I live next to a street which I cross daily (I am legally allowed to cross here in Germany, as the next pedestrian crossing is far enough away).

When I cross I make sure nobody has to worry about hitting the brake (provided they go with roughly the same speed they did before).

Yet it happenstwice a week that some lunatic thinks "hey the street is for cars" and starts speeding towards me (definitely also over the speed limit) just to get to a stop at the red light down the road.

This article is so insane, it just has to be some sort of outrage-bait (that actually worked for me, although my blood typically has a pretty high boiling point).

It seemed obvious satire to me (not funny or sophisticated, but satire nonetheless).

Felt like my suspicion was confirmed after seeing that other “Men of the Year” articles in the Free Beacon include “The Brothers Cuomo” (https://freebeacon.com/men-of-the-year/2021-men-of-the-year-...) and “Dem Who Spent Campaign Cash at Strip Club” (https://freebeacon.com/men-of-the-year/2021-man-of-the-year-...).

In this case the cyclist is the primary butt of the joke, not the driver. But the grandparent’s description of the article as “pure incitement to violence” is ludicrous hysteria.

Seems a satirical essay akin to a Modest Proposal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

"A Modest Proposal" is meant to make the rich think twice about their treatment of the poor. Do you think the Free Beacon wants its readers to feel worse about rolling coal and abusing cyclists?

FWIW, I live in one of the least right-wing cities in the US (Baltimore), and cyclists here report that aggressive driving towards them is common.

A few have reported that pedestrian aggression towards them is common, too.

Yea. I lived in Brooklyn, NY for many years, and definitely experienced aggressive driving there, too. Often times, the offenders would complain that the bike lanes were new and bicyclists were guilty of gentrifying the neighborhood. Now I live in Virginia, and it's usually huge trucks or SUV's with Trump stickers that tend to be the most aggressive.

Anti-cycling sentiment seems to be one area where the "both sides" argument has at least a hint of truth to it.

It doesn't take a lot of people for aggression to feel common to cyclists.

Just as a proxy measure of right-wing-ness, 11% of people in Balitmore city voted for Trump, and 35% in Baltimore County.

But I think the aggression is part of dominance assertion, a behavior that is more approved of on the right, but you still see plenty of on the left.

Rolling coal on cyclists, and proudly posting videos of it on youtube, and plowing trucks through the bicyclists, and writing articles portraying the perpetrators as heroes, is a hell of a lot worse than the common everyday "aggression" that American cyclists experience.

They're absolutely not equivalent.

Can you link to hundreds videos of left wingers with Biden bumper stickers rolling coal on anti-environmentalists, smashing their scooters and pickup trucks with Priuses, Biden supporters murdering right wing protesters with their cars just like a Nazi Trump supporter murdered Heather Heyer, and articles glorifying those attackers as left wing "heroes" and "man of the year"?

Or are you just trying to make another tired and dishonest false equivalence to justify and carry the water for right wing violence and aggression that is no way reflected on "both sides"?

And rolling coal is only a drop in the bucket of the mainstream right wing violence that's happening today. I can't recall anyone on the left wing rioting and breaking into the capitol, hanging a noose to murder the vice president, proudly marching and waving Confederate flags and flagpoles with spear tips, vandalizing and defecating through the halls of the Capitol, or shooting a nail gun at FBI agents as revenge for Mar-a-Lago then getting killed in a shootout with automatic weapons by the FBI. (Or do you agree with Trump that was a false flag operation? What's your evidence?)

Did I simply miss all those news stories about left wingers rolling coal and executing insurrections and attacking the FBI, just because of the left-wing media bubble I live in, and if so, can you please provide a link to them to prove that "you still see plenty of it on the left"?

Or are you just ignoring the whole point and moving the goalposts a few football field lengths to make a false equivalence?

You seem to be arguing with something I didn't say. So much so that I'm wondering if you meant to reply to something else.

If you're really trying to reply to me, could you please connect what you're asking of me with what you said?

I mean cyclists here talk about getting "bricked" (what it sounds like, getting a brick chucked at them)

Just as a note, the County and City have a somewhat antagonistic relationship, although County residents probably make up a decent number of drivers within City Limits.

Yes, that was my thinking. A lot of urban core drivers come in from the suburbs. I'd be willing to bet that people from outside the city are behind a disproportionate share of aggressive incidents.

Yeah, as a resident I doubt that. We have a pretty aggressive driving culture and I don't think we can blame it on Trumpers driving in from the Burbs to cause trouble.

> The right wing in the US is so pathologically sociopathic that they actually glorify assholes for rolling coal on bicyclists as heroes, and think it's hilariously funny.

Or, you know, perhaps the articles that make money based off of clickbaiting people with outrageous premises that make people mad are not indicative of the vast majority of people. I find that when I talk to people, you know face to face in person, we usually agree on 90% of topics regardless of which side of the aisle you fall on.

The internet and social media thrives on labeling your in-group as the heroes and your out-group as racist, homophobic bigots (left and right). I really hate this mentality because it paints a broad stroke on a whole lot of people that are not crazy and holding radical ideas.

I would hope on HN I could expect the average commenter to be able to realize this and recognize that there's a lot more commonality than social media and news media would like us to believe. And that the average HN commenter wouldn't resort to automatically pointing a finger at their out-group and casting all social woes and responsibility on them. There are jerks on both sides of the aisle. There are great people on both sides of the aisle.

And just as an example, here's Chris Cuomo bullying a bicyclist[0]. I'm sure there are others on the left like this as well, but I'm not going to automatically assume that somebody on the left hate or loves bicyclists. I don't know that because we're all individuals and make our own decisions at the end of the day.

[0]: https://nypost.com/2020/04/14/long-island-bicyclist-verbally...