The last time I rode cross-country on a motorcycle was twenty years ago. 1992. Prior to that, starting in the mid-70's, I rode cross-country once a year, occasionally every other year. Logged a lot of miles, saw both coasts twice, although not all consecutively. In two to six week jaunts. I had a companion on the bike with me on maybe four of these trips. The rest of my travels have been alone. My time, some hard, some beautiful, always spiritual.
I travel as much as possible on the smallest roads I can find. I only use interstates to get to a two-lane road, to get around or into big cities, and in emergencies when there's nothing to do but book. Mostly, though, I travel through small-town America. And I don't hurry. If it says 25, I'm doing 25, and I'm checking the town out. How's this one doing? What's this town got going for it? I stop and talk to people. I try to limit my days to the 250-350 mile range, and I never hurry.
I got a look at small town America. From California to the east coast, both northern and southern routes, South Carolina to Maine, everything in between. I have only missed Florida, Washington State, Southern California, and my greatest regret, the Dakotas and Montana.
Recently, I was able to return to the road. I met small town America on new routes between central Missouri and Washington, DC, between DC and State College, PA, and between State College, PA and central Missouri.
That's a lot of small town America.
The first and most shocking difference, noticeable almost from the very start, is that small town America is fat. There truly is an obesity epidemic and I'm here to tell you I saw it all the way across the country. People walking on the street. People mowing their lawns. Trimming. Driving a tractor. At the gas stations. In restaurants. On construction crews. Coming out of churches. Everywhere. Most people are visibly overweight. Not everybody, no, of course not. But I'd say by rough estimate that 75% of the adult population of the small town America that I saw is unhealthily overweight. They are generally as generous, good-hearted and friendly as ever. Just unhealthily overweight.
The second, and equally huge difference, was the proliferation of box stores, and the closing of the small town grocers and restaurants. When I'm travelling, I always look for a small town grocer in the last town before I go to my campsite to pick up my dinner. And my eyes are open for an interesting one all day. Locals, conversation. Then in the morning I like to ride 80 or 100 miles before stopping in a small town restaurant for what is always a delicious breakfast, usually accompanied by more interesting conversation with locals.
Frightening how many small towns had nothing but a WalMart on the edge of town. No other grocer. Period. Twice I had to go into the dreaded Wally World or go hungry, and I swear the same fat lady was standing at the deli counter ordering two pounds of everything SHAVED not SLICED, and the same freckle-faced kid who looks twelve had no clue when my packaged salami didn't ring up(which happened at BOTH of the Wally Worlds I went into—did they PLAN that?).
And I saw a lot of interesting-looking small cafes and diners where I could have had breakfast—if they were open. And somewhere not far away was a strip mall of box stores and plastic food, all chains.
But in Cynthiana, Indiana, I was told that the businesses started closing as soon as the Walmart opened 25 miles away. It took about five years for it to close them all. Twenty five miles away!
I find this very disturbing.
Very disturbing, indeed.
The giant box stores have moved in, closing the local establishments that could not compete. In most cases, meaning ALL the local establishments. Instead of capital feeding a local economy, with its own infrastructure, all the capital goes to the box store, and the mega-corporation that owns it.
The local people become 100% dependent on the box stores. Everything they need makes money for moguls. Gargantuan profits for moguls and absolutely nothing for the local economy. OK, except for providing a small number of minimum wage or lower jobs that even one person can barely live on. And then they complain that our wages are just too high, that's why they have to have all their manufacturing done overseas. Withholding the one thing they could provide: jobs.
Television, seemingly innocent and distracting, has been teaching us for about 60 years now that our lives cannot be fulfilled unless we have a bunch of stuff. And it now has a third generation believing their lives will be fulfilled by having stuff. A generation that has fully embraced the message, and gladly given up its local autonomy in order to have that stuff.
And of course that stuff includes a myriad of plastic food chains to replace the local restuarants, all of which lace their offerings with god knows what-all to make you want more of it. Which this generation of Americans has done: gotten more of it.
