Brush with high-speed blowout leaves me thinking about death

By David McElroy · September 7, 2018

The technician looked at me as though he had seen a ghost.

“You almost got yourself killed,” he said quietly.

I was almost back to my suburb Friday evening when I had a blowout on I-20 east of Birmingham. I was going faster than the law prefers when I heard a sudden noise that I find hard to describe. That noise immediately turned into a loud rumble. The car was hard to control. I can’t remember exactly what I did, but once I regained full control, I was on the exit to my neighborhood.

My regular car repair place was already closed, so I pulled into the Walmart auto center. An hour later, I was facing the technician who had pulled the tire off the car. He wanted to show me the hole in my tire — and he wanted to know how I had avoided losing control and killing myself.

After he showed me the gaping hole on the inward-facing side of the tire, I had the same question he did. Why didn’t I completely lose control and wreck? It would have been so easy to do that, especially at high speeds on a crowded rush-hour interstate highway.

I had the same question I always have after incidents which leave me realizing that I could have been killed. What was the difference between me and the hundreds of other people who died in very similar accidents today? I don’t know the answer to that.

The tire technician told me that I either hit something on the highway and didn’t realize it or else there was a flaw in the tire. I’ll never know. (A friend who took a look at it suspects a spontaneous issue with the tire, because he said there are no obvious markings that would indicate abnormal scuffs or residue.)

We go through life ignoring the fact that our lives are at the mercy of a thousand things that could go wrong at any moment. If we allowed ourselves to think about all those things each day, we would be afraid to ever leave our homes.

A tire can burst. Another drive could carelessly crash head-on into us. Electrical problems in wiring could start a fire. We could slip and fall into the path of equipment. We could fall down stairs. We could slip in a bathtub. The list of ways in which we could die is almost endless.

For me, it was a piece of rubber that failed tonight. I should have lost control. I should have crashed into another car. I should have had a good chance of dying, especially at 90 miles an hour.

But I’m alive and well. I’m sitting in the comfort of my comfortable air-conditioned home just a couple of hours after this incident. But I can’t stop thinking — yet again — about mortality. I can’t help but think that such brushes with mortality make me feel a stronger sense of urgency about the things which matter to me in life.

It would be a tragedy if I died tonight, not because the loss would hurt anybody, but because I would have wasted my life. That’s a very arbitrary evaluation, but it’s one I instinctively feel strongly. If I died tonight, I wouldn’t leave behind anyone who loves me. I wouldn’t leave behind anything which I’d done which would matter in the future. I wouldn’t leave behind much of anything that would be of value to anyone.

And that’s why I want to love someone who loves me back — someone who will feel changed by having been loved by me.

That’s why I want to have children who I raise in love and empathy, prepared for the role of helping to change the world bit by bit.

That’s why I want to make art that I can leave behind — something which will not only be loved but which will also preach the Good News as I understand it.

None of this is new. You’ve heard it before. I’ve felt it before. But the realization that I could just as easily be laying cold and dead in a morgue right now makes it very clear to me that I have to change my approach if I’m going to find a way to achieve what I want in life.

Whether I like it or not, death is always waiting. Tonight was just a little tease. My life isn’t over. Not yet.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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