In September and October of 2024, I spent 3 weeks riding motorcycles 1600 miles through Nepal and Tibet. After two weeks, there was a storm and the border road flooded out. We couldn’t cross back into Nepal, and spent a couple of days on the Tibet side in a tiny town called Gyirong without power and running water.
Then, we spent the next seven days on busses, planes, and in cars trying to make our way out of China. The logistics were quite complicated because we had a group visa and our individual passports weren’t stamped.
But, the point isn’t the adventure we had, it’s the epiphanies I had about politics. The lack of freedom just wears on you.
In China, you can’t use YouTube, you can’t connect to Gmail, and can’t even get on Facebook without a VPN. And, the VPNs don’t typically work on hotel WiFi. Then, add to it that our guide covered his mouth when explaining things to us because he was scared the Chinese government might use AI to read his lips in video recordings. It’s not an irrational fear. The authorities had already talked to and warned him three times about his business as a guide, there are cameras everywhere (I mean everywhere, even in rural Tibet), and machine learning really can read lips.
Add to that the fact that we needed special permits to enter Tibet,special permits to go down certain roads, we went through 10+ checkpoints all over Tibet, and needed handlers the entire time to talk to the Chinese checkpoint guards. Finally, our group visa didn’t allow the group to split up. Not to mention the hit or miss cell signal in rural Tibet.
Add it all up, and it truly grates on you mentally.
Then, I come back to the United States just in time for the 2024 election. Both sides are super agitated. One side thinks their freedom of speech is being infringed on and elections have been stolen. The other thinks there’s going to be a dictator and their lives are in danger like Hitler.
It’s all laughable.
After being trapped in Tibet/China for 7 days with a distinct lack of freedom, with my guide in Tibet covering his mouth for fear of arrest or harassment, I learned some very important lessons which I can and never will forget:
1. Political enlightenment can never come from within your own country/culture, you *have* to go out and experience it somewhere else. You need a horrible experience with gibs of culture shock to give you true existential clarity
2. The people in the United States, if they were being rational, would love each other and stop trolling each other, because we have WAY more in common, way more that should bring us together than separate us. Yet, we vilify the “other” side, fear civil war and complain about freedom of speech everyday. It’s ridiculous.
3. Westerners are fucking cry babies. We get wrapped around the axle about everything from politics to what rain gear to wear on a motorcycle ride through the mountains of Tibet. When life is good, and you have freedom, you have the luxury to be a cry baby. They’re taking my freedom of speech on Twitter, they’re killing trans people!!!! No. No, they’re not.
4. When things get quiet, and people stop being cry babies, that’s when I’ll worry. Until then, weeeeeeee, Nihilism
5. I love freedom. I almost got a tear in my eye when the Nepalese immigration officer stamped my passport and said welcome. I’d rather be poor and free in Nepal the rest of my life, than rich and constrained in China. This is not hyperbole.
6. I love being American: we’re free AND rich. It’s the best of both worlds. I guess I just have to deal with the paradox of the cry baby syndrome 😂
7. I am a political pacifist. I’d fight a robber coming in my house. Hell, I might even get into a random bar fight, but I will never fight a fellow American over politics or join a militia. Life is too short.
One caveat, if shit really did hit the fan, I’ll become a warlord! 😂 People think food and ammo is enough. It’s not. Charisma!!! That’s the key. You have to quickly firm a roving band, 1000 strong. But I digress. I’m over politics, but I’m definitely into post-apocalyptic survival.
You won’t do it. You can’t do it, because your nearing living relative is a Chimpanzee. But, I beg you, make a choice to appreciate the freedom you do have, and realize that talking at each other is not “working” to make a better country.