slow cycling movement

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Every week or so I’ll take a glance at some online cycling magazines and forums. It’s usually just a glance, because there’s rarely anything there to interest me. I don’t really care about most cycling tech, like derailleurs or suspension; I’m not interested in performance enhancing drinks or supplements; I have no interest at all in the various forms of cycling competition; and I’ve never paid any real attention to cycling efficiency or fitness. I’d rather pound a nail through my foot than read something about the coefficients of drag or wind resistance. I’ll occasionally read something about bicycle infrastructure or a recent development in ebikes. But in general, I’m not the target audience for cycling magazines.

That said, today I stumbled across an article that caught my attention. It was titled How to ride your bicycle slower and love it. It surprised me for a couple of reasons. First, because it never occurred to me that anybody would ever need to learn how to ride more slowly. I mean, you ride slower by…well, riding more slowly. Right? It’s pretty fucking obvious. But second, and more interesting (from my perspective, at any rate) I was surprised to discover there’s a growing (slowly growing, I presume) slow cycling movement.

Taking a break with my mountain bike, September, 2011

I was completely unaware of this. Apparently, there are communities of cyclists who’ve banded together to boldly declare, “Hey, I’m in no particular rush.” The article took pains to actually explain what slow cycling is, how it’s done, and why a person would do it. Slow cycling is:

[R]iding your bicycle in a relaxed manner, with time to look around and see the landscape…. It’s for leisurely enjoyment, not achievement, speed, or distance-bragging…. It’s all about meeting up with friends for a leisurely ride to the café for a streetside chat or going for a slow roll around town.

I shouldn’t mock (I’m going to, but I shouldn’t) because slow cycling is–and always has been–my default cycling mode. By nature, I’m a noodler. Whether I’m walking, driving, or riding a bike, I tend to just sort of noodle along. I’ve got nothing against riding for exercise. If that’s your interest, fine. Bikes are great for exercise. But so many of the people who ride for fitness seem to think those of us who ride for enjoyment are just in the way. We’re taking up valuable bike trail space that could be more effectively utilized for cardiovascular improvement.

A converted railway station on a bike trail, where I took a break.

The article about slow cycling (and yeah, I feel sort of silly even using that name) even went so far as to suggest how slow cyclists should dress. It’s not surprising that I actually dress in classic slow cyclist fashion. Cycling jerseys? Why? Wear a comfortable tee-shirt, or even something with buttons and a collar. What matters is that it should wick moisture away from the body to help keep you cool. Cycling shorts? Who needs them? (Well, I do, for one; I always have padded cycling underwear under my multi-pocketed sports shorts, and yeah, I like having lots of pockets for phones and keys and wallet and a camera.) When I’m riding with a group, the way I dress has always marked me as somebody not ‘serious’ about cycling.

When I’m riding with a group, I ride at the group’s pace, because that’s the polite thing to do. That’s usually anywhere from 15 to 20 miles per hour. But the vast majority of my cycling has been done solo. And yeah, then I ride slow. I’m talking a carefree 10-12 mph. That’s fast enough to cover distance, but slow enough to allow me to look at stuff while I ride. I’m constantly swiveling my head to look at birds and deer and groundhogs and whatever cool stuff I happen to see along the road or bike trail.

I took a break to chat with some guy and his dog I met on a bike path.

Not only do I ride slowly when I ride solo, but I stop fairly often. I stop and talk to strangers, I stop to pet dogs, I stop to look at stuff, I stop to take photos, I stop to have a drink and kick back for a bit and enjoy the quiet. I used to carry a small hammock; there have been many times I’ve stopped, tied the hammock between a couple of convenient trees, climbed in and taken a short nap. Or read a book.

None of that is efficient. It doesn’t burn many calories. It just makes me happy.

Which brings me back to that article. It claimed that slow cycling “releases serotonin and other happy hormones, not adrenalin.” That’s right. Happy hormones. Those are my favorite hormones. Fuck those grumpy hormones. Fuck them in the neck.

I was glad to learn a slow cycling movement exists, though I admit I haven’t seen any sign of it around here. Most cyclists I see are still on road bikes, still wearing colorful spandex cycling gear, still cycling with their heads down to be more aerodynamic, still failing to notice the chipmunks they’d just ridden past. Maybe that’ll change over time.

