We argue over “DEI bike lanes.”
I have never once, before this, heard of bikelanes as DEI. Man, the righty sphere is so wacky.
“Anything I dont like is woke.” Is now just “Anything I dont like is DEI.”
Its a big part of why I disagree with the backlash against saying retarded. People who want to be hateful just move the goalposts and make the acceptable term a slur. Furthermore anyone who calls a mentally disabled person names is a “CUNT” not “a person of dubious personal character”
逃げて 逃げろ!
…so it should be fine to say slurs because otherwise new words become slurs but also using slurs makes you a bad person so you shouldn’t do it?
Not fine but the message is more important than the words.
Calling someone who says hateful shit with the right words a retard is not worse than the hateful bastard. Idiot and Moron both have old roots in discriptions of people who were probably mentally handicapped.
The Left and the Right want the same thing.
But also:
I’m a Republican, and in nine months of advocating for safer streets, I have yet to meet another one.
After nine months immersed in transportation policy, I’ve come to believe something simple: Republicans and Democrats are often arguing for the same thing using completely different languages.
I’m going to remove the specific parties from tbe discussion becuase this is more than a Dems vs Reps thing. But it is indeed not uncommon for people in general to actually more or less agree, but lose nuance or understanding by disagreeing on the language used.
How we frame the issue matters. The Left loses the Right as soon as bike lanes are tied into identity politics. Multimodal equity […]
First of all, multimodal equity is a term that can only be common among transportation advocates like this person. This is jargon, not common terminology. Second, this term is not in any way about identity politics. It is about equity of modes of transport. In other words we should design cities, neighborhoods and roads with consideration for more than one mode of traffic. This has nothing at all to do with “identity politics” except for that the weird hang ups that the right has projected onto the term “equity”. So yes, this may lose the right, but it is not for a good reason.
Multimodal equity is simply “freedom of movement” to a Republican.
Mkay. I don’t think there is anything wrong with either term. For someone not involved in conversations around transportation much, the former is a little bit jargony and the latter is a bit vague. But if you understand what they mean, either term is perfectly fine.
But when Republicans talk about freedom, the progressives hear privilege.
No we don’t. The left sees privilege that the right ignore plenty. But it has nothing to do with their use of the word “freedom” unless you are using the word wrong, such as religios freedom to impose your religion on everyone else.
Aren’t the Left and the Right essentially saying the same thing?
They can be. Are they? Are there people on the right that agree with your advocacy for multimodal equity/freedom of movement? Not according to your own comments:
I’m a Republican, and in nine months of advocating for safer streets, I have yet to meet another one.
You also mention that the Republican Secretary of Transport is more concerned about roads, bridges and ports than about bike lanes, sidewalks and crosswalks. So you tell me. Is the right saying the same things as the left on this subject? Or is it just you? And it also wasnt you until you suffered a personal tragedy that.made you reevaluate your stance. Because that is what it sounds like.
Good analysis.
I would say that (as a non-American lefty), when I hear “freedom” in an American context, I hear “individualism”, and since that’s usually more focussed on “freedom to …” rather than “freedom from …”, then it isassociated with privilege, especially when uttered by middle class people
“Freedom to” vs “freedom from” is one of the core pillars of the problem on a societal level, yeah.
And it also wasnt you until you suffered a personal tragedy that.made you reevaluate your stance. Because that is what it sounds like.
Generally, people change their mind from in group pressure, or trauma. That’s really it. Facts from the out-group won’t do it. Looks like a bit of trauma shook the author up here.
They didn’t care until some in their in group suffered. Only once it actually entered their bubble did it start to matter. But it still only matters because it’s effected their world directly. It didn’t really make them care about others.
this term is not in any way about identity politics.
Not to reasonable people. But to these ones anything other than extra-wide lanes for their lifted dually with extended wing mirrors for the trailer they never pull is an attack on their identity as a White Christian True American Patriot.
Chrissy Oakes, you’re a dumb fuck
It’s interesting to watch someone try to blame the Democrats for trying and failing to enact solutions to the problem that killed her father, point out that she’s the only Republican she’s met advocating for bike lanes, and still not see how important it is to talk to other Republicans about maybe building more fucking bike lanes.
This is so unnervingly frustrating. Author claims we want the same thing and are talking over each other while recognizing they are the only Republican they know pursuing the thing the author claims Republicans want. When Democrats try and explain to Republicans that these things are good for them too (like single payer healthcare), they plug their ears but somehow it’s still the fault of Democrats and Socialists that we don’t have these things.
They don’t care about these things until it affects them personally.
