Whatever It Is, I'm Against It!

In an American political culture where for some the word “progress” is a pejorative I guess it’s to be expected that there will be people who actually oppose bicycles as a form of human transportation. Ever since New York City’s bike share program rolled out a few months ago I have noticed a fair degree of opposition, at least judging from the trolls on the New York Times online page.

In this article they talk about how the system has some glitches because at certain times of day at certain stations there are either no bikes or no place to dock the bike on which you arrived. This was all the issue needed for a virtual avalanche of stupidity in the comments section where at least a dozen readers mocked the program because although it is touted as being a green alternative to driving cars they must employ six trucks to ferry bikes around town from station to station. We are talking about six trucks out of 42,010 bike trips taken on a single day in the city in a system that thus far has 73,000 subscribers so pure stupidity doesn't begin to explain the opposition's argument.

People have called the bikes and the stations ugly yet a city absolutely filled with dormant automobiles doesn’t seem like an eyesore to them. The opposition simply lacks any sense of logic and reflects the true nature of modern American conservatives and their contrarian position reminding me of the number from Horse Feathers, “I’m against it.”