The Table Tilts
We try to keep politics out of the mix during our motorcycle rides of the last twenty-four years. We tend to fail miserably at that goal since feelings run deep and in opposite directions, just like on the national scene. In the motorcycling world nothing means more than the kind of metal you ride. While there are plenty of subcultures in motorcycling, the big rift is between people who ride Harley Davidsons and those who ride European or Japanese sport bikes. The former is about look and feel and sound while the latter is about performance, reliability and ergonomics. Culture versus engineering. But with rare exception, when motorcyclists pass one another on the road, they wave at each other out of a sense of camaraderie, regardless of their ride. Even within our group, with its logo built around a winged BMW roundel, there is no animosity towards Harleys and those who choose to ride them (we have a few).
But politics, which would normally not rise to a level of concern in a motorcycle club, seems harder and harder to avoid as the divisiveness and galvanization of American and global politics marches onward these days. We have always enjoyed a socio-economically diverse membership in our club. Admittedly, the international travel team is more skewed towards the 1% than not, simply by virtue of the cost of foreign travel. Some bikers travel by bike for the sensation and love of the sport, but some undoubtedly do so to keep costs down. We used to have a motto of “high mileage, low expectations”, but we regularly joke that the reverse is more true of us these days. If one can gentrify a motorcycle club, the AFMC has been gentrified. Gentrification and aging have a tendency to move people’s political meters to the right and we have seen exactly that. To be fair, I don’t know that we ever benchmarked ourselves on this increasingly important spectrum in days gone by, but my view would probably be corroborated by other members.
At our opening dinner for our 2019 AFMC Turkey Tour, we gathered in a pleasant but not especially chic or expensive kebab joint near the hotel (just my kind of place). Whenever we travel we have these meal moments when we must each decide where to sit at dinner and who will therefore be our dinner companions. Our group consists of twelve riders and spouses and two tour guides (total of nine bikes on the road). There are five women and nine men since there are five couples and two stag riders. We had an unexpected last minute addition to the team when the recently out-voted ex-governor of Illinois joined. He has been a member of the AFMC for perhaps eight or nine years, but has been missing in action for the past five due to his stint of seeking, gaining and then exiting public service. He is relatively unique in Illinois politics for having won the State House as a Republican and not having been indicted on some corruption scandal and ending his term of office with a term in the hoosegow. That was a good thing since he has lost considerable weight and hair during his term of office. We have two couples from Chicagoland, so they are big supporters of his. Those five are joined by another couple and the other stag that are all decidedly Republican in their voting preferences. I mentioned to one that if he becomes embarrassed by being a Republican due to the antics of you-know-who, he could just declare himself a Libertarian, like so many others are increasingly doing. He stood straight up and said he was not embarrassed to be a Republican. Such is the staunchness of these AFMC red members.
Those crazy-eights found themselves at one end of the dinner table for reasons I suspect are more random than not since we all get along just fine and political orientation is not tattooed to any foreheads. Our Turkish guide happened to sit at their end of the table even though I doubt he voted for Erdogan (the closest thing to a Republican in Turkish politics). At the other end of the table were the four of us who happen to all live in lower Manhattan and are decidedly liberals and blue to the core. We were joined by our Texas Hill Country, Mexican-heritage tour guide whose politics is Beto O’Rourke versus Ted Cruz all the way. That made the tilt five blue versus eight red. That felt like a bigger tilt right than I’m used to in this group. Where are our Vermont, Minnesota and Washington state members that would have balanced this ticket?
While I am wary of a direct political debate, less for fear of losing and more for fear of membership angst in either direction, I do make a habit of sliding in little anti-Trump zingers as the day wears on, more to test the limits than anything else. I have more of the troublemaker in me than anyone, especially my wife, wishes I had. But what I get out of it is the ability to plumb the depths of support that exists for Mr. Wonderful in the White House. I am one of those people who are amazed at how some people cling to their man regardless of what he does or who he shoots on Fifth Avenue. At breakfast I asked a solid red team member who he likes in the Republican roster to replace Trump when he comes completely unglued by the current “coup”? That’s the kind of insidious comment I find most helpful to slight Lord Voldemort without making directly abusive comments. I am pleased to say that one red couple gave me clear comments that indicated that they were no longer Trumpster fans. That does not put them on our blue team necessarily, but it may allow me to put them in the undecided camp. That makes the score 6 red, 5 blue, 2 undecided.
I know one of our red guys is an avid environmentalist. While he did say that Nancy Pelosi was the most dangerous politician in Washington because of her facelift, I still consider him to have a loose thread that can easily unravel his red-button support. In addition, one of the newer couples to the group, despite being Chicagoan, is not really yet declared as red and I suspect they have some wiggle room in their views (more her than him, I suspect). Another couple I would characterize as red on economics and blue on social issues, so we might be able to push them into undecidedland with a few more sideways comments.
So you can see that as the AFMC table tilts, there are never any shortage of manipulative tactics available to tilt it back again. The truth be told, Trump does more all by himself with his twitter-sense to tilt the table back into a more rational direction. This morning at breakfast I also heard the best news when I was told that the Democrats cannot win the 2020 election because America is not ready for socialism. That is exactly the kind of blind thinking in reverse that Trump rode to his unexpected victory in 2016. Sooner or later, everyone learns that the harder you lean in on the table, the more the tilt works against you.