Orbital Plane

How can anyone be interested in bicycles alone? Bikes are only a means to take in wide world beyond your doorstep. Have gotten stuck on transportive processes, but what else have you? Vegetative? Yes, you can learn plenty from barnyard animals, insects and plants, but warmest relationships can only form once you meet some percentage of planet’s seven billion seven hundred thousand other humans. Universe includes everything; culture and science explain how you fit into it. Heaven is gliding effortlessly to hear, see, sense and understand everything.

Fact is that during short time allotted there’s a glut of input and surplus of stupidity. Whole of internal logic, poetic rhyming, suggestive innuendo, and whimsical wordplay gets totally lost in translation, meaning filtered from consciousness of most readers whether or not foreign or native language fluent. Audience flocks to whatever bundles, digests, and eases reach, usually radio or television, then Twitter memes or websites. May attend live lectures or performances, but whenever highly motivated most knuckle down and read chapters and paragraphs. If you think about it, literature originates raw material for all other media, yet remains the least loved. A bond must be formed between audience and author that requires extraordinary effort from both, even undeserved pain, to achieve rapport, meld minds, and start word of mouth that breaks barriers. Wastes too much time.

Same dynamics describe transportation choices. The path of least resistance appears to be a private passenger car... that is, until gridlock becomes intolerable, parking impossible, or roads impassable. Then you’re back to walking, for which most are so out of shape they’ll pathetically stay in place until death overtakes or situation resolves. Planes and trains never reach where you want to be, so you still must rent a car or take a taxi. Costs and hassles of arranging, boarding and delaying have become so bad motorists may often be tempted to drive thousands of miles instead. Along with distracted and intoxicated, sleep impaired motoring is a major cause of accidents and fatalities, though many find it impractical to snooze aboard planes or trains, then drive upon arrival anyway.

Exactly half a century ago many of Earth’s three billion six hundred thousand people - less than half its current population - were riveted to Apollo 11 broadcasts. CBS anchor Walter Cronkite invited futurist fictionist Arthur C. Clarke to comment, since Clarke had speculated in books a generation earlier all that was about to occur, though admitted going to the moon was a lot more complicated and costly than imagined. Historic precedents excite, but space exploration since has drawn less acclaim than criticism, even with another moon landing planned around corner. Although you’re tracking more junk in orbital plane than you care to admit, because its influence is plainly incontrovertible, you live in a gravity well that's hard to escape and mustn't be taken for granted. News of alien visitation wouldn’t make things any weirder than they already are. Nobody at that time was reading instead of listening or viewing. During current events, literature gets abandoned, then resurges when buzz passes and people seek new perspectives. However, authors seldom rate among celebrities. Action heroes amass accolades. Wordsmiths are accursed.

A perfect case in point was Marshall “Major” Taylor, the first African-American international sports star. Not only did he set USA cycling records, Taylor surpassed all competitors on three continents and won every championship. Despite denial, racism, and violence stateside, the Black Cyclone was invincible from 1896 to retirement in 1909. He sat atop a fortune in winnings when age and rivals began to catch up. Although he expressed no bitterness or regrets in his autobiography, The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World, self publishing in 1928 and peddling copies himself, along with crashing of stock market and declining popularity of bicycling, ruined his marriage and net worth. Residing penniless at Chicago’s YMCA, Taylor succumbed to heart disease at 53 years old, about same age Labann began publishing Bike&Chain. So, fans lavish cash upon athlete, yet look past author as if he didn’t exist, even when one in the same person.

Had a chance to roll along Major Taylor Boulevard and stop at the [shown] Mendez memorial to the Worcester Whirlwind, dedicated in 2008 by Greg Lemond himself, outside public library next to YMCA just 7 blocks from George Street, an 18%, 500 foot hill Taylor used to train on, now venue for an annual race held every July in his honor in Worcester, where he began his professional racing career and first found fickle fame. These days city itself seems filled with anger, blight, ghosts, and reminders of region’s biggest KKK rally, while ugly white supremacy has wormed into nation’s highest offices.