In this one motorcycle ride, I saw a major, major shift in how this country works. The giant corporations have literally moved in and taken over. They have put all the local businesses that make up a local economy and infrastructure out of business, and they have managed to funnel all of your daily needs into their stores and the profits into their pockets. They have us buying all the stuff they tell us to buy, they have us eating the food they tell us to eat, have literally made us fat and happy. I just saw a story today that would have us believe the breakdown of local infrastructure is the fault of the drought. Wrong. These were communities mostly unaffected by drought. In fact, much of small town America that I passed through is still thriving family farms. Very few of those left in Missouri, which is profoundly affected by drought. But in Eastern Ohio, and much of Pennsylvania, there is a thriving rural community—much of which is dependent on box stores (except for the Ahmish, thank God for the Ahmish).
Everything is centralized. They provide us with everything. Giant distribution centers have become brobdingnagian. They rely on trucking. Which relies on the highway infrastructure. Which is crumbling now, and nobody wants to spend the money to fix it. Detours around unpassable bridges on two lane roads everywhere. WAY more than 20 years ago. And the power grid. Most of the power grid is late twentieth century technology and incredibly fragile.
Fragile. That's what this whole thing is right now. Incredibly fragile.
And there is another unavoidable fact that was not true twenty years ago: the poles are melting.
Now I understand why some people have to put their heads in the sand on this one, but whether or not it was caused by human action is moot at this point, there is virtually no scientific debate about this fact: it is too late to stop it. If certain scientific theories are true and if we suddenly stop being an oil and coal based economy, they say it might not be too late to mitigate it. Perhaps. A tad. As if THAT's going to happen. The bottom line is that it doesn't matter anymore what caused it. It is a global phenomenon that we will have to deal with. The poles are melting. Not true twenty years ago. True today.
People, this is HUGE. An island king in the Pacific has already bought thousands of acres of land in Australia to move his people to, and we can't even talk about it.
We KNOW, by this simple but oh so shattering fact, that something big is going to happen, and not too far off. Never mind about the faults that have been going to go for my whole lifetime, never mind about the Aztec calendar, never mind about any prophetic descriptions of an apocalypse or a second coming, just from this one simple fact, the poles are melting, we KNOW something big is going to happen, and very soon. We know this because it is happening NOW. The poles cannot melt, all that water cannot be added to the oceans, all that fresh, cold water, mixed with higher temperatures everywhere, without having a huge effect on the climate and geography of this entire planet.
Talk about an 800 pound gorilla in the room at the debates! And then one week later Sandy gives us a taste of what rising water levels will be like, not to mention the kinds of storms climate change generates.
Is this a lot to deduce from one motorcycle ride? From what has changed in twenty years? If it was the only evidence, probably. But evidence has been mounting since 9/11, and if you have read any news at all not controlled by corporate media over the last decade, you know a lot has happened. From letting that one airplane fly to Saudi Arabia after 9/11, to ignoring evidence directly impacting on the causes of 9/11, to the mobilization and rush to war with a country that bore no direct threat to us whatsoever, to the complete reversal of policy regarding spying on Americans, to the astounding escalation of incomes in the top 1% commensurate with the astounding reduction in the incomes of everybody else, to the making of corporate "persons" and that ruling that money equals speech and sealing it into law that the more money you have the more speech you are entitled to buy, to openly fracking this beautiful country with fewer and fewer environmental regulations. To the complete collapse of the economy in 2008, caused by the very bankers we then spent over a trillion dollars to bail out, and who then took home gigantic bonuses while millions of Americans lost their homes. Nobody went to jail and the government is a trillion dollars closer to bankruptcy. And all those people who lost their homes are still homeless. And all of those bankers are still filthy rich. Of course, now we have provided the homeless with "universal health care"—except that, oh, wait a minute, what "universal" means is that everybody HAS to pay health insurers or their personal debt-driven misery will be increased at the end of the year. The National Defense Authorization Act recently passed says that all they have to do is accuse you of being a terrorist and they can imprison you, Americans, on American soil, indefinitely. It is, thank God, being challenged in the courts as I write, but it passed the legislature. A majority of the people making the decisions about how our "free" government is run and what it should do believe that they need to have the ability to impose complete authoritarian control over us, lock us up just because they want to, without even an emergency. Just, you know, day to day. All they have to do is call you a terrorist. Bam. No rights. No trial. No redress. No habeas corpus. No nothing. Accuse you of being a terrorist.
