The Binary Circumstance

The Pacific Northwest is having a cold snap.

I braved riding my motorcycle into town late this morning when the temperature was reportedly 42. It wasn’t too bad as my jacket is well-insulated and the new gloves I bought last week are warmer than the vented ones. The helmet keeps my head warm.

The sun was also shining very bright and made it seem warmer when I was standing still. It was a beautiful, crystal-clear fall day with many trees including the broadleaf maples in full color and every gust of wind created a shower of red and yellow leaves.

Water and windproof pants are on my list of things to purchase next, however, because the wind cuts through denim and it’s useless when there’s water in the air. Thursday it’s supposed to warm up but also get rainy for a week.

Last night it got down below freezing and tonight it’s supposed to go down to 28. It’s not even November yet.

Ryan, if you need a shoulder to cry on, I’m here for you buddy.

Ryan Phillippe’s bio.

If you want to know just how bad the flight from reality is in the White House and how it has informed and directed public policy during George W. Bush’s administration, read Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills’ article “A Country Ruled by Faith.”

The right wing in America likes to think that the United States government was, at its inception, highly religious, specifically highly Christian, and even more specifically highly biblical. That was not true of that government or any later government—until 2000, when the fiction of the past became the reality of the present…

[…]

Bush promised his evangelical followers faith-based social services, which he called “compassionate conservatism.” He went beyond that to give them a faith-based war, faith-based law enforcement, faith-based education, faith-based medicine, and faith-based science. He could deliver on his promises because he stocked the agencies handling all these problems, in large degree, with born-again Christians of his own variety. The evangelicals had complained for years that they were not able to affect policy because liberals left over from previous administrations were in all the health and education and social service bureaus, at the operational level. They had specific people they objected to, and they had specific people with whom to replace them, and Karl Rove helped them do just that.

It’s a long and well-documented article that finishes with this:

There is a particular danger with a war that God commands. What if God should lose? That is unthinkable to the evangelicals. They cannot accept the idea of second-guessing God, and he was the one who led them into war. Thus, in 2006, when two thirds of the American people told pollsters that the war in Iraq was a mistake, the third of those still standing behind it were mainly evangelicals (who make up about one third of the population). It was a faith-based certitude.

Once again I ask big-government Democrats and Republicans, what do you do when the government you created with the power to regulate all aspects of life falls into the hands of those who do not share your values and wish to destroy you?

Do not forfeit your own natural right to control your own life and choose your own values by taking that right away from others. You cannot rationally claim a right that you take away from others.

The New York Times [reg. req.] has an article on the changing demographics of motorcycling.

Motorcycles are a symbol of youth that young people no longer particularly care for. In 1980, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council, half of riders were 24 or younger, and half of those were of high-school age. Nowadays not even 4 percent of bikers are under 18. Roughly half are over 40, and more than a quarter are over 50. For some brands of bike, the median age is particularly high: the typical Harley-Davidson buyer is 47.

[…]

Since bottoming out at just more than 2,000 deaths nationwide in 1997, motorcycle deaths have roughly doubled in the last decade, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and older bikers account for the bulk of them. Only about 5 percent of the 3,888 biker deaths in 2004 were teenagers. Nearly half were riders over 40.

Surely some of those killed were experienced motorcyclists hanging on a bit too long to something they used to be. But many were older novices who felt they had missed out on something and now sought to buy into it. Today plenty of products that used to be for young people have been remarketed to those who think (as the novelist Tom Robbins once put it) that “it’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”

[…]

By catering to the collective id of the generation that has the most people (and the most disposable income), motorcycle companies have chalked up spectacular successes. Sales of motorcycles have risen every year since 1993, and there are now almost 25 million bikers in the country. Business writers often marvel at Harley-Davidson’s ability to hold onto the baby-boom market as it has aged, contrasting it with the considerably weaker performance of, say, Levi-Strauss. This, of course, is a bit unfair to Levi-Strauss. To keep wearing Levi’s, you have to maintain the physique you had when you were 20, which is a tricky proposition. To keep riding a Harley, all you have to hang on to is the ideas you had when you were 20. Anyone can do that.

As I have pointed out in other postings about motorcycling, there are some solid economic and political reasons for owning a motorcycle especially where I live. Motorcycles use much less gas than say an SUV, a truck, and many cars. Motorcyclists are sending less money to countries where it can finance terrorism.

Most motorcycles are much cheaper to buy, maintain and insure than a car, cost much less to take on a ferry and get priority loading and unloading.

On top of that, it’s fun, especially when the weather is nice.