Consistency

I typically commute around the traffic-choked Los Angeles basin by motorcycle; today, I was following a Subaru with “No Blood for Oil” and “War is not the Answer” bumper stickers. I had just finished the uncharitable thought that putting “No Blood for Oil” bumper stickers on cars seems kind of like an oxymoron, when we came to a red light and I pulled next to the car.

The driver, a woman my age (middle), rolled down her window and gestured at me.

Continued…“Your lights are flashing”

I ride with a headlamp modulator by Kisan Products, that flashes my motorcycle’s headlights between dipped and high beams about once every other second. I find that it aids greatly in being seen by cars, a useful trait in safe motorcycling. About once a week, people point it out to me, thinking it means something is wrong with my motorcycle. I lifted my helmet visor and went into my typical response.

“Thanks! I know, it’s supposed to do that. It worked! You saw me!” All in a cheerful tone.

“It’s horrible! It’s giving me a headache!”

Periodically, it annoys people. I have a response to that, too.

“I’m sorry! It doesn’t bother most people.”

“Well, it’s giving me a headache. And you ought to be careful because it might make someone so angry they’ll run you over one day!”

…pause…

“Wow, that’s not very peaceful, is it?” I replied, maintaining eye contact.

She rolled up her window and drove off.

Ironically, we were on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, not too far from Barbara Streisand’s estate, featured in this, from the L.A. Times (registration required, use ‘laexaminer”laexaminer’):

Barbra Streisand has filed a lawsuit against an amateur photographer, claiming he is violating her privacy by displaying a picture of her bluff-top Malibu estate on a Web site designed to document erosion and excessive development along California’s 1,150-mile coastline.

The lawsuit filed in Superior Court in Santa Monica, besides seeking $10 million in damages, asks retired software engineer Kenneth Adelman to remove the image of Streisand’s mansion from the 12,000 photos he has posted on http://www.californiacoastline.org . Adelman and his wife, Gabrielle, have been snapping pictures for months from their helicopter to show the splendors of the coastline and what they consider environmental threats.

Look at this:

Democrats need to speak on TV, on radio, on the Internet and in the newspapers about the election and keep hammering home the legislative favors Bush is granting his corporate supporters in exchange for their campaign contributions. Journalists need to spend the same amount of energy and resources investigating Bush and Cheney as they spent over the past decade investigating the Democrats. Democrats need to organize, to motivate, to inspire the disillusioned citizens and the disenfranchised voters of this country who think their votes don’t matter. Democrats must reach out to voters who want sane gun control, voters who want to protect choice, voters dedicated to saving the environment.

Or this:

What Did You Expect?
Posted on Nov. 25, 2002

It has started. Protections of people and of our environment are already being gutted by the Bush administration in favor of corporations and profit.
The first environmental protection to go? Clean Air. On Friday, the Bush administration announced it would loosen industrial air pollution rules – resulting in dirtier skies, sicker people and richer corporations.

The quotes, of course, are from Barbara Streisand.

The bugbear of small minds…

(fixed typo – ‘basis’ for ‘basin’)

10 thoughts on “Consistency”

  1. A.L.

    Democrats are starting to sound like religous zealots, which does have its place and time. But it sure sounds like they have hitched their wagon to the wrong mule this time.

    Do people that support the war sound like that to the anti-war crowd? I’d like to think that we don’t, but who can be objective about their own feelings??

    Is there anyone on this planet that can speak objectively?? If there is, would partisans of any stripe listen??

    Polls, at this time, support the pro-war position. In the 90s, didn’t the Democrats live and die by the polls? What’s different this time?

  2. You should have just said “Without those lights, I’ll die.”

    This reminds me of the bitch in the SUV who told my friend she shouldn’t smoke because it pollutes. The anti-smoking fascism makes me want to start smoking.

  3. I’ve ridden in the LA area. You take your life into your own hands.

    On the other other hand, the fact that lane splitting is allowed and encouraged by the CHP does make the commutes fun and fast.