Twenty years later, this is the New America.
So now we have a candidate who is an established member of the 1%. One of the very moguls profiting from our misery. Who openly and shamelessly professed a budget in which welfare services would be cut, and in which education costs would be cut by going after the teacher unions. Then of course he denied all that at the first debate, but he will increase defense spending, create 12 million jobs, "fix" Medicare and entitlements, save the country from Obamacare and the "personal mandate" (which was the Republican replacement for single payer), regulate women's bodies but not industrial emissions, never tax the rich. Oh. And of course, most importantly, he'll do all this AND reduce the deficit. To this day he has never said exactly how.
And he has HALF of the country supporting him. Astoundingly, it is a very close race.
So these look like facts to me. Details can be quibbled, and I'm sure I have over-simplified many of these issues, but the essence of all the above is fact. Somehow, seeing small town America as I did, drove this all home. Much as I resisted being a specific conspiracy theorist, I had to admit that something is happening. Somebody is taking over and they are not looking out for our interests. And I don't think it started as anything insidious, a crafted plot to take over the world. It's possible, there is certainly the famous Wolfowitz/Rove paper from the 70s outlining how the right could take over, which has pretty much largely happened. But mostly it's just the guys with money spending gargantuan amounts of money to be able to keep their money and to make more money. They have enough money to buy whatever influence they want. They have pretty much succeeded. The objective of the day-to-day business of the government is now to protect corporate profits, not to benefit the people. Pick ANY legislation that has been passed in the past ten years, and you will find a push-pull between profits and people, and if the people have won, it has only been because they allowed their objective to be corrupted by profits. Lobbyists already write most congressional legislation. Lobbyists, not legislators. The Supreme Court has now made corporations "persons" and given them free reign to spend as much as they want to influence elections. They shamelessly suppress voters. They announced that they were not going to let Obama do anything (screw the country, we have to get him out!), and then were able to successfully block or fatally corrupt everything he tried to do. And now they get away with blaming Obama, as if that never happened. Now they're passing laws that say they can lock us up any time, forever, without having to answer to anybody. Now it IS a plot to take over the world, with consumerism, and it is a plot that is feasible: free markets, world-wide. Feeding their coffers, indefinitely, forever. That's a dream they will spend a LOT of money to achieve.
This is Mitt Romney's team. These are his guys. Even as he is swearing he will create millions of jobs, Bain is shipping jobs overseas from factories that are profitable, because overseas they will make MORE profit. Jobs? Well, he LOVES coal. It may be killing us (in his own words), but there are your jobs. And oil? He will drill, baby, drill, and Big Oil will have a Big Friend in the White House. The poles will continue melting around newer, bigger, deeper oil rigs, and the potential for horrendous environmental catastrophe will grow as exponentially as will the opportunities for gargantuan profits.
