What Worries Me

I've been meaning to sit down and tap out a blog post for several days but my heart hasn't been in it. The things I want to write about — to make note of here as I try and create some kind of a timeline to my life for personal reasons — are somewhat depressing things to ponder. 

There is so much that's been happening in our world and much of it is very concerning to me. Mostly, I worry about the political divide within our country and if there's anything we can do about it because unless we do, I see our democracy slipping from our tenuous grasp while a hard-right fascist movement waits in the wings to replace it. A few short years ago I never could have imagined myself thinking that, much less putting it in writing. But it's where I am. Unless we can maintain a healthy democracy (we currently aren't doing so), other pressing matters can't be dealt with as effectively as they should be — concerns about climate change and income inequality will continue to be kicked down the road when they should have already been addressed in an ongoing way. 

I understand that there will be times when we have to agree to disagree, and I'm fine with that, but let's first agree on the facts. That seems a nice place to start. How misleading information has been allowed to parade as fact despite its obvious detriment to us as a whole should concern us all: the downplaying of the pandemic and the Big Lie that Trump won the last election being two prime examples. I see conservative media as the thrust behind this misinformation — the same conservative media that is forever railing on the mainstream media as the purveyors of lies to unassuming people like me. But I'm not the unvaccinated one crowding into a hospital emergency room with the coronavirus, preventing someone more deserving from receiving much-needed medical care while causing some care facilities to collapse under the weight of such ignorance and gullibility, and neither am I the one ingesting horse medication because someone on conservative media told me it was the cure for what ailed me. 

It's difficult, if not impossible to keep so much of what we've been through as a nation the last few years in perspective — keeping in mind so many things that just shouldn't be allowed to pass as normal from any leader, yet they did, at least for the vast majority of conservatives. 

I'm concerned that in many states we no longer have a democracy; not when Republicans (where they have control) have recently rid their election committees of bipartisan officials and installed ideologues who will have the power to appoint leaders while ignoring election results. That's not democracy.

The only way that I see this getting any better is for corporate money to stop flowing to those who are pushing propaganda and undermining our democracy. Corporations around the country will go bust if we lose this precious thing we've enjoyed up to now. Few other countries will want to trade with us if our democracy begins to falter and we lack stability. Who would've ever thought that the cost of our democracy was just a few billion dollars in ad buys on conservative media and political contributions to corrupt politicians? But that's apparently the price. It seems rather cheap, doesn't it? And yet we continue to pump money into a bloated military to protect us from outside evildoers when the problem is within.

I had planned to take a pass on this year's Dawn to Dusk ride but late in the afternoon on Friday, I changed my mind. I phoned Steve, aka Silver that I'd see him in the morning. I had the training miles in my legs so why not put them to use? 

The day started out with a somewhat cool temp, an overcast sky, and light a trailing wind. Perfect conditions! The sun finally broke through about halfway through our ride. The light trailing wind had been increasing in speed throughout the day and would become a factor during our return. We cobbled together a paceline to help keep our speed up. All in all, it was a very fun ride and I'm happy to have been a part of it. Lots of work (215 miles / 346 km) but also lots of fun!

That's all I've got.