Lao Tzu Had A Point

I’ve been writing a lot about motorcycles lately.

Because motorcycles actually exist.

I’ve backed off popular topics. Last week, I discussed a collision with a tree. Trees are real.

I shy away from society in periods of madness. I saunter toward the exit when masses act stupid. If they think they’re wise like philosophers of yore; I run.

While I back out the door, things get creepy. Fools, lemmings, and witch burners yowl like cats in heat. They’re in rut. Witness their insatiable need to eliminate anyone who isn’t of their mindset. How else are they to preen and pose for the target audience. Thus, they signal their social superiority and availability. I suppose if you’re a peacock, sticking your ass in the air and waving big feathers might make sense. The next generation of dumbasses has to come from somewhere.

This happens from time to time. Americans have, in various bits of irrationality, talked to ghosts, outlawed alcohol, herded their own citizens into concentration camps, limited all roads to 55 MPH, and, delightfully, attacked bad music with explosives.

This week iconoclasts run amok. They can neither spell nor define “iconoclasm”. Perhaps the Taliban can offer pointers?

Blowing up shit is appealing to idiots.

The only questions are the degree to which the crabs will pull us back into their pot and how long our time with crabs will last. Will it be a few days or the rest of our lives? I’m an optimist. I think this particular stupid moment has an expiration date. I smell a whiff of “the lady doth protest too much methinks“. Folks might’ve earnestly believed agitprop in decades past. Now that’s impossible. The rot is too deep. Nobody believes a damn thing. This includes the jackasses throwing bricks and the lunkheads encouraging them.

They’ve hit the believably event horizon. One cannot make an opera from a Punch and Judy show during the festival of Orange Man Bad. Thus, today’s kerfuffles are fated to be forgotten; the future reaction will be a bemused shrug of the shoulders… “We did that? You had to be there.”

I could be wrong.  The truth is, nobody knows why people eat Tide pods, get bad tattoos, or join together en mass to scream at the sky. We are strange monkeys.

I know it’s the last act of a fading actor’s troupe because it’s forgettable. One can barely remember the irrational bullshit of a month past. The panic du jour is everything. When a new variety of slightly different bullshit is put on the table, the old stuff is memory-holed.

Doubt me? Try an experiment: Remember.

Try to recall the all encompassing “threats” of January 2020? It’s not long ago. What was freaking us out just six months ago? I remember four main “issues”.

• Impeachment went full nothingburger. Remember Russia Russia Russia? Wishful thinking breathed to life by a British spy, dirty money, and a swamp eager to do wrong. The press polished that turd for three years but just couldn’t make it shine. They tried again with Ukraine. As we all know (I’m looking at you J. J. Abrams), some sequels are so bad they kill the whole series. Crooked parties and their pet press smeared Ukraine on their faces, let out a war cry, and ran hard into a brick wall. I’m not sure what they expected. Who gets a mulligan on 63 million votes? Did the pussy hat crowd really want President Pence? Did anyone say “what’s our end game here?” The main lesson to me is that two of the three impeached presidents in a 244 year history got there by the work of Hillary Clinton. Hillary’s corruption is a walking tactical nuke and if she’d won in 2016 it would’ve gone off eventually. Some unspeakably gross corruption scandal would be in full swing right now. Say what you want about Trump, they didn’t invent the word “Arkancide” for him. Regardless, impeachment is the forgotten story of January.
• Global warming was urgent and all encompassing too. Predicted, modeled, hypothetical, urgently hyped, Malthusian death to much of humanity has been a constant throughout my life. Recently, it’s taken the guise of global warming. In the early 1970’s it was overpopulation and unavoidable starvation. Later it was the oncoming ice age. The whole thing morphed through mutually assured destruction into global thermonuclear war (that’s the Big Gulp of disaster sodas!). They tried a hybrid; mixing climate and war to create “nuclear winter“. Regardless, there’s always a reason us sinners hang by a thread. Over the years, variants of fear mongering flitted about through holes in the ozone and Y2K until they lit on the broad shoulders of a dejected Al Gore. He’d lost his bid to be president and was sad. So he dusted off an old Powerpoint and got the worlds first “consolation” Nobel prize. The world didn’t end (yet again) so Al’s predictions started feeling silly. Al “Ice Free By 2013” Gore handed the torch to Greta the autistic teenager. In late 2019 Greta went full Karen. First at the UN and then at everyone. She was among the headlines of January. “How dare you!”
• There was WWIII with Iran. Well, it didn’t actually happen but the press sure hyped one. Orange Man Bad unleashed our military to kill a terrorist. The press was appalled. I prefer dead terrorists to live ones, but I don’t work in the press. Iran, showing their usual competence, responded by shooting down it’s own passenger plane. Then… then what? Did we kiss and make up? Apparently. Both sides forgot to explode the world. Now it’s forgotten.
• Also, Australia had forest fires. I, a blogger in a different hemisphere, was to blame. So were you. Ask Greta. Every beautiful butterfly that dies in an Australian brush fire is the fault of an American who voted wrong. You bastard! Kangaroos died and we’ve since forgotten to feel guilty about it.