It seems to me that what we, the people down here in the trenches, need is local infrastructure. We need local autonomy. We need to break our dependence on box stores and trucking, on the power grid and centralized operations, period. We need stimulus for the local grocer, hardware store, cobbler. When was the last time you saw a shoe repair shop? No, we just throw them away and buy new ones: at a box store or national chain and the money goes into their pockets and does nothing for us. Not to mention the mountains of garbage feeding this capitalist colossus that are piling up (because, of course, that stuff is, ultimately, all garbage). We need manufacturing and sales and agriculture working for us, down here, in our towns in the country. We don't need more, bigger, "clean" coal and atomic power plants that have to plug into an already shaky grid (not to mention their waste products that are killing us). We need power supplies that will fit on our roof. Or that a neighborhood can share. That would generate jobs and local income. Just imagine if the billions and billions of dollars they are spending on power plants was instead divided up into subsidizing individual and small community power. Solar panels and wind generators lined up on your roof. Contributing to the grid rather than just draining it. Small businesses coming into being, people working together in their community. Creating local autonomy. Why isn't anybody talking about this? And the obvious answer is because it won't serve to profit that infrastructure that may be fragile as a leaf but is their cash cow. And we already know the federal government can not help us when that all breaks down. Imagine an event two or three times, hell, ten times the scope of Katrina. This is very likely what we are looking at. The poles are melting. What tools do we have to survive, much less to continue our oh so very comfortable existence, without centralized power and shipping? Ask yourself, seriously: how much will it take to disrupt the grid and trucking?
No, Obama is not as enlightened as we wanted him to be. He seems to have missed the boat on what we need. He has been full of unpleasant surprises, some of them out of left field. Like going after whistle blowers. It makes you wonder what he learned about what they have to hide. Drone war. Kill lists. And he signed that National Defense Authorization Act. His compromise to get health care was its doom because now the republicans can denounce the very thing they corrupted it with (the personal mandate). They have thwarted or corrupted his efforts at every turn, and the result has been discouraging. We did hope that he would have enough influence to actually do what he wanted to do, and now we know he doesn't. So choosing Obama this election is tempered. I believe his heart is essentially in the right place, but it has compromised itself profoundly, and we can't be as enthusiastic as we were. The alternative, however, is certain doom for small town America, because they won't even talk about decentralization or helping the poor or the fact that the poles are melting. Not good for profits. (Obama might not either, but at least he might).
Romney is a snake-oil salesman, and he has buffaloed half this country. He's one of those guys who could sell overcoats in Hawaii. Lying is protected free speech. He is so adept at it that even as we evaluate the debates and everyone goes, yep, fact checkers confirm that this was not a true statement, we still don't call it "lying." I mean, think about that. How smooth is that? People. Please. Listen to what he says. And to what he said last month. And the month before that. And the month before that. And if you're not asking yourself about this guy's integrity by now you don't understand integrity.
How many, I wonder, how many of those low-income, small town, overweight Americans with failing local infrastructure, little or no health care, living lives Mitt Romney is incapable of imagining, much less doing anything about, are republicans?
I want to go back and SHAKE them!
What was at stake in the election of 1992? Nothing like this.
I am very frightened for my country. Our only hope is that we outnumber them. Which is why they are investing billions and billions of dollars into propaganda. Insane amounts of money. On propaganda. In America. In our United States, where even lying is protected free speech. They are shamelessly and pathetically capitalizing on that right and plastering the airwaves with sheer, unadulterated, pure, high-dollar, exquisitely crafted, propaganda. The Supreme Court of this land told them to let 'er rip. The Supreme Court.
Who's left up there on our side?
If Obama is defeated, they will be very, very few.
Folks, this is the takeover by the military industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower, among others, warned us about. Hell, the communists warned us about this back in the 1930s. They were wrong about how their dream would benefit humanity, but they were sure right about the evils of capitalism. It is happening right now. Everywhere republicans are convincing people to vote for them. We are on the verge of a national/global takeover by the 1%, the core capitalists of the world. And this election may not quite seal the deal for them but it will take them a hell of a lot closer to absolute power. The alternative is that it could buy us four more years to try to get the people's shit together so we can stand up for ourselves and maybe start dealing with what's real instead of what's profitable.
Pray that this time around a majority of us can resist the propaganda.
When I left on this trip, little did I know where I would end up.
Whew. What a ride.
Please become an activist. Try to get your republican friends and relatives to really think about what they are supporting. If nothing else, read Truthout.Org and follow Democracy Now! Seek and spread truth. And VOTE.
Copyright © 2012. May be reproduced and distributed without alteration. This site has a companion site, An American Manifesto for 2010, which describes in considerably more detail my take on the challenges facing the American people.