$4 Gas

Unlike other Americans, Texans are accustomed to seeing high oil prices as a good thing. Historically, enough of us have had oil under our land, worked in the oil business, or sold things to people who worked in the oil business, that we tended to see to see every uptick in the price of a barrel of West Texas crude as another dollar in our pocket. During the oil bust of the early 80s, bumper stickers on Texans' pick-ups prayed plaintively, "Lord, please bring back $30 oil. I promise I won't piss it away this time." Back in 1990, when Poppy Bush was getting ready to go to war against Saddam Hussein the first time, a number of us were heard to mutter under our breaths that we weren't sure why it was in Texas's interest to fight a war to lower the price of oil.

However, the current surge in oil prices has been a little different. In the decades since the last oil boom, Texas oil fields have played out, the Texas economy has diversified, and Texas suburbs have sprawled further and further. As a result, more Texans see the current run-up in petroleum prices through the lens of the higher gas prices they pay at the pump, the same way their fellow Americans do. I, however, think that $4 gas is a good thing.

Americans have been exhorted to conserve oil since the OPEC oil boycott of the 70s, to no avail. We've continued to commute from more distant subdivisions in more gigantic vehicles. But this price surge seems to be getting folks' attention. The buses are more crowded. More bikes are on the streets. The state agency I work for is allowing more of us to work from home. People seem to actually be changing the way they live. A change this big will be difficult, but I think that $4 gas is starting to make it happen.

Two-Wheeled Politics III

One of the common complaints that car drivers have about bike riders is that cyclists "disobey traffic rules". This is true, of course. It is also true that drivers and pedestrians violate traffic laws, but nobody seems to write letters to the editor waxing indignant about speeders on Interstate 35 or jaywalkers on 4th Street. So why does the issue of cyclists compliance with traffic regulations loom so large in motorists' responses to bicycle riders?

One reason that cyclists violate traffic laws is that the rules of the road are basically designed for motor vehicles and therefore make much less sense when applied to bicycles. A cyclist approaching a 4-way stop sign at 10 miles an hour has much more time to make sure that the way is clear than does a car that's going 40 mph. In my experience, some maneuvers are safer for all concerned when carried out "illegally." For example, at some intersections on my commuting route, it is clearly safer for me to go through an intersection against a red light when there is no traffic in the cross street and I have a lane all to myself (because the car next to me is stopped for the red light) than it is to start off from a stop while sharing a lane with a car to my left. Indeed, at least one state has modified its traffic regulations (pdf) to take into account the intrinsic differences between motorized and pedal-powered vehicles. In any event, a 200-lb. cyclist, even one who runs stop signs, represents much less of a danger to others than a two-ton sedan, no matter how carefully the car is operated.

But what really bugs me about the constant refrain about bikes and traffic laws is that it is typically trotted out in reponse to arguments to which it is absolutely irrelevant:

"Bikes are non-polluting."
"Yeah, but I saw a bike run a stop sign on my way to work this morning."

"Riding a bike is good exercise."
"But why do you always see them riding the wrong way on one-way streets?"

"We really need to take some serious measures to encourage people to ride bikes."
"You know those crazy cyclists are just a bunch of scoff-laws!"

Cut it out! If you want to make a serious argument against bikes as transportation, make it! If you just think riding a bike sounds too much like work, say so. If you think that riding a bike is just not cool enough for you, ok. But stop claiming to be shocked by traffic violations!

Hard Working White Americans

Hillary Clinton's recent remark that she has the support of "hard working Americans, white Americans," is probably the first time since May 15, 1972 that a candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination explicitly claimed to be running on behalf of white people.

Of course, Clinton would deny that her campaign has any similarity to George Wallace's. Her remark, she claims, was simply an attempt to point out to her fellow Democrats (and more particularly the party's "super delegates") a gap in Barack Obama's electoral coalition and to argue that she is more "electable."

Whatever her reasons, I can't help but see Clinton's remark as a step backward for the party and the country. After all, Lyndon Johnson, the most accomplished political realist ever to hold the office of president, willingly gave up the Southern white vote that had long been part of the Democrats' coalition in order to pass the civil rights acts of the 1960s. He did it because it was the right thing to do. To raise the flag of white resentment in 2008 in a mainstream political campaign only points out how much our political discourse has deteriorated in recent decades.

Apostasy

On Monday the New York Times published a really slimy op-ed by Edward Luttwak, a military historian, in which he argues that, under Islamic law, Barack Obama, as the son of a father who left Islam, is himself regarded as an apostate and is, therefore, a pariah in the Muslim world. His ostensible purpose in discussing this matter is to counter the argument made by many Obama supporters (including the TBC) that Obama's status as the son of a Kenyan immigrant would help him repair the Bush-inflicted damage on the United States' reputation in the Islamic world and the Third World generally. Its real purpose is to reinforce, under a legitimate guise, the whispering campaign that Obama is a Muslim.

