worked summers alongside Bill Baxter of Baxter Repair Service.

 

Baxter suggested two years at Lewiston Community College where the discipline of a technical education would stand him in good stead.  He could move from small motors to large ones, and perhaps one day he might find himself on an airline maintenance crew. 

He did as Baxter suggested - the college's fees were nominal and no strain on his family's modest budget - and he graduated with a technical diploma that was indeed his union card for employment, even in down times.  He applied for an apprenticeship with Southwest Airlines which serviced Lewiston, was accepted, and after a few years was a bona fide airline mechanic. 

The story, however, is not about Doug's career, but about the particular psychological configuration which got him through troubled times.  Being a dull, uninspiring man of limited intelligence and insight, he was able to weather the storms of a difficult economy, social dislocation, and the radical shifts in political ethos which were affecting the country. 

Now, the character of the Washington-based political opposition to the current president is well-known. In a canny but so far ineffective campaign to discredit him as a racist, homophobe, misogynist, and capitalist tool, the political left hammered away at him for over a decade.

Lawfare, impeachment, smear tactics, innuendo, and fear-mongering were all tried but failed.  However for very action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and because of the ad hominem assault on the President, the country itself became angry, divided, harshly and reflexively critical, and unquieted. 

Lewiston was small city, like many in the country not known for anything in particular, but still a reasonable place to live and work.  The county of which it was the seat was growing, and a number of major firms opened plants there.  Hankook Tires, for example, moved in thanks to a deal with Doug's community college which promised to train prospective workers if the company would hire them. 

All well and good, but Lewiston could not avoid the divisiveness, racial conflict, and social disturbance affecting the country at large. As a matter of fact, it became the locus of the most aggressive, often violent protests against the President's radical agenda.  The press took notice, and its concerted efforts to rid Washington of this menace to democracy, were well-publicized. 

Although the protests in Lewiston were seen from the outside as unified and a true political collective, they were anything but.  Black Lives Matter holdouts in one corner, angry white, deeply progressive women in another, and organized labor in a third.  These factions were constantly at each other's throats and each angrily assertive about their interests. 

The protests became routine, police barricades and crime scene tape common.  Arrests were made and talk was heard about the deployment of the National Guard.  Things went from bad to worse as a militant group firebombed a military depot causing little damage but giving the restive, angry Left the visibility it wanted. 

Doug had been approached on a number of occasions and asked to join this or that faction; but he politely demurred.  There was nothing in him - not in his character, personality, background, or life - that was suited for such a political activism.  To be brutally honest, although Doug could rivet and repair, he was as dumb as a stone.  Only thanks to his natural affinity for screws, bolts, wrenches, and hammers was he able to manage as well has he did.  Other than that he was as clueless as the day he was born. 

A co-worker at the airport, a union man angry at the administration's moves to make airport maintenance a right-to-work zone, tried to enlist Doug in his activism; but Doug, unsure what right-to-work was - the fact that he had a good job was all he knew - and constitutionally unable to parse the simplest articles of democracy, again refused.

 

When the protests threatened to shut down the airport, Doug's co-workers became more insistent on his support. Doug again thanked them but no thanks, and returned home to wait until the dust cleared so that he could go back to work. 

'What's up at the airport, hon?' his wife asked one afternoon. 

'Not much', Doug replied.  The sirens of police cavalcades down Egbert Avenue were heard day and night, but Doug slept well.  

Now, this was not from a practiced, educated stoicism or a survivalist reaction to violence.  Beyene Wolde-Gabriel, a co-worker from Ethiopia had survived the civil wars, the brutality of the dictator Mengistu, the pogroms, midnight hangings, and street mayhem by keeping his head down, a partisan of no cause but known as a quiet supporter by all.  

