The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, a ten-day event that ended this past Sunday, has been billed as a “celebration” of “freedom.” As the Daily Beast reported last week, this includes the freedom to be stupid. 700,000 unmasked white people reportedly attended the event, including those who claim they personally didn’t know anyone who has been vaccinated. One attendee from Washington, Greg Bailey, a longshoreman, justified his unvaccinated self by asserting that “I don’t listen to politicians. They’re going to lie. It’s all about votes…I don’t trust either party.” We can take that with a grain of salt, since there is one political party that is speaking his “language”; furthermore, people like Bailey seem to think that health care professionals are also going to lie to “get votes.” Stupid is as stupid does.
Gov. Kristi Noem, meanwhile, showed up to open the proceedings, and she made sure she at least took the precaution to be vaccinated in the presence of her fellow yahoos. South Dakota, like Florida’s so-called Department of Health, has been manipulating Covid numbers to make them look less bad than they actually are; for example, last Friday Florida reported 1,071 more Covid deaths than the previous week’s number, yet the report incomprehensibly only claimed 286 deaths “for the week” without explaining the discrepancy of nearly 800 total deaths. South Dakota, which is also now only reporting weekly, on its Covid dashboard has been registering “0” probable cases for quite some time now after such cases had made up some 12 percent of the total before; thus the state appears to be deliberately undercounting both the case and death counts by “fudging” what qualifies as a Covid case:
A reported 462,000 attended last year’s rally; one “study” claimed that far from being a “super-spreader” event, only one person could be positively identified as dying of Covid directly because of their attendance at the event. This is a ridiculous conclusion; one in 500 have “officially” died of the virus in this country; than means that given as an average, at least 900 people in that maskless, unvaccinated crowd were likely to have died since then, and who knows how many others they would have spread the virus to.
With the Delta variant dominant in her state, Noem again made the reprehensible and ignorant claim that this is all about “personal choices” and “personal responsibility” on Laura Ingraham’s show the other day, as if any “responsibility” was in evidence at the Sturgis rally. Of course, it was only a few weeks ago that Alan Dershowitz sent Ingraham into a tizzy fit when he contradicted her assertion that the Constitution gives anyone the “freedom” or the “right” to make other people sick or die because of their ignorant beliefs or behavior like this:
Meanwhile, you can’t have stupid without its close cousin around, racism:
Of course a perusal of the items on sale suggests that the politics of the clientele is expected to be strictly limited to those on the far-right, so “everyone” is not exactly “everyone,” especially if you are, you know, one of those liberal commie pinkos, while Trump supporters and people nostalgic for Nazism can find whatever it is to satisfy any occasion. Isn’t it odd how “freedom” and fascism seem to equate to the same thing with these people? These people surely know that many millions of people were murdered by other people wearing this insignia. But giving these people the “benefit of the doubt,” what kind of “freedom” are they talking about then? Is it the freedom to offend? Just what exactly does wearing this stuff make them feel “good” about?
The same vendor also made the bizarre claim that American soldiers returning to the U.S. would hang Nazi paraphernalia on their motorcycles. Oh really? “So, we’re kind of honoring that not necessarily that, you know, we believe in Nazis and Hitler, but it’s just kind of a special thing that the US military was able to go in and win the war and bring things back as souvenirs and they would put them on their bike.”
What??? There is so much ridiculous to unpack there. It is highly probable that 99.9 percent of the “bikers” and their entourages at the rally were not even born yet when World War II ended. You can tell by the vendor’s confused gobbledygook that any rational “explanation” for this is not intellectually possible, other than the truth—which is that putting a baseball cap with a Nazi logo on it is meant to show contempt for civilized society, and provoke fear and anxiety. Of course you can’t ignore the possibility that some of these people really are proud neo-Nazis who either deny history—or believe it should be repeated.
Alonso went on to absurdly claim that this is “total freedom of speech.” She admits she can’t make “everybody happy,” and by taking a look at her wares she isn’t even trying. “There’s always going to be somebody that gets upset with something I have here. A majority of people are very accepting and are excited about what I see and that they can get those items here.” Being “accepting” is of course a figure of speech; we remember during Trump’s 2016 campaign events, when lone protestors—especially if they were black—were beaten to a pulp by his supporters, and if anyone showed up at Sturgis to call out these people what they are, they could probably expect the same for exercising their freedom of speech rights. Furthermore, it is a rather sad commentary on society for people to be “excited” that they can purchase Nazi gear and feel “totally accepted.”
Naturally, if you are going to please the Nazi gear crowd, you can’t leave out Confederate (and Trump) paraphernalia fanatics.
A vendor from Texas, Amber Williams (women sure like selling this stuff) proudly displayed her “rebel” tattoo, claiming “It’s more about my heritage, not about my hate. I have no hate. I have a background with heritage and Indian (don’t all Southerners claim to have “Indian” blood almost 200 years after Native Americans were driven out of their lands in Southern states?) and everything else and so honestly, I see it as no hate. I see it as just heritage and if you don’t know the heritage and just see it as hate then you were brought up wrong.”
Yada, yada, yada. Some people might say that it is actually people like Williams who are the ones who were “brought up wrong.” It is absolutely amazing that people in this country do not understand that at the very core of every argument justifying secession and leading to the Civil War was the preservation of slavery. Period. End of Story:
Whatever the peripheral issues were, like “states’ rights,” they all started and ended in the same place. When white Southerners talk about their “heritage,” you will be hard pressed to find out what that means beyond the Confederate flag, the Civil War, and or just being a white Southerner. You start to run into problems when you ask these people what all of that actually means. I’m not sure what there is to be “proud” of; for the biker gangs attending the Sturgis rally, there can be little doubt that it is less about “heritage” than as symbols of separation from civilized norms, and far-right militancy.
If you don’t like any of this, you can always, well, buy one of those hats being sold on the top shelf of Alonso’s stall, march around and tell these people to
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