Or maybe I haven’t been paying enough attention. It’s possible I was looking at other stuff and the slow cyclists just sort of noodled on by me while I was distracted. I’d like that.

how do you start

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This might seem a silly question, but…

This question wasn’t asked of me; it was asked generally on Bluesky. But anybody who has ever written anything and been paid for it will eventually get a question that starts the same way. The questions tend to be pretty generic (…but how much dialog do you need?) or vague (…but how do you know when a scene is over?). But this was the most common and fundamental ‘silly’ question:

…but how do you *start* writing? How do you bridge the gap between staring at an empty page, with only a story idea & vague sense of urgency in your head, and convincing yourself to actually Start Writing?

There’s something fundamentally innocent about this situation. I’m just a writer, standing in front of an empty page, asking it how to begin. It’s both silly and serious, because the answer is both self-evident and incomprehensibly complex. How do you start writing a story? You put words in a row. It’s that simple. How do you start writing? Using godlike powers, you create an entire world where none exists and imbue it with rules and natural laws, then populate it with beings who behave as though they have free will but are, in fact, completely and entirely under your control. It seriously IS that complex.

Any story (and by ‘story’ I mean a work of fiction of any length–novel, novella, short fiction) is a cosmological event. When we write a story, we create a world and the world we create shapes how the story will be played out. All fictional worlds, to some degree, resemble the one we live in. The operative term there is resemble. As writers we routinely take liberties with the world we live in, making our fictional worlds different in ways we find useful. We may, for example, create a world in which dog trainers routinely discover dead bodies and solve crimes. Or librarians secretly engage in magical combat with ghosts. Or lesbian necromancers explore haunted gothic palaces in space. Regardless of the liberties we take with reality, the world we create nonetheless still resembles the world we live in.

This is true, but it doesn’t begin to help answer the actual question. How do you confront the empty page?

Brain to hand to pen to page.

It’s like when you have a new car (or any other shiny new purchase). You’re very careful where you park, because you don’t want other cars to ding it, or birds to shit on it, or tree sap to fall on it. You dread that first ding, but once it happens you relax a bit. You don’t fret about it as much.

So that’s how you start writing. Ding the car. If you find a clean white page to be intimidating, get it dirty. Put words in a row. Any words.

Another thing. There are LOTS of books on how to write. I haven’t read any of them, but I’m told many have rules on what NOT to do when starting a story. Rules’ like Don’t start with dialog or Don’t start with descriptions of weather or other bullshit. If you’re at a loss with how to start, maybe start by deliberately breaking one of those ‘rules.’

Start with dialog between lesbian necromancers describing the gloomy weather at the gothic space castle if you want. You can always change it later. I mean, it’s ALL just stuff you’re making up, so do whatever the fuck you want. Ain’t nobody looking over your shoulder. Later, if you want/intend/hope to sell what you’ve written, then you may want to take an audience into consideration. But when you’re starting a story, you are completely free. There are no rules, no moral code, no ethical constraints, no social standards you have to comply with.

Once you realize you’re free to write anything you want in any way you want, starting to write becomes pretty easy. Here’s what I know to be true: writing the beginning is fun. It’s all enthusiasm and you’re unburdened by the weight of the story. Writing the ending is harder, but it’s always satisfying. The dangerous part of writing–the part that strangles most writing projects–is the grim fucking middle. That’s where you have to do the grunt work of creativity. That’s where you have to do the heavy lifting of the imagination. The middle requires discipline. I don’t know about you, but I resent discipline. But it’s part of the gig, so there it is.

The beginning though? That’s all bluebirds and sunshine and chocolate eclairs.

ebike evolution

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Today is World Bicycle Day. And, okay, that sounds silly–like with all the awful shit taking place in the world, we need to set aside a day to celebrate bikes. But it actually makes sense. Bikes are–and always have been–revolutionary.

That includes electric pedal-assist bikes. The perception of ebikes is evolving rapidly. I bought my first ebike back in June of 2020. There weren’t many of them around at the time. In fact, I didn’t see another ebike in the wild until late that autumn. They were so uncommon that people–pedestrians, other cyclists, even people in cars at stop signs and traffic lights–would stop me to ask about the bike. They had lots of questions: how did it work, how far could it go, how fast, how much did it cost. And very often, these two questions: “But isn’t it…cheating?” and “Aren’t they for…old/disabled people?”

Those questions are what I like to call ‘stupid-ass questions.’ No, they’re not cheating. No, they’re not just for old or disabled people. They’re just bicycles. Bicycles plus.