I didn’t see if the author claimed to have advocated for bike paths before their father was killed. But I’ve just assumed that’s the case, and in the wild circumstance that I’m wrong, it’ll be more coincidence than anything else.
I’m so tired of these fascist-come-latelys jumping on that one specific topic that has now affected them WHEN IF PROGRESSIVES HAD OUR WAY THIER RIGHTS WOULD HAVE BEEN PROTECTED ALL FUCKING ALONG.
edit: I thought I got the impression right - the fucking title: “I thought bike lanes were [bad] then my father was killed”. Fucking fuck off, you fucking fascist prick. Because you still support the REST of the fascist agenda.
It’s also ignoring everything their fellow republicans are doing. Nevermind the secretary of transportations bullshit, local politics is where most of this kind of shit starts. My town put in protected bike lanes (protected only by collapsible plastic rods), and all the Republican f-550 Sherman tank edition truck owners bitched they couldn’t fit their tanks on the roads until they literally ripped them out a few years later.
Sherman tank edition
But the Sherman is relatively small as far as tanks go, both in modern context and even back in its day.
The Sherman was the smaller, lighter, cheaper tank that wasn’t as good as most of its rivals on the battlefield, but made up for it by being cheaper and easier to produce, so they were able to field more of them and win through numbers.
That is a good point and shows how little I know about tanks
it’s that classic republican talking point ‘why didn’t Obama tell us this was a terrible mistake even harder?’
We don’t have to agree on every reason for building safer streets. We only have to agree that Americans deserve to make it home alive.
Then explain ICE you disingenuous fuck.
Easy, ICE only goes after brown people.
Except when they murder white people in the middle of the street.
Their spirit is brown.
Only “Americans” deserve to make it home alive. And his definition of Americans is as narrow as can be.
“I have no empathy for others but now that it happened to me, I think it’s important. Too bad that the people who are like me are just the same and won’t care either. Too bad.”
If you find out you’re this wrong about one thing and it seems so obvious now, imagine how many other things you’re wrong about but never bother to think about them with any reasoning or detail
That would require having an imagination, or any internal voice at all.
Do they even know what DEI means it they just throw that acronym around to describe anything they disagree with?
well, her father certainly DEI’d, didn’t he?
yes. all that hard work with affirmative action and BLM and Critical Race Theory. all the same, it’s a buzz word for ‘I hate this’ and ‘I won’t even listen’ type of garbage. it’s poisoning the well. it’s making sure no one will even come to the table.
Of course they don’t know what it means.
Next, ask them to define what ‘woke’ is.
somewhere along the way, we turned roads into a political argument. We argue over “DEI bike lanes.” We argue over “equity.” We argue over ideology. […] The Left loses the Right as soon as bike lanes are tied into identity politics.
Once again, the right-wing echosphere applies identity-politics labels to something, and once again it’s the left’s fault that that label has been applied.
How about instead of lecturing the left over how to appeal to the right, you go after the right and tell them to stop automatically tuning out the moment they hear one of the phrases they’ve been programmed to react irrationally and emotionally to.
Right? We aren’t the ones who said they were dei. We just said we wanted people to stop dying on the streets so maybe it’s time we startbuikding infrastructure that’s safer. We didn’t apply woke and dei labels to scare off others, they did.
I dunno it seems like the Republican arguments are stupid and the left wing ones are based on facts and evidence.
A bike lane is equity. It is freedom of movement. It is accessibility for someone who cannot drive. It is independence for a 12-year-old riding to school on their own — and an hour back in their mother’s day. It is law and order, using engineering to prevent tragedy instead of reacting to it after the fact. It is Make America Healthy Again — bringing Americans outside, safely. It is economic development.
This is all stuff the left says (minus the Maha branding). The right doesn’t listen. They’re too busy marinating in their feelings.
Here’s a Wayback Machine link (in case you don’t want to give traffic to the Washington Examiner): https://web.archive.org/web/20260910210212/https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/op-eds/4690296/bike-lanes-safety-super-speeders/
For people who don’t want to send traffic to the Washington Examiner - https://archive.ph/WPJe5
I think if you read this as trying to communicate to a Republican audience, it’s much less LAMF… I don’t think she’s trying to complain, I think she’s trying to shift the right… Seems like a good outcome to me.
Also, republicans are not solely responsible for America’s insane car dependency, that shit has been building for a century. No one born in the last 50 years voted for this…
t’s a shame this person lost her father and still didn’t learn bike lanes are good because they’re DEI, allowing inclusive and equitable transportation options for people who bike.
She’s literally arguing for bike lanes?
