I know bike lanes and speed cameras aren’t really trail-specific, but they are trail-adjacent, and we sometimes use them to get to trails or from one trail to another. Why not have proven safety measures? Oh, that’s right—it’s coming from the same people who promote vaccine skepticism. That said, I can’t begin to express my dismay, which goes way beyond the bike lane and camera thing. The damage already done and the continued BS coming out of Washington is frightening and sad—more than a few degrees worse than anything I’ve experienced in my lifetime. I feel like I’m in an episode of the Twilight Zone meets Idiocracy, but this isn’t Hollywood, and the script being played out is worse than most writers could ever dream up. This bike thing is just one minuscule issue in a plethora of WTF moments that have me questioning how, at 250 years young, the US seems to be under the thumb of a king again.
Maybe the slogan is actually “Make America Great Britain Again.” The irony of “Don” meaning lord/king/owner—as well as a term for a mafioso crime boss—is palpable. We live in a country shaped by many, and in large part by Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, but Hamilton’s Federalist vision ultimately won, and Jefferson was right to point out what we got: “Hamilton was not only a monarchist, but for a monarchy bottomed on corruption.” The Anti-Federalists Patrick Henry and George Mason were also on point, feeling that we’d end up with a system rigged to favor elites—and lo and behold, money talks in DC, and corporations are people.
So the safety measures we were supposed to have as a nation—where science and its methods of pinpointing truths, along with law and order, were meant to be a guiding light—have instead become a source of disorder and untruth by law, not to mention dishonor, in my opinion. Is there anything more Orwellian, more newspeak, than a Caesar, if not a Czar, masquerading as a president who has a social platform called Truth Social? I’m hoping that most judges, journalists, political leaders, and engaged citizens will keep pushing back—successfully—or at least slow the train wreck of a fragile democracy becoming a mockery. But the truth is, the Imperial Boomerang worries me.
Any trail builders outside the US in need of a hand? I’m ready to move.