There used to be an anti-religion, immigration hostile Know Nothing Party. Ever wonder what happened to it? Lincoln drew its xenophobic adherents into Republican Party. This same thinking monolith of anti-intellectuals, bigots, denialists, and racists represent only about 25% of Americans, which, coincidentally, is the same proportion of insane people loose in society at any given time. Without scruples they are better organized than any other party, especially Democrats, a loose confederation of idealists, labor unionists, and splinter groups that collect over 45% of voters, though not all routinely show at polls. In the 1930’s, Republican Smoot Hawley tariff was principally to blame for deepening The Great Depression and making recovery impossible, now known as the most catastrophic act in congressional history. In 1940 another of their bills, Taft Hartley, restricted unions to keep wages low. In the 1950's, McCarthy's communist witch hunts, with his protege Reagan, condemned innocents and curtailed progress. Nixon was forced from office for his misconduct and paranoia. Politics were much healthier before Reagan destroyed unions in 1980’s to end labor’s clout in picking candidates and speaking for up to 35% of voters. Unions have since dwindled to municipal, paramilitary, and shrunken industrial groups, only 5% of today's workforce. Bushes gave billionaires bailouts and tax cuts precipitating recessions that savaged all but the wealthiest few. Yet dunces who couldn't see trough this century of lunacy and villainy elected Trump. Just how stupid can Americans be? Who can you blame but yourselves for this condensed history from New Deal to No Deal?

People react as if astonished that a politician dares to cheat and deceive them. It's all they ever do. Honest folks have no place in office. Even when they do get elected, they're forced or maneuvered out, usually through sex scandals, as if intimate encounters weren't healthy and normal but lewd and shameful. Probably dupes celibates, crones, and virgins. Rest of voters engage in some frequency from "get lucky once" to "once an hour on average". Scandal tactics don't work against Republicans, who are the first to accuse others of what they themselves have been caught and doxed doing countless times. Over the last 3 GOP presidencies alone that includes homosexual trysts, pedophiliac perversion, rancorous infidelity, and statuary rape. More outrageous than this bitchy behavior is their outright hypocrisy.

Maybe relative decency, social programs, and wide tolerance weren’t so good as strategies when planet’s population doubled since 1969 threatening natural resources to tipping point and tripling traffic with which you have to deal. Yet non-stop war over same period did nothing to reduce, single child laws failed to achieve zero population growth, and threats of apocalypse urged births to preserve species. If world’s going to end soon, what’s the difference? Validates don’t-give-a-f*ck attitude of climate denialists, self servers, and unchecked sociopaths in office. GOP’s gross misconduct emboldened miscreants, enabled worst transgressions, and exposed an execrable underbelly allowed to operate in society. Nobody expects perfection, only works toward it to bring improvement.

Situations change while stuff stays the same. Bush recessions hurt, but collapse of social entitlements earned over a lifetime would be ruinous. Most of all Neocons drool over trillions duly invested into Social Security, the last federal treasury from which they’ve not been able to steal. For many retirees, it’s still an important foundation for monthly income, though small amounts doled out represent less buying power than dollars involuntarily contributed. Now they want to take even this away in pursuit of their zero sum game that will kill everyone including themselves. Conservatism describes the terminal scenario before sink hole sucks entire system to bottom. A clean sweep of Congress can’t be done within year left before next election, may take several cycles, would require viable candidates, yet almost anyone would represent you better, and America survived bad administrations before. Worst catastrophe in homo sapiens history would be to allow this conservative cancer to spread to another planet. Colonization must be apolitical and freegan.

“When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equals, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to that I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” Abraham Lincoln, 1855

Rednecks Flain

“Riding a bike is Democratic... Now into era of mixed messages, travel by bike and you may be treated like a hero, or, still, treated like vermin... Revolution might be a cycle tour. Time spent thinking about how to do it is never wasted... People fear freedom... Tiresome to be treated as a problem when you are the solution. Don’t let other people’s stupidity upset you... People who ride bikes live longer.” Patrick Field, 2011 address to Royal Geographical Society

This ten year blog slog must end soon. Meant to slow time, it still went by in a cosmological blink. As did Patrick Field, said everything necessary about bicycling already, though parsed deliberately in bicycling cadence through many digressions over a decade. Yet B&C’s social commentary has lost its relevancy. While literature should be fun to read laden with linguistic delights, texts stuffed with opinion alienate everyone. Politics stink. Surveys only seek self vindication, not what you personally think.