Such political courage and savvy was foreign territory to Doug who had trouble placing Ethiopia on the map, and as far as the territorial struggles with Eritrea and the Somali terrorists who had joined forces with both sides, he was one hundred percent ignorant.  In fact, if his co-worker had taken the time to explain the situation, his words would have gone in one ear and out the other, passing through the complete vacancy of Doug's mind. 

 

That vacancy, as little as Doug could appreciate or even acknowledge it, was what kept him afloat in troubled times.  Conrad in his novel Victory wrote about Heyst, a refugee from civilization, preferring a life of incessant wandering, devoid of attachments and commitment to entanglement.  Graham Greene in The Comedians and The Quiet American wrote about the same calculated indifference in his main characters, a kind of existential stoicism. 

All these characters are drawn into concerted action, to engagement, and to entanglement with good and bad ends; but Doug had none of their calculated indifference.  He was too ordinary, too vacant for any such ideas.  He stayed outside the fray because life propelled him that way.  He didn't so much resist his co-workers' pleas for engagement, but simply demurred.  Not the path of least resistance, nor the easy way out, but a simple complaisance, the congenital aspect of his dullness. 

There is a bell curve for everything, and intelligence is no different.  Lack of intelligence, grouped at one asymptote has many expressions.  From the persistent dysfunction of the ghetto where generation after generation intermarries within a confined, uninspired gene pool, to class dullards, clueless adolescents, one-issue politicians, minor criminals...the list is endless.  Most of these sub-par individuals cause harm, lesser or greater; but those like Dougie whose lack of brains is expressed only as vacancy, cause nothing, and in so not-doing, survive the worst of times. 

The novel Being There by Jerzy Kosinski is a satire on American politics where a simple man of limited intelligence is taken as a genius.  Chance the gardener, used to talking about the lifecycle of plants, bushes, and trees in the simplest, organic terms is thought to be speaking in brilliant metaphor, and rises up in the political world thanks to the credulousness and intellectual myopia of his handlers. 

No one ever found or recognized the advantages of vacancy in Dougie Brandon.  He just carried on, head down not out of political savvy but habit, hands always busy, emotions always on an even keel. 

Yes, Doug was as dumb as they come, and not one salient, interesting, or provocative thought ever entered his head, but such dumbness is often overlooked, rarely singled out as a positive aspect of diversity. 

The Dougies of the world are everywhere, and most lead lives of remarkable dullness - impossible to be around because of their mental immobility, they are thudding bores.  Worse even than Del Griffiths, says the Neil Page character in the movie Planes, Trains & Automobiles about his boring co-passenger. 

'I could sit through hours, days, and weeks of insurance seminars with a smile on my face. "How do you do it?" my fellow conferees ask. "Because I spent a week with Del Griffiths"'. 

Dougies are suburbanites, office workers, bank tellers even professionals - occupation is no disaggregating filter.  The hopelessly dull are everywhere unaware of their own boundless vacancy.  At least for Dougie it was a survival mechanism.  For all the rest just an empty stare.

Wind In His Hair - A Bike Lane Prophet Cycles The Great Outdoors, Dopey And Without A Clue

Doug Burnett was an ordinary man - born and raised in a coal town to a pharmacist father and a second grade teacher mother, he was well-behaved, dutiful, and an obedient student.  He couldn't make heads or tails of anything past arithmetic, so he repeated a grade or two, but since there was nowhere else to put him, he moved up and out, and one day found himself at Montgomery College, MK as it was known because of the fourth-grade level of its students. 

The college was a congenial place where there were no unrealistic expectations about Harvard or academic excellence, just a pleasant holding pen for those who would never make a mark, but would just fit in nicely. 

Doug muddled through his two years - MK was a junior college - and was anxious to get on with life, but he had no idea about what or how, so he took a job as a stock-and-errand boy at his father's pharmacy in Chillicothe, cleaned dusty bottles of chloroform and peptides in the storage room, waited on the occasional customer, and had no more ambition than a split-level, a wife, and two children.