When I bought my first ebike, they were as rare as unicorns.

I’ve talked about the ‘cheating’ issue before. The entire concept of cheating in recreational cycling is ridiculous. It’s stupid on multiple levels. Cheating implies some sort of competition. Who the fuck are we competing with when we go out for a ride? If you’re riding purely (or even primarily) for exercise, you could, I suppose, argue that you’re competing against yourself–that you’re trying to cycle better each time you go for a ride. Go faster, go farther, go longer, burn more calories. If that’s the case, then riding a bike would be cheating against runners. Riding a bike with multiple gears is cheating against cyclists who ride fixies. If you buy into the ‘cycling is competition’ argument, then anything that makes cycling easier can be considered cheating. All that spandex shit you wear? That’s cheating.

The other question–ebikes are for old or disabled folks–is equally wrong-headed. Ebikes ARE great for older folks and for folks who have some sort of disability. It allows people who otherwise couldn’t or wouldn’t ride a bike to…well, ride a bike. The same is true for step-through bikes, which are easier to get on and off (and yeah, there were assholes who thought they were clever by referring to my bike as a girl’s bike–like that’s an insult). Anything that helps people get on bikes and ride is a good thing. That’s pretty fucking obvious.

My second ebike is a lot more nimble.

Here’s the thing: a lot of us don’t see cycling as competition or a fitness tool. We’re riding bikes because they’re fun. We’re riding bikes as a form of transportation. That’s the main thing about ebikes: they’re generally adaptable. If you want an inexpensive way to commute to work without getting all sweaty, an ebike is your friend. If you want to take long rides without worrying that you’ll exhaust yourself (turning a fun ride into an ordeal), an ebike allows you to do that. Even if you want to cycle for exercise, you can reduce the level of pedal assist and sweat your ass off.

There are still a LOT of bicyclists who mock ebikes. But it’s changing. I rode my bike to the local farmers market on Saturday. The market is deliberately located on the town’s central bicycle trail. I’d say at least a third–maybe even half–of the bikes parked around the market were ebikes. There are two bike brew pubs within a few hundred yards of the farmers market; around a quarter of the bikes parked outside those pubs were ebikes.

I can ride farther and longer and have more fun with my ebike.

Don’t get me wrong; ebikes are far from perfect. They’re generally more expensive than regular bikes. They’re heavier. Batteries have a limited capacity, which affects the bike’s range (although that’s becoming less of an issue). Any device that depends on electricity to function necessarily has more ways to fail than their human-powered counterparts. And yet, despite this, ebikes are becoming more popular.

Why? Because they’re fun. I’ve been riding bike for most of my life, but I can honestly say I’ve never had as much fun on a bike as I’ve had the last four years. For me, the ebike has been liberating. I called my first ebike the best purchase I ever made. That’s still true. My second ebike is a much better bike, but that first bike was a revelation. The second bike was confirmation of how much better my life is with an ebike.

It’s World Bicycle Day and I’m certain most people–including most cyclists–won’t notice. They don’t need to. They’ll be out riding their bikes regardless.

chik chik chik chik

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Guilty as charged in all thirty-four counts. Everybody has a take on this, of course. Most of those takes are focused on either Comrade Trump’s immediate future or the effect these convictions will have on the 2024 presidential election.

Take a step beyond that. Remember that this case–these 34 indictments–was the most complicated and weakest of the four sets of indictments Trump is/was facing. The prosecution had to convince a jury of ordinary people that 1) Trump knowingly falsified some business documents, and 2) he falsified them with the intent to commit another crime. That’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s fucking hard to prove intent, because intent takes place in the mind. In this case, the State was able to prove intent almost entirely because Trump’s malignant personality got in his way.

Trump’s other cases are much less complicated; the evidence in those cases is a lot more clear and easy to understand. The Georgia case has a fucking tape of him trying to strong-arm the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” votes that weren’t there, to “find” enough votes for Trump to claim he’d won that state. There’s SO MUCH clear, easily understood evidence in that case. The Florida documents case? Tons of evidence that he took them, denied he had them, refused to give them back, left them lying about unsecured in a goddamn golf club that was frequently visited by foreign agents, moved them around to make them harder to find, lied about moving them. Sure, the judge in that case is doing everything she can to kneecap the prosecution, but if it ever goes to trial, it’ll be pretty one-sided. The insurrection case has texts, recordings of phone calls, eyewitness testimony, and hours of video of assholes actually storming the goddamn capitol in an effort to stop the electoral college vote, not to mention hundreds of other participants already serving prison sentences.

