Author: TheGentlemanAtLarge

It Doesn’t Matter that that Cyclist is a Jerk

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ 1 Comment

You’ve seen it. You’re on your way to work, stuck in traffic (bumper to bumper, always), probably going to be late. So late you’ve got your coffee with you, and a breakfast sandwich, and you’re generally crawling your way to the office and checking in on Twitter, Snapchat, whatever. It’s taking forever. It’s the worst.

Then out of the corner of your eye is this dickhead. He’s on his bike, flying the wrong way through traffic. He’s got coffee in one hand and his phone in the other (Tindr, probably), and he’s gripping an Egg McMuffin between his teeth. He’s wearing headphones and dressed all in black and you’re lucky you even saw him at all.

What a jerk. You’d better not hit him.

Because when we climb into our cars in the morning we assume a position of power on the roadways; whether we think about it or not, by choosing* a car to get from Point A to Point B we assert control over the lives of others. A fatal collision between a motorist and a cyclist is always the fault of the motorist because they assume the responsibility of the vehicle when they get behind the wheel.

A drunk driver is responsible for their actions in spite of impaired decision making and reaction time because they made the decision to begin drinking and then drove. In the same way, a sober driver is morally culpable for harm they cause (even when the events that lead to that harm are beyond their control), by virtue of having left the house in a 6,000lb weapon in the first place.

We as Americans have a nasty habit of justifying the moral failings of those with power by pointing to the moral failings of those without. We do this when point to “riots” after unarmed black men are murdered by police, and again when those police are acquitted or never charged. We do this when we excuse the human rights violations by our allies in Gaza with valid criticism of Hamas policy, politics, and attacks. And we do this when we clamber to place blame on cyclists killed by the fashion accessories of the wealthy.

When we are presented with a choice (and if you are reading this driving is a choice) and elect a position of physical power we are responsible for the ramifications of wielding that power. When we reach for the keys, we should understand that if we are sitting still at a red light and are struck by a texting cyclist, we created the conditions of their injury by selecting a weapon for transportation. It’s on us.

Placing blame on the powerless to excuse our own laziness or vanity may be an American tradition, but it’s a bad look. Think about it before you leave the house.

*Philosophy students may raise an eyebrow at the use of the word “choice” here, which opens its own whole bag of worms. I’m comfortable with it here, but fire away, please!

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Ugh More Self-Righteous Bike Talk

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

“Ugh,” you are, at this point, almost certainly thinking. “Another self-righteous blog post about bicycles. Just what the internet needs. Great.”

By now the audience has reduced by half (at least) as the rest of those folks navigated away to go look for FailBlog videos or something with baby animals exploring playground equipment. And I get it, you’ve all heard this diatribe before, and besides cyclists are just so damn annoying. That’s really it, at the end of the day.

Just this morning I was almost pasted by some guy hopping onto the sidewalk from riding toward oncoming traffic during rush hour. What a dickhead. And if you’re still reading you obviously know that all cyclists aren’t like that guy, and obviously as that happened he and I were both passed by like 20 people texting and driving on their way to work, but damn, he almost got me.

And hell, even the good cyclists are a pain in the neck. They’re all over the roads that they don’t even pay for, zigging and zagging and carrying on. And if you can look past the film of human grease they’ve accumulated from exercising while commuting and their lewd pants you’ll probably get splashed as you pass them with inches to spare because they’re all just drenched with smug*. They’re the worst. I get it.

But what I don’t get about folks who openly hate cyclists or tacitly endorse that aggression by driving when they shouldn’t is how else they see this playing out.

Because, like, there are a lot of us, people, you know? And then every day there are a few more. And we’re all pretty much going to the same place – stores, stores, restaurants, whatever. And traffic is already pretty bad, right? That’s what I hear. So have a seat and use your imagination for a minute, really. How do you see this going?