Circumstances being what they can be, capricious and unpredictable, Doug found himself in Washington, DC thanks to a chance meeting with the representative for the Second Congressional District of Ohio.

Now, Doug was not a youth of any pretense, and had no thoughts about democracy, contribution, or investment; but when approached by the august member of Congress who invited him to join his staff as an intern, he readily agreed. 

He had no idea whatsoever what the job entailed let alone the role or importance of a member of Congress, but he had been brought up to respect his elders, so acceptance was simply the only right thing to do. 

He had been singled out not because of his intelligence, political savvy, or social appeal, but because he was a working class voter from the eastern half of the Congressman's district and would do well as a poster boy for his rural poor constituents. 

 

Doug was a faithful amanuensis, little more; and when the Congressman finally retired, Doug found himself out of a job.  With few qualifications but willing and able; but with a good recommendation, he joined Scientists For Social Responsibility, a non-profit group organized around 'planet health' a catch-all ethos which gave them cover to advocate for environmental protection, climate change, and social responsibility. 

Doug understood none of the ideas proposed, but was happy to do good; and was a loyal and hardworking member of the team.  

One of the propositions of the group was to encourage dedicated bike lanes in urban areas.  Cars were polluting interlopers and their rampaging takeover of roads and highways needed to be stopped.  Scientists for Social Responsibility intended to be at the forefront of the biking New Age, and Doug, coming as he did from a rural, undulating, bike-perfect region, was asked to be a part of the Bikes Are Our Future team. 

They bought him a bike, took him with them on casual rides on the C&O towpath, and urged him to go farther up the trail to the Cumberland Gap. 

He had only ridden a fat-tired Schwinn in his boyhood so was unused to the 21-gear hi-tech two-wheeler he was given, but quickly took to it.  Riding up the same kind of hills he had struggled over on his bulbous Schwinn was a dream.  If this was climate change advocacy, he was all for it. 

The mystique of cycling escaped him - as simple as he was, there was no vision or epiphany in it. It was simply pedaling, sometimes hard up, other times light and repetitive, nothing more.  When he sat at the Old Ebbitt Grill with his colleagues over a beer, he was lost when the chat turned to mountain vistas, expansive prairies, farm houses and cows in pastures.  

He had taken to biking as a matter of duty - if his organization was all in for bikes, so would he be - but he found nothing particularly uplifting or elegiac about it. 

As a matter of fact, bikes were a pain in the ass. Driving from here to there in Bethesda was slow, interrupted, and interminably blocked because of the presumptive Rulers of the Road, dedicated bike lanes, and the inevitable accidents.  

'Perhaps I'm missing something', Doug said, not giving bikers their due, not appreciating the particularly heady, transformative experience of rushing down a mountain pass, wind in the hair, guided by the natural winds, inclines, and vistas of the open road. 

He gave it a go, joined a weekend biking group that headed north to Poolesville, stopped for beers at a local tavern, then cycled home for dinner.  All without anything more than traffic, impatient drivers, potholes, and dreary, endless trees. 

He gave urban biking a try as well, cycling from his suburban home to his downtown DC office; but that was a gantlet, a medieval joust, a mudwrestling ugly tour better left to others. 

Perhaps because Doug was so limited, so simple and unpoetic, so straightforward, practical, and nose-to-the-grindstone, he decided to chronicle his biking experiences as a kind of clinical record. At first he did it to illustrate his organization's vision and principles, then as a down-to-earth account of the order of biking.  Whether he understood it or not, whether he got or didn't get the essentiality of the open road, it was his duty to paint the picture. In the end, as dull and prosaic as it was, it became his raison d’etre - which of course everyone needs regardless.

 

His chronicle, his biking memoir, his record of traipsing Appalachia and suburban Maryland was the most horrendously boring saga imaginable.  It was a story of gear ratios, brake linings, torque, tire resistance, and ball bearings and nothing more.  A tedious recollection of bike trips in the most predictable places, a soggy, watery saga of nothing but grinding up and down the hills of Western Pennsylvania and points west. 