Compared to those other sets of indictment, the NY indictments were like hieroglyphics. If a jury could figure them out and reach a verdict in the NY case, the other cases should be significantly easier.

chik chik chik chik

What this first case does is further erode the notion that Trump is untouchable. Trump has lost legal cases before, of course, but the last year was (I believe, I hope) the beginning of a cascading sequence of increasingly serious legal setbacks for Trump.

  1. In May of 2023 Trump was found legally liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll; he was ordered to pay her US$5 million in damages.
  2. In July of that year, the judge acknowledged that the jury had found Trump raped Carroll, according to the common definition of the term.
  3. In January of this year, 2024, a second trial brought by Carroll as a result of Trump’s continued defamation awared her an additional $83.3 million in damages.
  4. In February, Trump (along with his sons and his company) was found to have committed years of fraud by lying about the worth of his various properties. He was fined $355 million.

What makes Trump so admirable to his cadre of MAGA fuckwits? His sense of invincibility. The notion that he can do whatever he wants, no matter how outrageous, and get by with it. Remember, this is the guy who bragged he could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and not lose any votes. The guy who bragged he could grab women by the pussy because, “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” MAGA loves that shit.

That aura of invincibility is being shattered. Each of those cases exposes Trump as a loser. A consistent loser. Right now, of course, the MAGAverse is awash in bullshit patriotic pro-Trump rhetoric. Trump is raising funds calling himself a political prisoner. The congressional MAGA remora who’ve attached themselves to Trump continue to feed on his backwash. And on FreeRepublic they’re digitally shouting “Remember May 30th!” like the courtroom in lower Manhattan is the fucking Alamo. BUT…

But they know. They may not admit it to anybody, to themselves, but they know. In their secret hearts, they know Trump’s not really Trump anymore. He’s not what he was. He’s failing, he’s getting shoved around, he’s unable to defend himself, he’s weak.

That first domino was tapped. It took a while for the second to fall. Then the third. If you listen, you can hear it. That inevitable chik chik chik chik.

juries

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Okay, long story.

Years ago, when I was a criminal defense investigator, I worked a bank robbery case. Our client had been charged with robbing a bank in a small New Hampshire town near the border of Massachusetts. It was a local bank, had been in that town for decades, the clients were all local folks. The bank was so small there were only two teller windows. So small, they’d never installed security cameras or security dividers at the teller windows. So small, they’d only just installed a drive through window.

Here’s what happened: guy comes into the bank shortly after it opens, says he has a gun, orders the tellers to empty their cash drawers into a bag. While they’re doing that, the guy is so nervous he pisses himself. They give him the cash, he leaves. Nobody sees him drive away.

The two tellers give the police a very basic description: the robber is maybe six feet tall, short curly dark hair, pale complexion, maybe some acne scars. No arrest is made.

A few weeks later, one of those tellers is working the new drive-through window. Guy drives up, makes a deposit, drives off. The teller says it’s the robber. The local police respond, chase him down, stop his car on the side of the road, order him out at gun point. He gets out, pisses himself. He’s maybe 5’10”, long straight dark hair, fair complexion, no acne scars. The tellers identify him as the robber. He’s arrested, charged with robbery, and taken to jail.

Another couple of weeks pass. Guy walks into the bank shortly after it opens, robs it, manages NOT to piss himself, takes the money, leaves, nobody sees him drive away. The two tellers report to the police saying it’s the same robber as before. The problem is, the guy they’d already arrested is sitting in a jail cell. The police eventually release him. No arrest is made in the second robbery.

Couple of months pass. Across the border in Massachusetts, police bust a couple of guys in a drug deal. Some of the money seized turns out to be from the first bank robbery. The guy holding the money is maybe five-eight, reddish hair, ruddy complexion, no acne scars. But he’s from NH and he’s got no solid alibi for the date and time of the robbery. The NH police charge him with bank robbery. The tellers identify him as the robber.

That was my client. When his lawyer and I interview him, he tells us he didn’t rob the bank and has an alibi he didn’t tell the police; he claims he was in Cape Cod when the bank robbery took place; he’d been there for a couple of days, selling drugs. He gives me some names of people who might confirm his alibi.

