Making Sense of Our World

I don't always ride for my physical health; I ride for my mental health as well. My bikes and my walks are my escapes from the world and its problems. They're what I use to help sort out my thoughts, just as writing in my blog does. 

I remember the exact stretch of highway I was riding, just east of Lydia on a beautiful Sunday morning in October 2008, when I stopped being owned by the Republican Party for my pro-life vote. I took it back. I had been contemplating the presidential endorsement Colin Powell gave Obama on Meet the Press a couple of hours earlier. It was a powerful endorsement and one I couldn't ignore. I made a conscious decision in that moment to open my mind to switching my support. 

Before that morning, I had always been a reliable vote for conservatives, primarily because of reasons centered around abortion. But they were using me. Putting the issue of abortion aside, it became clear to me that I could no longer support a political party that was heavily weighted toward the support of business at the expense of the masses. Trickle-down economics, something I believed in, proved to be a failure (yet, here we go again). Our ill-fated foray into Iraq for a lie about weapons of mass destruction also played into my decision, as did Bush's assault on the federal workforce with a 5-year pay freeze directed solely at air traffic controllers but not management. 

Why was I supporting and defending these people? 

Over the next several months, I would work to disabuse myself of so much about conservatism that I had been conditioned to accept, mostly from conservative talk radio personalities, which I had allowed to influence my understanding of so many issues. It would soon become the single most freeing thing I've ever done, to walk away from the dysfunction of the party and no longer feel the need to defend it. As I've previously written in my blog, my decision to leave the party also stemmed from years of debates with progressive voices on a forum that predated Facebook; debates that I was often on the losing side of. Those online friends were instrumental in helping me see another perspective that I'd been wilfully ignorant of. It took years to reassemble the bricks of the foundation I'd torn down into something that was actually functional and made sense to me. The abortion issue no longer took precedence as I came to understand that there are myriad valid reasons why women choose to terminate pregnancies. And besides, I was only ever pro-birth, like the rest of those who call themselves pro-life. 

This morning, Trump launched an assault on the country of Venezuela and arrested their illegitimate leader, Nicolas Maduro, ostensibly because he's involved in drug trafficking. It's a flimsy excuse considering how, less than a month ago, he pardoned the former president of Honduras, one year into a 45-year prison sentence for his role in trafficking 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S. Many of us see this action by Trump as an attempt to take control of Venezuela's oil production and distribution, likely enriching bad actors along the way. I can't help but wonder, had Maduro 'paid to play' in Trump's corrupt world, would he be a free man today? No doubt. And we also see Trump's assault on Venezuela as an attempt to distract us from his failing and flailing presidency and the release of the Epstein files that will likely show Trump is a pedophile.

For those wanting another perspective about Trump's role in what may have happened between himself and underage girls, please check out this video of a woman who goes by the pseudonym Katie Johnson and her claims that Trump raped her numerous times in 1994 when she was 13 years old. There's nothing about her words or the way she says them that leads me to believe she's lying. The video is part of a lawsuit she filed in 2016, only to rescind her suit in the weeks before the presidential election of 2016 due to death threats she received.

My Christian conservative friends: what are you thinking? Did you get your SCOTUS judges? Did you get to vent publicly with no shame about transgender people? Is that what mattered? Is that a fair tradeoff for seeing peaceful, hard-working immigrant seniors and young adults who add so much to the fabric of our communities, and who have only ever known this country, being stolen off the streets and whisked away in ICE vehicles? Can I ask you to put yourselves in the shoes of a 20-, 30-, or 40-something-year-old, or even a teenager—especially a teenager, and to imagine how you would feel if you woke up in a foreign land with no money, no cellphone, no family, no support, and no idea what to do next? Does that thought trouble you? Good. Keep expanding on it. Take it further and see if maybe your vote to punch down on immigrants, end abortion, gay marriage (next), more guns, and for a felon and likely pedophile presidential candidate wasn't perhaps a wrong choice. We're better than this. 

One of the people I rely on and trust to highlight important happenings and how they mirror our history is Heather Cox Richardson. I'll sometimes link to her daily updates here via her Substack or her YouTube channel. Her Substack letter is usually the first thing I read in the morning. It's very informative.

Heather's video below was done this morning after a night of little sleep. She's dedicated to using her expertise as a historian to help us navigate the troubling era we're living in. Please watch her video below. If you don't have time, just check out the last few minutes. 

My intention isn't to upset anyone with my words, but if I cause you some discomfort, I'm good with that, because this shit's getting old.

That's all I've got.