Stories On Two Wheels: Part 3

I woke sore. I’d been overheated the day before. I took an ibuprofen and stumbled to the hotel’s breakfast area. (I’d been super lucky to find a bottle of ibuprofen in my saddle bags!)

The breakfast area was stocked with an array of inedible garbage. Truly awful. Almost impressively unpalatable. I took a sip of coffee and poured the rest down the drain. It was from an “instant coffee dispensing machine” and tasted even worse than it sounds. I gave up and skipped breakfast.

Wearing yesterday’s clothes and not even bothering with the mesh pants, I stepped into yet another blistering hot day. I rode my bike a lot slower this time. Bare denim pants offer basically no protection and for some reason it was bothering me this particular day. I’ve worn denim jeans for many thousands of miles but this time I kept having visions of skin grafts. Was my subconscious trying to tell me something?

Then I was distracted by another business situation. After an hour of yammering on the cell phone while standing in a sweltering city park it was resolved. In the hubbub I never got my morning coffee.

It was mid-afternoon before I stopped at a coffee shop for iced coffee (first of the day!). I sat exhausted in the AC until the magic of caffeine kicked in. Three shots of espresso dumped on ice will fix a lot of problems.

I eagerly looked around for someone who looked like they needed a strange sweaty biker to pay for their lunch. I was anxious to “pay it forward”. It didn’t happen. The place was basically empty.

While decompressing, I read the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. Unlike the press or social media I actually read the words of the decision. OK, I didn’t read the whole thing but I read a lot of it.

It’s good to read what the actual justices had to say. Don’t just parrot what the dipshit on the screen says. Don’t forward a meme. Don’t preen with a “thumbs up” on some F***book rant or “destroy the other side” with a Twitter slogan. Read the frigging sentences and paragraphs as written by the smart fuckers we hire to do that sort of thing. God gave you a brain. If he meant you to be moron in a colony of like minded morons he would have put you on this earth as something suitable for that sort of life; such as a sea sponge.

Careful review imposes mental discipline. If you can’t read without reflexively getting your knickers in a twist then you can’t think. If you can’t think, your comments are stupid and pointless. Conversely, those who calmly think things over have a shot at intelligent and reasonable discourse; even when they disagree.

My opinion, with which nobody has to agree, is that the logic of Dobbs was sound. I’m happy to see penumbras and emanations corrected. 50 years ago the Supreme Court derailed the legitimate workings of representative democracy. It was one of many steps in the continuing decline of what was once un-ironically called the United States. They basically said “fuck the States, we have the power of Crom and decided for everyone all at once, because penumbras”.

If everything is decided in DC there will always be masses of people getting steamrolled by more politically connected groups. Look out your window. That’s exactly what 2022 is all about.

Roe vexed me because it was a perpetual machine for generating anger. The Supreme Court played grabass in ‘73 and because of their bullshit I had to live through an entire lifetime of people losing their shit. Every congressman, senator, district attorney, dogcatcher, presidential candidate, and especially supreme court nominee has had to opine on (and usually try to dodge responsibility for) the continuation or discontinuation of fucking penumbras.

Every supreme court nomination in my life has been a white hot lightning rod of rage. It is said that many supreme court appointments in the distant past were boring administrative affairs. Can you imagine such bliss? That’s heaven compared to the circus that erupts at every modern nomination. Screaming crowds, sketchy unsupported accusations, and the worst of all… adult professionals tiptoeing around even the most basic subjects. So much unhinged cult-like anger! Seeking power without complying with the constitution bends the rules. Enough bent rules and America winds up precisely where we are right now! Dobbs is a step back from the whirlwind.

It’s 2022 so I don’t expect an outbreak of reasonable behavior. Too much of our populace is in a cult-like mental spiral. They’ll get spastic because that’s what they do. They were spastic yesterday. They were spastic the month before. They’ll be spastic next week. It’s an inescapable lifestyle marker for them now.

It has the whiff of desperation about it… and cult. Bitching about Federal control (in this case the lack of it) lets a social justice warrior focus on that which they don’t control. Since everything is caused by DC they’ve got no agency in their life. No agency is the flip side of no responsibility; a child like incompleteness of the chronologically adult. They can’t do anything non-political (like go bowling or paddle a kayak or sew a quilt) because they’d feel the beginnings of fulfillment and a tiny hint of self-reliance. That’s the last thing a programmed cult member wants!

Aside from the shrieking maniacs, what will the rest of us do? We’ve the option of participating in our State’s decision making process without shitting on the neighboring State. Can we handle it?

Between State variation is rare but still exists. Here’s an example; Oregon decriminalized heroin in 2020 but about 6% of Americans live in dry counties where you can’t buy alcohol. States haven’t been completely subjugated. Dobbs will help States in their effort to matter.

State level variation relieves pressure. Over time, people gravitate to the location that matches their needs. Nobody in dry-county Goat Balls Alabama wants to step over a dead heroin addict in the yard. Nobody in heroin allowed Portland Oregon wants life without weed and microbrewed IPAs.

As that crazy racist right wing conservative John F. Kennedy said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Either that or JFK said “lay one finger on my penumbra and my green haired contingent of shrieking harpies will burn down Kavanaugh’s house.” It’s 2022, who knows if they’ve retconned JFK yet.

In my travels, I’d passed a state line. Local politics were so blue they probably have a statue of Trotsky in front of the public library. The federal decision wouldn’t ban a goddamn thing there. The Supreme Court kicked the decision back to the State and the folks there are surely scheming to allow abortion up to a kid’s 16th birthday.

(More to come.)