So what have blog’s readers learned? A lot of words rhyme with chain? A mineral skeleton integrates effectively with a biological organism? Every manner of human is represented among a billion bicyclists? A quarter of a G8 nation of three hundred million can’t differentiate a dictator from a servant, and three quarters have no idea how to recapture control and retard decline? Not a damn thing?

Most people avoid everything that even hints of emotion, logic, poetry, reason or thinking. Facing facts can indeed be too painful, cause stress, raise blood pressure, shorten lifespan. But if you let others do it for you, you forfeit your chance to do what’s right for you as an individual; you’ll have to wear one-size-fits-all hand-me-down decisions, which may impact your very survival.

Who’s going to rub vindictive Ubu Roi the wrong way thereby risk being rubbed out? Like Jong-un and Putin, he’s a gangster surrounded by henchmen whose salaries you stupidly pay. Unpopularity also proves nothing. USA’s presidency isn’t a monarchy, only to a certain redneck mentality, which has been decisively bagged, precisely flain, and specifically quartered here since onset. Hunting makes for fitting analogies given their gun proclivities and hankering for war. Have made it plain that only none too bright short term gain and right to exploit interim might matter anymore in a world run by bosses, nazis, racists, terrorists and theocrats. A diligent citizen or intelligent resident has no say, then it all crashes with no family spared heartache and losses you might pray would stay away.

Despite their conspicuous contempt, Republicans seem content to run their ridiculous incumbent for another term. A dozen Democrats have to duke it out for dubious privilege of deposing this dunce. Nobody with any sense wants the job. Or listens to same 3 rap beats repeatedly. Or parks in a crowded lot and pumps volume to ear splitting decibels on sunny summer afternoons, as if doing world a favor and making America great again. While sensible people do exist, they don’t make a spectacle of themselves, so you only notice candidates and cretins whose intention is to draw your attention by whatever means, such as parading missiles and tanks to flaunt military might, instead showing muscular incapacity to every enemy.

A least Democratic debates raised issues that voters wanted to discuss: job creation, living allowance, loan relief, minimum wage hike, social justice, and ways to participate in a rigged capitalist regime. Sanders and Warren did respond, but suggested no ways to resolve. Poverty spreads while corporate profits and Wall Street soar. Democrats want to push boundaries on behalf of splinter groups, while Republicans seek to restrict reform of electoral college which delivered elections. For example, by not holding 2020 Census, funding and voting wouldn’t be properly redistributed. This would undermine their plot to have indebted multinational agribusiness control a large number of districts in rural states.

A third option exists, though not so obvious most would notice: To form a centrist political party that could divert enough votes from main two, as if only two ever existed of anything. Might actually be easier than it sounds. Democrats and Republicans in office don’t serve mainstream voters but small factions. They divide votes because no other choice presents itself to dissatisfied majority. Bikes and unicycles both roll, but trikes are more stable.

Forever in demand, progress never occurs without problems. Amish or Neo-Luddite separatists might think they can transcend technology, but they can barely produce enough to be self sufficient without machines and they’ll suffer just as much as rest of society after widespread collapse. Freaks espousing fringe beliefs found no sanctuary among equally superstitious farmers. Everything done to enfranchise ingrates becomes dictates that penalize the god fearing and law abiding.

Revolution would toss out hard earned entitlements along with political corruption when only slight tweaks are required, by which Labann means new faces and policies. Partisanship has become a pandemic affecting all incumbents. With fraud so entrenched, fearless and scrupulous patriots need to reclaim responsibilities, secure spots in Senate, and serve entire nation, not just selves. People seldom get so lucky. Motivated mostly by greed, swilling brews, and watching NASCAR, rednecks neither heed nor read, so are definitely not willing. Perhaps millennials won’t be so self possessed when they inherit this mess once ugly gluttons drop dead or retire, unless offspring inherit seats in Congress. Too often votes are swayed by name recognition. Conservatism derives from aged dementia and mental defect, whereas liberal youth often demonstrate bad judgment and inexperienced mistakes. Provided you can find anyone with some, what needs to prevail is wisdom.

Bike&Chain focused from start upon the universal struggle between doing right and exercising freedom, neither of which are tolerated within a de facto kingdom, not to relieve readers from unreasonable worries. Some stress is good when what results benefits both self and society. But it should be a whole lot easier to work toward global justice when doing the opposite only destabilizes diplomacy for transient comforts.