Here’s a couple ideas for how it’s probably not going to go:

  • Magical Autonomous Subterranean Hyperloop Super Cars
    These are not going to save us. Sorry. Elon Musk and his ilk have continually shown that in driving innovation the technology industry is exceptional at creating value for shareholders, and not quite as good at solving problems that are measured by human lives, or goodness, or really anything other than currency. They are, however, pretty good at inventing problems for which they have a patent on the solution.
  • Flying Cars
    File this with with the tunnel cars.
  • Back to the Old Days
    Certainly to the chagrin of your grandfather and right-wing whackjob uncle who thinks our economy should still work like it’s 1890, things are not going to go back to the good ol’ days, when you never had to sit in traffic and a gallon of milk cost a nickle.
  • Nuclear Winter
    Shoot actually this one might just play out. And it’ll look a lot like the old days, the wild west, I guess, but you’ll pay for things with ears or teeth or something and probably eat babies, if Cormac McCarty knows anything.
  • Gradually Numbing Our Perception of What Is An Acceptable Distance to Sit in Our Cars, Isolated by Glass and Air Conditioning and Podcasts from Our Communities, as We Increasingly Sprawl and Pave the Interstices between Cities and Towns and We Find that Eventually We Have Created a Kind of Infinite Strip Mall of Mega-Box Stores and Build-a-Bears and Office Parks and Office Park Parking Lots and We Have No Choice to Meet Our Basic Needs than to Sit in a Car for 45 (60? 90!) Minutes at a Time to Simply Buy Lettuce or Something, or Even Worse it Becomes So That the Horror of Doing So is Insurmountable and So We Order Our Lettuce on the Internet and Never Feel That The Cost – Financial, Emotional, ETC – Is Worth Leaving Home and We Further Insulate Ourselves from Each Other and Simply Maintain “Communities” Through AOL Instant Messenger, or Whatever, So that this Virtual Community Usurps Actual Community as a Tenet of Our Values and We as a Species Shrivel and Withdraw and Do Not Expire By Way of (the now curiously intriguing) Nuclear Winter but Simply Cease to Exist in Any Meaningful Way.
    Phoenix, in other words. Shoot that’s already a thing.

And suddenly the idea that conserving space in our cities, towns, and communities by leaving behind the 6,000 pound handbags that we use to put off retirement and murder people just doesn’t seem that crazy. It is one of two logical progressions of how our communities will develop.

Transportation problems are not ones that need a new invention. We have it, and stamp them out for a few hundred dollars a piece. Cars, obviously, are not going anywhere (and nor should they, they’re great), but we need to stop thinking of them as the norm, and start thinking of them as the exception. Without this kind of shift in how we leave the house, we will continue to literally pave the way to living in an asphalt hellscape.

Bicycle evangelists are about as annoying as all the other kinds of evangelists, and so we can be easy to write off. But the premise is unassailable: the only path to livable communities is through a collective embrace of sustainable transportation – buses and bikes.

*I hear only diesel fumes can get it off you.

It Really Is a Thing

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

Hey, so, if we haven’t met, you should know that I spend a lot of my time filling out paperwork. And it’s not glamorous paperwork. Mostly it’s asking for permission in 5,000 words, and documenting redundancy redundantly, things like that. I spend about a third of my life proving to people that I have insurance, as though a quick “we’re good i swear” text isn’t enough to assuage liability.

Some days, in order to coordinate volunteer trail work efforts on public land, I will fill out the exact same paperwork that Northrop Grummon fills out before they’re awarded trillion dollar contracts to help murder civilians. The exact. Same. Paperwork. To clean water bars on our National Forest.

From day to day, I am continually amazed by the glee with which some federal employees embrace our bureaucratic morass, and revel in inflicting drabness on active community members who have no ambitions beyond contributing to the public good. This goes well beyond my personal experiences, and today being stonewalled by slowly articulated regurgitations of policy handbook language is a right-of-passage for those who would engage with our public land in any organized way.

The daily struggle to simply participate in the public process is infuriating. Asinine. Obtuse.

But the thing is, in spite of every frustration and eye-clawing inconsistency in how it’s managed I will go to war for public land, and so will everyone else who shares the headaches that go with its management. That fight is here.