I spend a couple of days in and around Truro, talking to drug users. Some confirm the client was there for a few days, but deny buying drugs and can’t/won’t confirm the date (drug users are pretty shitty when it comes to keeping a calendar). Some deny seeing him or knowing him at all. But two guys admit buying drugs from him. They can confirm the date (they had friends from out of state visiting), and can confirm when and where they bought the drugs from (the friends wanted to visit a cemetery near where the dismembered bodies of the Cape Cod Vampire’s victims were found in the late 1960s; that’s where they arranged to meet the client). But, of course, they were very very reluctant to testify about it.

The defense attorney and client conferred. They decided to rely on the strong ID defense. After all, the tellers had already mistakenly identified a different guy once, and their description of the robber at the time of the crime didn’t match the client. They decided an alibi of “I was selling drugs to serial murder fans at the Cape Cod Vampire murder scene” wouldn’t help their already strong ID defense. Besides, Truro was only about three or four hours away from the small NH town; it would have been possible for the client to be selling drugs in Truro, drive to NH, rob a bank, and return to Truro to sell more drugs. And while a jury might wonder why a drug dealer would interrupt a successful drug dealing holiday on Cape Cod to drive 7-8 hours round trip to rob a bank of a few thousand dollars, the alibi seemed to raise more problems than it solved.

The case went to trial, and the jury voted to convict. The client was sentenced to 20 years for a bank robbery he (probably) didn’t commit.

The Jury — by John Morgan (1861)

Why am I telling you this? Because today, Judge Merchan will be instructing the jury in Comrade Trump’s election interference case. And because folks who know I’ve spent a lot of time in and around criminal courts have been asking me for an opinion about the outcome of this trial. Here’s my opinion: the evidence against Trump is solid and the defense case is weak.

But juries are fucking weird. No matter if the case presented by the prosecution or by the defense is solid, once the jurors close the doors and start deliberating, anything can happen. All it takes is one juror who thinks maybe Michael Cohen can’t be trusted (and let’s face it, Michael Cohen CAN’T be trusted, even if he’s telling the truth now) and the State’s case goes down the porcelain facility.

I generally disagree with folks who describe a jury trial as a crap shoot. The dice are usually loaded in the prosecution’s favor. But once the dice start bouncing around, they can bounce in bizarre, unpredictable directions. All we can do is wait.

I’m hoping they bounce toward guilty.

in which I look at an old photo

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Here’s a thing I’m going to do. Well, it’s a thing I’m thinking I might do. I’m not going to commit to actually doing it because it might be awful–for me and for any poor bastard reading this blog. Anyway, here’s the thing:

I’m thinking I might periodically look at one of my old photos and review or analyze it as if it were shot by a stranger.

I almost never look at my old photos. The very idea of looking at my old photos sounds boring as fuck. The idea of talking about one of my own photos sounds pretentious and annoying (and also boring as fuck). So why am I going to do this? I’ll explain the reasons later. Anyway, here’s the first photo I’ve chosen for this maybe-project.

5:51 PM, Wednesday, September 27, 2006

I shot this one late afternoon in September of 2006 (EXIF data is handy) with my very first digital camera, an Olympus C-770 UZ. A four megapixel powerhouse. It’s shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio, which I’ve never been comfortable with. As I recall, there was an option to shoot in 3:2, but it required some loss in resolution, which was noticeable in a 4mp camera.

I was having coffee with a friend and was somewhat distracted by the pattern of the late afternoon shadows. I recall shooting a couple frames of the shadows, but the images weren’t very interesting. At some point, my friend raised her arm to sip her coffee; the sun had shifted enough to illuminate the edge of the rolled up sleeve of her white shirt. I asked her to do it again and took the shot.

It’s not a great photograph, but that arm and sleeve humanizes the image. It’s not just a photo of some shadows; it’s a photo of a human moment. There’s a palpable mood here–quiet, reflective, casual, conversational. There’s something comfortably relaxed, intimate even, about that rolled up sleeve. I also like the fact that the image is intimate while being sort of impersonal; there’s almost nothing to identify the other person–age, gender, height, weight. It could be anybody. Fill in the blank.

Finally, the perspective puts the viewer IN the scene. Sitting relaxed across at a table with a friend in an almost empty coffee shop on a sunny afternoon.