Luttwak's argument reminded me of the arguments made against a Catholic president back when Kennedy was running: "The papal bull of 1876 says that Catholics must do whatever the pope says, therefore Senator Kennedy as President would transfer the gold in Fort Knox to the Vatican," ignoring the fact that Kennedy was a pragmatic American politician who simply did not take his religion all that seriously. Similarly, Luttwak seems to assume that, because some Muslim religious text urges the punishment of apostates unto the last generation, the world's Muslims, faced with President Obama, will, instead of thanking Allah that the Americans have come their senses and elected a president who is not a trigger-happy fool, launch a fatwa against him because his grandfather, whom he never met, may have practiced Islam. Does that make any sense in the real world?

Two-Wheeled Politics II

Saturday, May 10, was Election Day for the Austin City Council. I voted for the three candidates endorsed by the League of Bicycle Voters. They all lost--even the incumbent, Jennifer Kim! I guess bicycle politics has a way to go here!

True Love

Much has been made recently of Barack Obama's patriotism or lack thereof. The flag pin issue is the one most obviously about patriotism, but many of the other "electability" attacks are, at bottom, a suggestion that Obama doesn't really love America. After all, he's got a funny name, his preacher asks God to "damn America," he went to school at a "madrassa" in Indonesia, and he doesn't put his hand over his heart during the national anthem. Seems to be a common thread here!

At first glance, it takes a lot of gall for anyone who has ever supported George W. Bush or Bill Clinton to attack anyones patriotism. After all, by the classical measure of patriotism--the willingness to die in battle for ones country--our last 2 presidents, who actively avoided combat while young, are certifiably unpatriotic. However, the folks worrying about Obama's patriotism seem oblivious to this irony.

So is the Obama patriotism issue just a cynical maneuver by opposing political campaigns? While it's certainly true that the political operatives are using this issue, in order to work, the issue has to resonate with real voters. So why is Obama vulnerable to this attack?

At the risk of being accused of "playing the race card," I'd say that the basic source of concerns about Obama's patriotism is white guilt. White people know, whether they acknowledge it or not, that African Americans have a long list of legitimate historical grievances against white America. They find it hard to believe, therefore, that blacks can love America in the same sense that whites do, notwithstanding the fact that blacks have lived in this land for 400 years and died in her service since before the United States was born. In other words, some whites feel like, "if somebody had treated me like we've treated them, I wouldn't love them."

I suspect that the patriotism issue will not go away during the general election campaign. The Obama campaign is addressing it by, essentially, affirming his patriotism, which is probably the only way to go in that context. But individual Obama supporters can and should, I think, confront friends and family members with the source of this concern in America's racial history.

Ruffian

I'm not an animal lover, at least not in the sense that the term is used among the American middle class these days. I'm not an animal hater either--I've had pets and I love them, but I don't feel about animals the way many of my fellow citizens seem to these days. I've never paid a thousand-dollar vet bill. I've never stayed awake at night because my brother, the dairy farmer, sends his dry cows and bull calves to the slaughterhouse. Indeed, I've never been a vegetarian, even for a day. As I write this post, I am simmering a stew composed primarily of the cubed leg muscle of an adolescent sheep who met its untimely end just a few miles from where I live.

So I'm not an animal lover. But this morning, when I opened the Sunday paper and saw that Eight Belles, the filly who placed in these year's Kentucky Derby, had broken down at the finish line and been put down right there on the track, I teared up. I cried partly because thoroughbreds are beautiful animals who deserve better than to die for our amusement, but mostly I cried because I remembered the day, more than 30 years ago, when I mourned the death of a thoroughbred filly whom I had never even seen.

In 1975, Ruffian was the outstanding 3-year-old female race horse in the United States. She had won the Triple Crown for fillies and, in the era of second-wave feminism and Bobby Riggs-Billie Jean King tennis matches, it was inevitable that somebody would decide that a buck was to me made by racing her against the year's outstanding colt, Foolish Pleasure, the winner of the Kentucky Derby.

The match race was held at Belmont Park on July 6, 1975. That summer, I was a 25-year-old law student doing a summer internship in Chicago and living near the lake. I remember driving through the green, elm-lined streets of Evanston, listening to the race on the radio. When Ruffian broke her leg a half mile into the race, I broke down bawling. I was crying so hard that I had to pull over to the side of Dempster Avenue, so that I didn't run my car into one of the beautiful old trees that were dying of Dutch Elm disease.

A few weeks later, I left my internship early to drive to California where my father was waiting for my arrival so that he could die. Maybe that's why I cried for Ruffian and maybe that's why I cried this morning for another horse whom I had never met.