Why he ever bothered, why he even tried was a mystery.  Why would this man of limited means, desultory intelligence, and without a drop of insight, creative vision, or personal feelings ever think that it would be of interest let alone be inspiring?.

Such is the nature of true belief - febrile, airy, satisfying, and overarching.  It matters not to the believer whether or not his ideas have currency or relevance; or whether his passion and obsession will encourage other to action.  He speaks, promotes, insists because righteousness is hardwired and absolute. 

No one of course paid any attention to his wandering, incoherent, fantastical memoir.  Not only did few care about biking; not only were most people pissed that their civil rights were being infringed upon by the unhinged two-wheeled few, but the fact that some actually believed the absurd idea of a biking heaven . It was a consignment to a Barnum & Bailey side show. 

Doug - Dougie to his diehard friends - never quit, and in all forums, informal dinners, roundtables, conferences, and on streetcorners he hammered on about bikes, bike lanes, and bike heaven.  His old friends tolerated it all but waited for the day that he and Mary Beth took up their residency in Avalon Quarters retirement village, but even there anyone within earshot thought the old man queer and ready for the glue factory. 

Bike Lanes, Recycling, And Electric Cars - The Happy Life Of Doing The Right Thing

Del Barrow was a bike advocate - from dedicated lanes, rails-to-trails, and cycle-friendly rules of the road he was a passionate partisan.  He spent long hours preparing his bike-friendly petition before the City Council, contributed time, efforts, and money to 'Bicycles Are Our Future', the leading bike advocacy group in the Washington metropolitan area. 

 

According to Del bikes could do no wrong.  As inheritors of the climate change legacy, in the avant garde to reduce vehicle traffic on the nation's roads, and the new Thoreau, Walden Pond, Emersonian poets of the soon-to-be pristine urban environment, bike advocates were insufferable  They were pedantic, insistent, hectoring, critical, and tedious.  And yet they never stopped their hammering about the new world of bicycles. 

Bikes were a nuisance. They slowed traffic, caused accidents, and forced unnecessary public investments in bike infrastructure - boondoggles and public scams by green authorities anxious to show their commitment to a better, more verdant, considerate world.  The famous Montgomery County 'bike lane to nowhere' rankled commuters every rush hour as they funneled into a one lane thoroughfare, reduced by half because of bike lane of 500' that ended in traffic, that no one used, and was an example of politically-inspired waste.

Bikes were vehicles when they felt like it, pedestrians when it suited them. Prejudicial laws favoring cyclists passed in the days of radical environmentalism made drivers automatically, ipso facto, guilty in any accident involving cyclists.  This sense of undue privilege and entitlement, particularly when cyclists disobeyed all rules of the road dared cars to hit them. 

Yet Del never once wavered.  Those who complained about bike-share racks lined with unrented bikes, confusing on-off, only sometimes downtown bike lanes on the capital's busiest streets, play-as-you-may observance of traffic laws, the lack of any of the safety equipment standard on cars are ignoramuses, said Del, troglodytes, throwbacks, and inconscient fools.

Bikes made life more worth living, said Del, who suited up in his brand-festooned Lycra biking suit for his weekend peloton, or strapped himself into his beater Schwinn to pedal to the Metro, or volunteered up at Cabin John to fix flat tires.  'Bikes 'R' Us' was the lawn sign Del had put on the front lawn with a bar code and a number to call for more information. 

His wife, initially supportive of Del's efforts to promote cycling was becoming tired of what had become his obsession.  While she approved of the principle, she had become annoyed at his non-stop banging on about bike lanes, car fools, and the dilatory attitudes of government authorities.  From dawn to dusk, Del whinged and complained, and it had become a tedious slog.  He needed help. 