Okay. Now, why am I talking about this 18-year-old photo? Here’s why.

I used to spend a lot of time thinking about photography. Thinking about different photographers, about styles and trends in photography, about the decision-making processes involved in making photos. For years I wrote a fairly regular series of essays about photographers (which can be found here). I started those essays primarily as a way to educate myself, but they became a tool for discussion in a Flickr group called Utata.

And then I stopped. I could probably cobble together some logical explanation for why I stopped, but really, who cares? The thing is, I just didn’t spend much time thinking about photography and photographers. I continued to shoot photographs, but lackadaisically and rarely with an actual camera. I was satisfied with my Pixel phone. Until a few months ago.

Again, I could probably cobble together some logical explanation for why I picked up a 12-year-old camera, but, again, who cares? I picked it up and started shooting with a camera again. Which led me to start shooting with another of my cameras. Which led me to decide to buy a new camera (which should arrive in a month or so). I’ll write about the new camera when it arrives. But the thing is, I’m thinking about photography again. I’m reading about photography again. And one of the articles I read included some bullshit about reviewing your old photographs.

Here’s a True Thing: I have no real interest in looking at my old photos. The very idea of looking at my old photos sounds boring as fuck. I mean, I shot those photos; I’ve already seen them. I’d rather look at new photos, photos shot by somebody else.

But this article suggested looking at your old photos as if they were made by a different person. The rationale is that we change over time, so our approach to photography probably changes. Which sorta kinda makes sense to me, since in a very real way I’m NOT the same person I was in, say, 2006.

So I said, “What the hell, why not?” and I opened up Google Photos and scrolled all the way down to the oldest photos. The photo above was one of them. It seemed like a good place to start.

I don’t know if this is a good idea or not. I’m not sure I’ll follow through on it. But back in the days when I was actively thinking about photography, I stumbled across some thoughts by Alfred Stieglitz and William Gedney about practicing in public. Although they didn’t put it quite like this, those guys were suggesting that if you’re serious about photography, you’ve got to be willing show your whole ass. Maybe this is related to that whole notion.

the way to end the genocide in Gaza is…

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…not to vote in the 2024 election, I guess?

Well, that’s what some people seem to believe. I’m basing this on recent Bsky comments responding to my ‘voting is like taking a bus‘ analogy. Granted, the voting-bus analogy is flawed. Anytime you compare a thing to a different thing, the comparison will fall short, because (obviously) they are two separate things. Still, I think that analogy is/was useful in explaining WHY I’ll be grudgingly voting for Biden in the 2024 election. Here, briefly, is the analogy:

The U.S. government is a bus. The 2024 election is about who’ll drive the bus. If neither bus driver will take the bus directly to the place we want to be, it makes sense to choose the driver who’ll deliver us closest to where we want to be.

Several people on Bsky used the analogy to lament the choice of bus drivers and/or wish there was a better bus driver we could choose. Here are some of their responses:

— There are two buses that are driving toward hell at slightly different rates, I would like to turn around and take a bus away from hell
— If my desired destination required that the bus run over tens of thousands of innocent people to get me where I was going, I’d simply not ride that bus and find some other way to get there
— So if I want guaranteed healthcare, take the genocide bus, got it.
— why don’t we change the bus routes so the bus goes where people actually want to go instead of only going to the dump.

I don’t blame these folks. I’m not happy with the choices either, or with the system that limited our choices. Unfortunately, the system we have IS the system we have. It takes time to change an entire electoral system and, sadly, the only way to change it is by voting for people who’ll change the system (very few of which are running for national office).

For a lot of these folks, the solution is obvious. Don’t take the bus. Don’t vote. They argue that voting for Biden is essentially endorsing genocide. They say Biden’s support of genocide is so defining they can’t, in good conscience, vote for him.

These folks have an uncomfortably valid point. Here’s an exchange I had with one person:

Them: Here’s the problem with this analogy: The place I want to go is a free and safe Palestine. Not only is Biden going nowhere near there, it’s impossible to get there on one’s own.
Me: I would also like a free, safe, independent Palestine. Tell me, who should I vote for to get that? I’m willing to be convinced. Hell, I’m eager to be convinced.
Them: Neither. That’s the point.
Me: So your suggestion is…not to vote? Does that help anybody at all? Voting for either Biden or Trump–or not voting at all–isn’t going to help anybody in Gaza or the West Bank. For me, personally, there are other reasons to vote; friends & family who will suffer more under Trump. Yes, the lesser of 2 evils is still evil, but it’s less evil. I can settle for that.
Them: Well, many can’t. Either get Biden to change or deal with it.

