Summary

The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally has become a symbol of America's struggle with personal liberties versus the collective responsibility during the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting the consequences of prioritizing individualism over community health.

Abstract

The annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, attended by nearly half a million bikers, has inadvertently become a catalyst for the spread of Covid-19, exemplifying the lethal mathematics of viral transmission. The event's aftermath has led to a surge in cases, with one fatality in Minnesota and reports of attendees spreading the virus at a subsequent wedding. This surge has contributed to the Dakotas, Kansas, and Iowa becoming new Covid hotspots. The rally, once a celebration of freedom and American ideals, has now come to represent a reckless disregard for public health, with the author lamenting the loss of the heroic and responsible image of Harley riders. The pandemic has laid bare America's underlying condition of blind selfishness, which undermines efforts to control the virus and reflects a broader societal issue of neglecting the greater good in favor of personal liberty.

Opinions

The author expresses a mix of sadness and anger over the transformation of the Sturgis Rally into a public health hazard.
There is a sense of betrayal and loss regarding the Harley-Davidson brand and the ideals it once represented, such as heroism and a sense of community.
The author criticizes the attendees' actions as "pure dumb selfishness," contrasting with the traditional values of freedom and individualism they claimed to uphold.
The rally is seen as a manifestation of "self-indulgent nihilism," a stark departure from the previously revered gathering of the faithful.
The author believes that America's fixation on personal liberty has overshadowed the necessity of collective action against the pandemic.
The pandemic has revealed a "cheap spectacle" of American life, where the pursuit of freedom lacks the balance of social responsibility.
The article suggests that the American ethos has been distorted, with leaders and citizens alike prioritizing individual desires over the common good.
The author argues for a reevaluation of American values, emphasizing the need for a shared sense of purpose and responsibility to overcome the challenges posed by the pandemic.

The Lesson of Sturgis

I saw this map at a rest stop on a few years ago, inviting riders on the way to Sturgis to stick a pin in the place they were coming from. Imagine them bringing the virus back to all these places. (photo from the author).

Like the thunderstorms that arrive at the end of an overheated summer day here in the nation’s heartland, we’re seeing new cases of Covid-19 following the recent Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

Not a lot of surprise there. If a virus could possess a malign intelligence it would probably cook up something like a giant gathering of freedom loving Harley riders to super-spread itself around the countryside.

By now we’re getting a pretty good idea how the lethal math of this virus works. New cases appear in handfuls. Then bigger handfuls. And so on as the next surge of disease sinks its teeth into us.

As of this writing one Sturgis attendee has died from Covid-19 in my home state of Minneapolis. There’s a press account of another going to a wedding the week after Sturgis and spreading it to the guests. The Dakotas, Kansas and Iowa have become the nation’s new Covid hotspots.

If the rest of us are disciplined we might manage to keep the new Sturgis infections from going exponential. But that means more school kids stuck learning at home this fall. More restaurants and bars struggling to stay afloat with a few tables on the sidewalk instead of being able to actually reopen their establishments. More weeks and months before anyone can start to feel like we’re getting our normal lives back.

Riding a Harley has always had its rebellious side. But what exactly was being rebelled against by the nearly half-million riders who flocked to Sturgis this year? Kindergarteners and bar owners?

I watched the whole Sturgis thing play out with a mix of sadness and anger. I spent the better part of my career writing ads for Harley-Davidson. For more than a dozen years I put my heart and soul into building up the legend — of both the Harley rider and the annual Sturgis rally.

Now I’m left with a grim sense of loss.

A colleague once wrote an ad with the headline, “Ride, because children need heroes.” It captured better than anything else what I admired about the idea of riding a Harley, and what I admired about the many riders I’ve had the privilege to think of as brothers and sisters.

There was nothing heroic about partying up and down the streets of Sturgis SD in the middle of a pandemic. It was pure dumb selfishness.

Getting on a motorcycle is a purposeful act, more so than other forms of transportation. A lot of that has to do with the dangers involved. But it’s also the freedom that comes with being so exposed. The connection with wind, road, horizon. You’re more aware. Or as I used to put it during my years giving voice to the Harley-Davidson brand, you’re more alive.

The free-ranging Harley rider symbolized things we all hoped we had inside us. Life in the saddle was bigger. Better. Uniquely American. I used that to great effect when I was making Harley ads. We talked about Sturgis in reverential terms. A gathering of the faithful.

This year’s Sturgis rally symbolized America at its smallest. You heard riders talk about ideals like freedom and individualism when the press caught up with them on their way to the Black Hills. The reality was nothing more than self-indulgent nihilism.

In my work I always considered Harley’s story and America’s story inseparable. The virus causing the pandemic is particularly dangerous to those with an underlying condition. The blind selfishness we saw at Sturgis is America’s underlying condition. It’s why we keep failing to solve the pandemic in this country.

And so if anything good can come out of the Sturgis rally, it’s a timely reminder that in our obsession with personal liberty we’ve swung too far away from any sense of obligation to the greater good. We’ve let cheap spectacle overshadow our sense of a common purpose. We’ve let our leaders get away with acting like the words at the front of the Constitution are “Me the People.”

As summer fades and we wade into the electioneering season we’re being fed nonsensical choices in apocalyptic terms. Brutal policing or anarchy in the streets. Liberty or death, as a response to a virus that can only accept one of those conditions.

The real decision we need to make right now is what sort of American we want to see looking back at us when we stand in front of the mirror.

Freedom comes with a price, as the old saying goes. It will wither in a heartbeat if we forget our responsibility to one another. That’s the lesson of Sturgis.