    Good call on the headlight modulator, BTW. Professor Harry Hurt would certainly approve. I understand they cut down on the dreaded “I didn’t see him so I turned left killing the biker” accident, which was the most common two-vehicle crash in the Hurt study.

  4. I commute from Long Beach to Agoura Hills. For those of you not familiar with Los Angeles it’s an ugly ~60 mile drive. I frequently take PCH. AL, you have my sympathies. Every day I see situations where people are not thinking, not paying attention. I do it myself some times. More than I care to admit, I’m sure.

    There’s a saying that goes, “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.” Though this could certainly apply in this situation, I don’t think it’s entirely true. Though stupidity certainly causes so many problems, I think that a more likely reason, especially in the case of this woman, and many others, is that people tend to be highly self focused but not very self aware. I think we all exist in our own bubble from time to time, some more than others.

    It is this inconsiderate egotism, I think, that is more of a root cause of, not just what you ran into, but so many other situations. Watch people in a mall some time. Or talk to them about their politics. NIMBY-ism, one of California’s favorite pastimes, is a great example. So is voter apathy, or the “Oh, it can’t happen to me” attitude. And then there’s the one most heard in Hollywood. “Don’t you know who I am?!”

    I don’t believe that, for the most part, people are stupid. A lot of them don’t bother to think, though. And that’s where this comes in. If that woman, for example, stopped to consider that there might be a reason for your headlights flashing besides trying to give her a headache, she might not have said anything.

    On NPR last night, heading home, I listened to an article by an author, who had been receiving emails from students assigned his books as homework asking what they were about. It was nice to hear that his responses boiled down , “Dunno. Tell me when you figure it out.” It was sad though. Sad in that it underscores how much we, as a people, aren’t trained to think for ourselves. I wonder, did that woman think much about her position on war before she put her “No Blood For Oil” sticker on her car? If war was not the answer, what was? Did she bother to consider that? Or was she too tied up into thinking she was the center of the universe?

  5. I live on the other coast. A classic Cambridge, Massachusetts sight is someone in a car held together by the Peace&Love stickers, screaming obscenities at a parent who isn’t herding the toddlers through the crosswalk fast enough. Probably making the driver late for a Save the Children protest.

  6. Stephen –

    You’re exactly right (and have my sympathies for having my commute but doing it in a car!); the issue I’m noodling on is the … thoughtlessness? … of the position, and more, the willingness to take on the ‘trappings’ of a position without doing the heavy lifting of actually having the position.

    I talked about ‘standing’; I once did some business with a community activist who ran a nonprofit hosuing organization. My respect for him (and willingness to give him things he wanted in a negotiation) skyrocketed when I discovered that he had started and lived in a limited-equity cooperative – thereby personally forgoing hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits that he could have made (italics erroneously left out in 1st version).

    Similarly, when I see progrssive activists who internalize their ideals … who act peacefully, who are aware of the contradictions in a ‘No Bloof for Oil” bumpersticker on a car … my respect for them and willingenss to take their positions seriously also rises.

    A.L. – whose household has a 25mpg minivan, and who commutes on a 40mpg motorcycle

  7. Sounds like the idea that one should be able to have handed to them a ‘good self image’ rather than crafting it one day at a time is predictably bearing it’s wilfully arrogant fruit.

  8. I grew up in one of those left leaning, upper-middle northeastern towns. My old man, R.I.P., had the limousine liberals’ number down pretty well. Whenever we’d see one in the Merc or Volvo with the peace stickers, and the pained smile, as if the botox needle was still stuck in, he’d say,

    “Dammit! What they hell are they smiling at? They wouldn’t slow down to keep from running you down in a church parking lot. Never trust anybody that goes around smiling all the time.”

    That about sums it up: Sugar coated razor blades and bile.

  9. I used to commute by bicycle about an hour each way in the very PC city of Vancouver. Most drivers were polite and careful. The exceptions to this rule often sported greenpeace stickers.

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