You can be forgiven for missing the news (it’s been a crowded cycle). But a few days ago Senator Mike Lee became more proactive in his platform to privatize public land. Remember that this is a pillar of the Republican Party platform, but due to its wild unpopularity among voters in the west, most candidates of been wary of embracing it.

Not true of Mike Lee. In spite of outdoor recreation contributing more than $12 billion each year to Utah’s economy, in spite of it supporting 110,000 jobs and contributing nearly a billion dollars in tax revenue, and despite the State’s aggressive stance to public land demonstrably injuring that economy, Lee has embraced the large scale divestment from these natural resources.

From his website: “Congress should honor its promise to sell federal land in western states.” Right there, clear as day. He’s proud of that shit. Across the west the sanctity of public land is pretty much the only thing that right and left can agree on. In spite of disagreements on how that land should be managed, and frustrations over the process itself, the narrative is clear: voters expect our elected officials to Keep Public Lands in Public Hands.

And the threat is more than top down. After sweeping acquittals of insurgents involved in an armed occupation of federal property last year, the ranchers whose case triggered the standoff were granted presidential pardons today, further undermining the sanctity of public land.

The struggle is real. This is not hypothetical. Shoot back.

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Pugs

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ 1 Comment

Pugs, the dogs, are a bit like like Juggalos: it is only once you welcome one into your life that you begin to grasp their ubiquity. They are the newfound darlings of the meme world, usurping the throne from corgis and grouchy cats, but never doubt their everpresence or durability as a cultural icon.

The pug is the hero of underdogs everywhere. They are bred to a disadvantage and still they prosper, like a worldwide sleeper cell network of whatever the hell Jabba the Hut was. They represent a natural, bred aristocracy, and carry themselves with an aloof kind of dignity that can only be wrought from some divine preference. They are our rightful rulers, our philosopher kings, our benevolent dictators, and they know it.

Almost made it.

You see they began their history as the lap dogs of emperors – they are an ancient breed – and were reared among luxurious furnishings and a complement of armed guards. This is an expectation the dogs seem to have retained.

And good on them, I suppose, because their very existence is a cruelty. We have bred from them every defense mechanism. They cannot see, flee, or fight. Instead to survive they must, at all times, be within arm’s reach of human being, lest they be snatched away by a cougar, or coyote, or seagull.

They have been selected for distinctive looks and an authoritarian demeanor that passes for personality. They are predisposed to a slow metabolism, horrible breathing, prolapsed eyeballs, infected rolls, and we did this to them for our own comfort and amusement. Shame on us. We deserve to live beneath the mini-Machiavellis that we have created.

This used to be a wolf.

You see because it as been said a pug cannot be trained. In my experience this is not the case. It is not that a pug can’t be trained, as much as it won’t be trained. Sit, says you; go fuck yourself, says he. And then he turns the tables.

Make me a lap, pleb, and I will sit upon it, and you will pet me and keep me warm and safe from owls and believe that it was you who said come sit here but no, no it was I, the architect of your misery. And now I am hungry. Feed me human, feed me not only kibble but also shower me with praise not for what I have done but for who I am, your lord The Pug. You, too, will believe this soon.

The gaslighting little fuckers.

And from beneath their tiny iron fists, it is easy to forget that pugs are dogs. In spite of their ample, tender underbellies, in spite of their low position in the food chain, in spite of their intrinsic disdain for humanity, they descended from wolves once. And in spite of the thousands of generations of indignity bred to them by mankind, they have retained a strand of wildness.

Like any of us, I suppose, they have been removed from the natural order for so long, but still hold a killer instinct. Whether terrorizing dinosaurs/chickens, or gobbling ants, or simply stalking the cheese drawer from the hallway, there is a strand, a thread, an atavistic whisper of their wild and rugged heritage. A pug has been habitually ruined for the wilds for millennia, and yet here they are, a predator with what tools they have. I wonder if we all might look briefly in the mirror and see a wilder us.

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