Star Spangled Banter

On 9/11, we were attacked. It seems as if no one remembers anymore. September 11th of 1814! The War of 1812, sometimes known as the Second American Revolution, solidified our sense of national identity and moreover taught us to fight together as a team. Most folks don’t realize that the British were seizing American merchant ships, restricting trade and actually kidnapping our boys and forcibly “impressing” them into service for the Royal Navy in England’s war with Napoleonic France. Yeah, we tried to take Canada while the Brits weren’t looking, but it backfired, and we got wiped. The British got a little pissy about it after whooping Napoleon and decided to burn Washington D.C. to the ground. A few weeks later, when the Redcoats set their sights on Baltimore, the home team rallied together and pulled off an unthinkable victory against the world’s premiere military force.

A little place called Fort McHenry was built to defend the entrance to Baltimore harbor, and Major George Armistead wanted a garrison flag bigger than any other flag ever made to fly over the fort to lure the Brits into battle and at the same time rub their noses in our independence. We sunk our own ships at the entrance to the harbor to impede entry, and it’s there that the British flotilla pounded the fort with bombs bursting in air and the red glare of the newly developed Congreve rockets (bigger versions of today’s bottle rockets) for nearly 25 hours. Francis Scott Key was a 35 year old lawyer acting as a hostage negotiator who inadvertently became a prisoner himself just before the battle, and ended up watching the scene transpire from a tiny boat tied to a British vessel. When the smoke finally cleared, our flag was still there, and the British moved on. Francis Scott Key was inspired to write a poem, not a song. However, within a few days, the words were printed on handbills and the patrons in the local beer halls sang the poem to the tune, "To Anacreon in Heaven" and it caught on.

Most interestingly, that huge flag, the legendary flag that flew over Fort McHenry and inspired our national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner, SURVIVES! The flag has been undergoing an intensive restoration since 1998. You can actually see the process taking place through the windows of a hermetically sealed laboratory at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.. The flag is almost entirely intact and colossal as well, originally measuring 30’ x 40’, with each star being almost 2 feet across.

The Star Spangled Banner represents hope. It represents the struggles of a fledgling republic and provides Bikers with a touch-stone to the past when the freedom of our forefathers was severely challenged. Today, nobody really gives a rats-ass about freedom anymore. The guys and gals getting into motorcycling today will puff up their chests and tell the television news crew that they enjoy riding because of the “sense of freedom” they get from being out on the open road. If you ask me, they’re all a bunch of egocentric hypocrites more into the “look at me” syndrome than they are about any enjoyment of riding in the wind. And you can forget about them riding in the rain, because they simply won’t. Such is the level of their sacrifice for freedom.

Thank God somebody gets it. Our brave kids with boots on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq understand the sacrifices inherent in freedom. Our selfless troops are willing to bleed to improve someone else’s quality of life, while the lame-assed “Bikers” in California aren’t willing to fight for even the simplest of political endeavors; the elementary task of asking a city or county to simply declare motorcycle awareness month in hopes of drawing attention to what I would consider to be their favorite charity; THEMSELVES. Maybe even help them avoid becoming a hood ornament in hopes they’ll get a chance to live another day.

Yeah, I’m pissed at the world, alright. It pisses me off to look back at the last three years of my life only to realize that I’ve not really made much of a difference in the world at all. I fight so hard to preserve the sport for future generations when, in fact, I’ve pretty much been abandoned by my own generation. That future is looking rather grim. I’m trying hard to convince myself that all my efforts will somehow be rewarded in the end, not with money, but with “essential freedom.” While all these Johnny-Come-Lately-Chopper-Schmucks are getting rich, I don’t know how much longer “pride” will continue to pay MY bills. It really irks me that while I’m off riding to this meeting or that to preserve the sport, I’m passing all the happy go lucky riders who haven’t a care in the world, who are all enjoying the “sense of freedom” that somebody else sacrificed for. Lane-splitting like idiots, riding in the carpool lane, making a bunch of excessive noise and pissing off entire towns with their big inch air cooled engines that WE helped keep legal, all the while being complacent with the state mandated dress code. While I just passed 50 bikes to get there, I’m lucky if a handful of people are at the meeting. Today’s modern rider, and the motorcycle industry as a whole, simply doesn’t care that we’re the ones fighting to keep them on the road.

However, I DO appreciate YOU, the loyal Bailing Wire reader, and the members of ABATE of California, for making the sacrifices, for stepping up to the plate to fight for other people’s freedoms, even if they don’t appreciate it. So if they say they’re a proud American, and they ride without fighting to preserve the sport, well, they can just knock it off with their hypocritical “Star Spangled Banter” once and for all. It’s time for all of them to start singing a different tune called, “GET INVOLVED OR TURN IN YOUR KEYS.” If you’ve been offended by anything I’ve said and you wanna do something about it, join ABATE of California today. The freedom you save just might be your own.

Learn more about the Star Spangled Banner: http://americanhistory.si.edu/ssb/2_home/fs2.html