Del wasn't the only one in the neighborhood who had gone 'round the bend for doing the right thing. Margot Billings was a terror about recycling.  Not only was she careful about sorting - she was proud to never mix cans with glass, paper with organic waste, and newspaper with packaging, but she meticulously washed every can she recycled, removed every last bit of dried tomato paste, stray lemon seeds, and stray plastic wrap. 

 

She ran out into the alley at Christmastime to give the garbage men generous tips, arranged her bins so that that they would have an easier time hooking them on to the forklift, and waved to them every Thursday morning as they came by. 

She, like Del, was passionate about her cause, but carried her obsession a step further.  She was a recycling vigilante who called out her neighbors for irresponsible mixing. She left signs on those recycle bins with indifferently sorted trash (she peeked under the lid on her neighborhood walks).  

This vigilantism came naturally, for she was a veteran of the COVID wars during which she was the first to shout j'accuse! at neighbors without masks, disregarding the six-foot rule, or waiting unconscionably long before getting vaccinated.  She was known as The Harridan of Butterworth Place, a woman who still in her bathrobe, but double masked, gloved, and wild, stormed out of her house to confront a COVID denier. 

 

It felt good to be part of a movement to save the environment, and both Del and Margot were happy people.  Because their anger at those who did not comply with biking or recycling was righteous, it was not the bilious kind, the kind that kept you awake at night.  It was part of the passion, the commitment, the progressive faith.

Shannon Biggs drove a Tesla and her husband a fully-electric Toyota; and they were as outspoken and determined as Margot and Del in their desire to help others join the mission for a more livable planet. She wrote letters to the editor, spoke at formal and informal gatherings, and distributed reading material at libraries. 

Now she, like Del and Margot took her cause at face value.  A car with no carbon emissions was ipso facto good.  There could be no doubt, denial, or objection.  Of course this was all idealistic fantasy. Lithium mines were just as environmentally invasive as open copper mines, child labor was used in nasty, war-addled countries like the Congo, coal-fired plants generated the electricity needed for recharging, the added weight of electric cars because of their batteries took its toll on tires and roads, and much more. 

 

Cost-benefit was a fiction for recyclers, electric freaks, and bikers.  Their good was taken as a matter of faith, and no comparative economic analysis of waste disposal or reconfiguration of traffic for a desultory interest in bike travel was necessary.  In fact to do so was to challenge the very premise of a warming climate. 

That - the warming climate - was the issue that brought Del, Margot, and Shannon together.  Despite growing evidence that global warming might not be the apocalyptic threat it has been touted to be - ice sheets in both the Arctic and Antarctic are increasing not decreasing; new evidence from sophisticated AI analysis suggests that man's influence on climate variations is far less than concluded by climate activists - environmentalists are more passionate than ever, and have dug their heels in even more deeply.  Climate change is not received wisdom.  It is fact. 

So, not only does involvement in sectoral environmental issues feel good - biking, recycling, and electric cars - but that advocacy for a reversal of global warming feels even better.  It is the big tent, the big issue, the one idea that puts it all together.  The fact that the three neighbors were one on climate change added to their sense of identity and purpose and gave them a universal camaraderie.  

Hobbes's famous notion - 'Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short' - may well be true, but social activism is a good anodyne.  It may not change the existential nature of a penitential life, but it at least takes your mind off it.  So, although the excesses and febrile enthusiasm of people like Del, Margot, and Shannon might be amusing if not laughable to some, some credit is due.  How different is climate activism any different than a round of golf or bass fishing?

University Park, the neighborhood where all three live is an amusing place thanks to its very visible political commitment.  Hate Has No Home Here, BLM, Democracy Matters lawn signs are everywhere.  Compost bins are place in front (not in the invisible alley) of houses, electric cars are charged up on driveways, and bikers pedal up and down the main streets.  

There is nothing quiet about political philosophy there.  Own It, Show It is the mantra, commitment requires evangelism, good works are impactful.  

Yes, it can all be tedious at times, but a side show right around the corner? A must.