Well, here we are. Right in the middle of silly season, in other words, our quadrennial presidential election season. We are at one of the most emotional points aside from the election itself. That is the primary season. It can make (hopefully temporary) enemies of people who you had previously put in the category of “one of my kind of people”.

I am a Democrat. The other side, the Republicans, are going through a very upsetting time. Their front runner is anathema to the establishment conservative media/politicians. Donald Trump is turning conservatism on its head by advocating a reasonable safety net and assistance for the poor, while maintaining the conservative hard line on immigration. And, instead of nativist and racist dog whistles, Trump uses a foghorn. Turns out the hoi polloi great unwashed masses of working men and women who vote Republican don’t care so much about cutting taxes on the rich and increasing taxes on the poor and cutting their benefits, a reverse Robin Hooding, if you will. It turns out they are not that stupid. They are scared, and they want to have America back like it was in the early sixties. But that doesn’t mean they want to make rich people richer. Donald Trump has proven that, and things will never be the same in the right wing. I hope.

We Democrats are having our own problems, chiefly with a socialist Jewish man who is like a yapping dog that is nipping at your leg. He is annoying, but you don’t want to hurt him. Bernie and his followers are similar in a way to President Obama and his followers during his first election, other than the lack of black and brown faces. The crowds at Bernie Sanders’ rallies are typically as white as his hair. The other difference is that Barack Obama had a chance to win. Bernie Sanders has virtually no chance. Bernie’s followers are well known for their vitriol and their slinging accusations against Hillary Clinton with no proof whatsoever. They are doing the Republicans’ work for them. I really resent these people, more than I resent Sanders. They and their Savior are a fact of life for now, though, and Hillary has to walk another tightrope in addition to the one she is already walking, that of campaigning for public office while female. That other tightrope is trying to dispatch Bernie without pissing off his supporters too much. She is a woman of great emotional maturity and self control. All these young people who were in diapers during her husband’s presidency are throwing Republican-made accusations at Hillary. She cannot call them know-nothing inexperienced whiny sexist brats, which is what many of them are, in my opinion. She has to court them. Can you imagine if Donald Trump had the same types of accusations thrown at him? He would go berserk. Somebody would pay big time.

On both sides, one of the biggest insults against the opposing candidate is calling them a politician. Everybody, it seems, wants to elect somebody to a political elective office who isn’t a politician. On the Republican side, they started out with an astonishing number of professional pols. In a more typical time, one of them, perhaps Jeb Bush or Scott Walker, would be on top now. They are both gone. The ones on top are a sexist Republican governor named John Kasich, a celebrity media expert named Donald Trump, and a skunk named Rafael “Ted” Cruz. Of course they are all sexist, but I hit Kasich with that because he is running as a sane alternative. He is not sane. He is a misogynist of the first degree. An enemy of reproductive choice and Planned Parenthood. Trump is widely feared and loathed by both left and right. Ditto Cruz. Referring to Cruz, to turn a popular oldie on its head, to know-ow-ow him is to hay-ay-ate him. His old college roommate said that he would pick a random name from a phone book for president before he would pick Cruz. His fellow senators despise him, with good reason. On the Democratic side, an extremely experienced, well-prepared woman ready to hit the ground running on her first day, is being challenged by an atypical politician. Bernie Sanders is hailed as a revolutionary. To turn the name of a classic movie around, I call him a Rebel Without a Hope. Even if he was elected, he has zero chance of getting anything done on his bucket list. Take down Obamacare, Medicaid and Medicare and replace it with Universal Single Payer? No copays and unlimited coverage? That is either a calculating lie, or a breathtakingly naïve fantasy. Obama had the House and Senate, and Obamacare represents the level best he could do. It’s not that he didn’t want to do better. He COULDN’T. Bernie has no interest or much knowledge about foreign policy. The international stage is extremely volatile right now. We need somebody who we can trust who knows what they are doing.

Probably because of the so-called Great Recession, we are in an extra-silly season, with a large number of potential voters willing to vote us off a cliff into the arms of a non-politician politician. Many people don’t vote with their heads. They vote with their emotions. My message to them is to get your head together and vote for the only person on either side who is qualified on day one to lead the free world. The best kind of person for a job is one who is skilled and experienced at it, a politician, if you will. Would you hire a plumber to fix your broken light switch? Would you go to a carpenter for your hip replacement? Hillary is the most qualified to be the leader of the free world. Republicans and other conservatives won’t vote for her. They hate her guts. Any liberal or progressive who doesn’t vote for her because of some supposed Wall St. smoke and Republican-fed lies, will deserve exactly what they get if they get their wish. Either an ineffectual president or a dangerous one.