Those four things, all reported seriously and repeatedly in January, are gone. Poof. Like they never mattered. I believe they faded easily because they were bullshit from the get go.

Heck, right now, the two biggest things of June are already fading. COVID was a real barn burner so it’s gradually ebbing but it’s on its way out. There are still random regulations, designer facemasks, and viral particles that can differentiate between 5′ 11″ and 6′ 1″. (Clever little buggers eh?) But you can sense desperation. The press hypes a “second wave” lest we get uppity and leave the house.

Note the resistance to good news. Nobody admits predictions were worse than reality. In March, Black Plague loomed on the horizon. It looked pretty bad. I was worried! Now it’s June. It wasn’t as bad as they said it would be. I’m relieved! Did it wipe out Seattle? Nope. Did a million Americans die? Not yet. Did the hospitals overflow? No. Did we treat people in tents? Not much. Did we need to dock a floating hospital in New York City? No. Did we flatten the curve? Yes! Did old people knife fight for the single available ventilator? No! I’d say we mostly won. Isn’t that good news?

COVID sucks. Every death is terrible. But there never was a choice between COVID and no deaths… there is always death. Every choice has a consequence, including being unemployed and sitting on the couch two months. So far it’s been a little worse than the pandemic of 1968 and much better than the pandemic of 1918. Remember those? Don’t worry, nobody else does. In due time they won’t remember the pandemic of 2020 either.

The other fading news is the quadrennial “most important election ever”. In February it was a hot and heavy battle. Once Bernie was sent packing, half the equation zeroed out. Trump is ready to rumble. He’s striding around the arena with a tire iron and a Diet Coke. “Step into the ring with me. WHO RUNS BARTERTOWN!” Biden is hiding in his basement. Hillary did the same thing in the summer of 2016. It sure as hell didn’t work for Hillary and it won’t work for Biden. Here’s a hint, If you have to hide from voters… you’re in the wrong business. I feel for Biden, I really do. Nobody on earth that thinks Biden can out debate or outperform the Orange Menace. Biden up against the human battering ram is going to be painful to watch. So why the hell did they pick him? Like locking me in a cage with six Navy SEALS isn’t wise, who doesn’t get that? Nobody’s seen Joe Biden outside of a Zoom meeting and I don’t blame him.

Until Biden nuts up and campaigns, and probably even then, voters lack the opportunity to change their minds. If you spent the last 3 years wearing pussy hats and screaming, you’ve painted yourself into a corner. “You know what? Cheeto Jesus ‘aint that bad. Hear me out on this; he didn’t put gays in cattle cars, start a land war in Asia, or eat a live kitten on TV… maybe I’ve been overreacting? Also I think Biden fell asleep during the last debate.” Lacking opportunities to make a rational decision they’ll vote for absolutely anything with a pulse because “hate Trump” is now their personal branding. Like owning a Prius, or pretending to like kale. Luckily, a pulse is something Biden can muster. Meanwhile, people who voted for Trump have the same problem. Many held their nose and voted for Trump only because he wasn’t Hillary. “Maybe in 2020 the Dems will run a real human. I just couldn’t vote for a harpy that hates me. Hopefully, I can ditch the freak from New Jersey in 2020.” Didn’t happen. A three year tantrum among people that lost a single election is horrible. When a toddler’s screaming because you wouldn’t let them have crayons. You don’t hand over a shotgun. Having seen the tantrum, many will vote for Trump even if they have to crawl through broken glass to do it.

The choice will be made in November. Which is better, a trip to the dentist, or a ride on a unicorn? It’s hard to say. Sometimes you need a dentist. Sometimes you don’t. Unicorns don’t exist. Carefully examining egomaniac blowhard versus a drooling simpleton is unpleasant. Lets pull down a statue.

I got to the end without mentioning Lao Tzu. That’s OK. The end is where the end needed to be. I was inspired by Clint Fargeau’s excellent post Lao Tzu Leaves For the Mountains: Absurdity Rules L.A. Riots 2.0, and It’s Just the Beginning:

“The mythical Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu–credited with authoring the Taoist wisdom classic Tao Te Ching–left his city to live alone in the mountains during an analogous period in Chinese history. The takeaway from the legend is clear: wisdom and virtue have no business in a civilization coming unglued. Ideas don’t matter; dialogue isn’t useful or appreciated; and traditions distilled from millennia of life might as well be a third antler on a deer.” [Emphasis mine.]

That stuck with me.

“Wisdom and virtue have no business in a civilization coming unglued.”

Lao Tzu knew the score. He fucked off to the mountains. As have I.

That, dear readers, is why I’ve been writing about motorcycles.