A lot of these folks argue they’ll vote for the down ballot candidates–the members of the U.S. Congress, state legislators, local offices–but not for Biden as POTUS. But here’s the thing: POTUS sets foreign policy. Congress controls the budget, but the agenda for foreign relations is established by the president. If your primary concern is a safe, independent Palestinian state, your choices are limited to a guy who reluctantly contributed to genocide or a guy who enthusiastically endorses it.

Forget the bus analogy. Instead, think of the coming election like this: somebody is going to pound a nail through the foot of every Palestinian. You have a choice: a) a ten-penny nail, or b) a railroad spike. It’s an ugly choice. In a better world, we could choose between two leaders who want to teach Palestinians to dance. But we don’t live in that world. The best we can do right now is try to reduce the harm.

I’ll be voting for Joe Biden AND doing what I can to pressure him and Congress to stop the genocide. Yes, it’s contradictory. But Walt Whitman was right; we are large, we contain multitudes.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Biden is also significantly better than Trump on a number of issues, including the environment, labor, LGBTQ issues, voting rights, civil liberties, infrastructure, taxes, and a lot of other policy stuff. Still awful on his support for Netanyahu, but multitudes and all that.

we’re all on the bus

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Voting. Think of it like public transportation. Think of it like a bus service. There’s a place you want/need to go to. But there’s no bus line that will take you directly to that place. So what do you do?

You take the bus that gets you closest to where you want to be.

For me, that bus is driven by Joe Biden. Yes, he’s old and believes that the institutions of democracy will save us. Yes, his role in aiding the Palestinian genocide and his actions in support of Netanyahu are unforgivable. I could provide a long list of his faults and flaws. But he’s also the bus driver that will get the bus closer to where I want this nation to be. It might only a few blocks closer, but closer is closer.

Trump, on the other hand, wants to take the bus in the opposite direction. A big chunk of the US population is in favor of that. There are also a few third party bus drivers who have plans for the bus, and they all have their supporters. But let’s be honest about that; no bus driven by a third party driver is going to leave the terminal. That’s just a fact.

Here’s a True Thing: you’re on the bus. Whether you like it or not, if you’re a US citizen, you’re on the bus. That gives you the right to vote to decide who’ll be driving it. But here’s another True Thing: your choices are basically limited to two old white guys: Biden or Trump. Sure, there are those third party folks out there who’d LIKE to drive the bus. Some of them might be much better bus drivers than either Biden or Trump. But the reality is, it’s going to be one of the two old white guys. That’s just another fact.

So what do you do if you don’t like those two old white guys? You can choose NOT to vote; you can forfeit your right to choose the bus driver. You can opt out. You can tell yourself there’s no difference between those two old white guys. You can claim they’re both awful, that one is only marginally less evil than the other. You can argue that less evil is still evil and you won’t vote for evil.

That’s fine. But you’re still on the bus, as are all your friends and family. If you opt out, you have to be willing to ignore the fact that less evil is still less evil. You have to ignore the fact that less evil is a better choice than more evil.

When there’s no direct route, you take the closest bus.

You also have the option to cast your vote for a bus driver other than Biden or Trump, one of those third party drivers. You can, in fact, choose to vote for the BEST POSSIBLE bus driver. You can tell yourself that voting for the BEST POSSIBLE bus driver–that voting your conscience–is absolutely the right thing to do, the moral and ethical thing to do. But you know the BEST POSSIBLE bus driver isn’t going to get enough votes to drive the bus. You know either Trump or Biden IS going to be driving the bus. No matter how much you hate knowing this, you still know it’s true.

In effect, voting for the BEST POSSIBLE bus driver is passively accepting whichever old white guy eventually wins. Whoever wins, you can tell yourself (and others) it’s not your fault. You can blame everybody else for not being wise enough to vote for the BEST POSSIBLE bus driver. You can’t be held responsible for the direction the bus takes. You can take comfort in that, if/when the bus goes in the wrong direction.

The bus isn’t going to wait. The bus is on a schedule. Come November, one of those two old white guys will be chosen to drive the bus in January of 2025. You can help choose which one. Or you can shrug it off.

It sucks. But here we are and there it is.