Well, it’s that time of year again. As I sit here typing (keyboarding, in PC-speak), there is a storm forecast in a few days. Depending on its track, it could dump anywhere from a coating to a foot of snow on southern Worcester county. Too far out to tell. Regardless of that, however, this is the shortest time I have been forced by the weather to store my bike in many years, if ever. January and February. I stopped riding in the last week of December 2015, and resumed on the first or second day of March. Can’t complain about that.

I started my two-wheeler obsession when I was about 12 years old. I got a minibike with money I had earned mowing lawns. My neighbor up the street had one also. We had a lot of area to ride on, living on a dead-end street with 3 houses on it and a bunch of pasture land. We had a good time with our two-and-one-half horsepower lawnmower engine-propelled fun machines. I graduated from that to a used Suzuki, which I had until I got a 350-cc Harley-Davidson Sprint. They haven’t made those for many years, and if I still had it, it would be quite a collector’s item. Unfortunately, I sold it when I was 21 years old. At that point, I was in a period of irresponsibility. Motorcycle riding wasn’t high on my list of priorities. So, to make a long story short, I didn’t ride again until 2004. Not that I was irresponsible all that time. Riding just seemed like a bridge too far, what with new insurance and registration costs. I never forgot about it, though, having kept my motorcycle endorsement on my driver’s license active at a small fee every five years at license renewal. I am on my fourth bike since 2004. They have all been Harleys. I traded up each time. I am happy with the bike I have now. It’s a Harley Big Twin 1584-cc bike. I have been drawn to Harleys since I had the Sprint. I liked the bike, and I liked the fact that local service was available. I always try to buy American when I can.

Motorcycling has changed a lot since I first rode in the late Sixties to mid-Seventies. One of my favorite movies of all time is Easy Rider. It was a low-budget counterculture smash hit in 1969. I saw it several times in 1969. I snuck in to Paris Cinema on Franklin Street to see it, because I was underage. That was before the great old Paris became a seedy porn flick gay sex meeting place. Easy Rider was playing on the second floor. I bought a ticket for the first floor G-rated movie and went to the second floor R-movie surreptitiously. Easy Rider was my example, my template for motorcycling. Hippies, free spirits, all that good stuff.

Fast forward to 2004. The motorcycle culture has changed, not surprisingly. It has been a while, and culture changes with time. What I find somewhat distasteful is the conservative attempt to take over and define motorcycle riding. They want to equate motorcycling freedom with the conservative freedom cry, meaning freedom from troublesome “nanny-state” regulations. I’m reading a book right now, and I’m about halfway through it. It reads like a doctoral dissertation, with the incongruous title Born to be Wild. Its subject is the motorcycle’s evolution from beginning to now, including the politics of it. It seems that the right has, with some degree of success, used the helmet-law controversy to paint the government as clueless and meddlesome. I believe that Massachusetts is the only New England state that mandates DOT-approved helmets for adult riders and passengers. I don’t really have strong feelings about it one way or the other. To me, common sense dictates wearing a DOT helmet. The only thing that gets me a little bugged is the fact that, if somebody becomes a vegetable due to their decision not to wear a helmet, in many cases society is burdened with their medical care. I guess what I would like to see is for it to be mandatory to wear a helmet unless you carry sufficient insurance to cover your lifetime care in case of a debilitating head injury.

The other reason conservatives seem to dominate now is that the motorcycle has been, almost from the beginning, closely allied with the military. Harley and Indian bikes were used in WWII. Some of the early outlaw clubs were made up of World War II vets looking for excitement and camaraderie. So the political conservatives have taken the helmet “freedom” issue and the military involvement, grabbed a POW/MIA flag, and declared Harley-Davidson conservative territory. Conservative Republicans Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had a Harley-themed Roast and Ride, a patriotic-themed festival in Iowa: see http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/06/2016-race. John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona, gave a speech at the Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally in Washington, D.C. Rolling Thunder is a project dedicated to the POWs of Vietnam. Now, John McCain is a genuine war hero. I don’t mean to disparage him, except that, as a politician, he has lately been very disappointing. In another era, he was actually quite moderate. But he is a war hawk and always has been.

I enjoy riding my Harley. I don’t particularly enjoy having my choice of ride being embraced by conservatives or war mongers. It’s a nice-looking bike that is fun to ride and almost as fun to just look at or to work on. I much prefer Harley to any of the Japanese bikes. Even the American-made Victory and Indian bikes aren’t as good, in my opinion. I have read different articles proclaiming some of these other manufacturers offer different things that Harleys don’t. But, in my opinion, Harley is big enough and diversified enough to withstand the next recession. As well as having enough choices in style and customization to keep their customers satisfied. I don’t want to find myself owning a bike whose manufacturer has gone out of business and I can’t get parts for. The ride is the enjoyment, and as far as I’m concerned, the Republicans can keep their politics off of my Harley.