My Uber Ride Was a Tale of Two Cities
Two tales: The dark rabbit hole of MAGA and the enlightened recovery of a crack addict
This is a tale of two cities: Atlanta. And not one, but two Uber rides: one to my destination, and the return trip. It’s a tale of two drivers: one was a Trump supporter driving a heavy-duty Ford Expedition that was larger than some ocean tankers. The other was a former crack addict in his tenth year of recovery driving a Toyota Corolla.
A little background.
Whenever I live in congested urban areas, I tend not to own a car. When I lived in San Francisco’s North Beach and, later, Hayes Valley, I didn’t have a car because it was easier not to. Finding a parking space in the streets of San Francisco was a long-term project that usually took a few days.
When I found a spot, I often found myself taking Muni, the local transit service, so that I wouldn’t have to give up my hard-won parking space. A lot of good that did me. The street cleaners came by every week anyway, kicking you out unless you wanted to pay a steep fine.
Now that I live in Midtown Atlanta, I continue the tradition of not owning a car for somewhat different reasons: The parking is much better here, but most everything I need is within walking distance. If it isn’t, I take Uber. If it’s far away, I rent a car.
Driver One
Not too long ago, I needed to get to an appointment in Buckhead, which is too far for a walk, so I ordered an Uber and jumped into the aforementioned big black Expedition.
Getting into the beast was like rock climbing, but I finally hoisted myself into the thing using a clever gymnastics technique I learned fifty years ago.
The driver was a pleasant guy around my age, which means, like me, he probably receives unsolicited mail urging him to look into crematoriums.
Our conversation began normally enough. Something about housing prices. I braced myself because even though I’m not supposed to, I profile people, especially old white guys in Georgia.
Atlanta is a blue city, but on a cold day when there aren’t a lot of people around while walking the Beltline (the main city trail), a keen ear can sometimes overhear two old white guys talk about “dem Blacks” like it’s 1950 while they’re strolling together complaining about things.
But progress can’t be halted by a few cranks. Atlanta is undergoing a Black renaissance of sorts. This makes some people unhappy, but it’s an unstoppable force whether they like it or not.
The renaissance I speak of covers the full scope of culture, from food (there must be hundreds of great Black-owned restaurants1), to music to art to film and theater. The city is becoming an explosion of Black culture and influence to the point where it seems half my Uber drivers have African accents because the word is spreading overseas that Atlanta is becoming a Mecca for Black empowerment.
Coming to America? Come to Atlanta.
Yours truly, an old white guy, loves it. It should have happened 200 years ago, but chains got in the way. Better late than never.
My new friend in the Uber driving seat was an affable fellow.
So when he eased the conversation into the world of Trumpenstein, I found our points of agreement, that politics does not attract our best and brightest, then told him the story of another guy I know who always votes for the Other Guy for President.
The Other Guy is always a guy, and he’s always a businessman who promises to run America like a business. Which, to an old socialist like me, is kind of scary, but whatever.2 Guys like Ben Carson or Ross Perot or that guy with the teeth, Vivek Ramaswamy, are Other Guys.
That’s really how Trump got going. He appealed most to people who are tired of politicians. The cult has spread since then to anyone with chronic grievances, but that’s another story.
My driver confirmed that he, too, was initially attracted to Agent Orange for his alleged business acumen. By now, I think we all know that a fella like this is immune to arguments about Trump bankruptcies and the like, so I skipped all that. I didn’t engage other than saying that, although I loathe politicians like most normal people do, Trump was not the answer.
After a beat, he calmly asked me, “Can I ask you why?”
I decided to focus on the Epstein Files, the multiple sexual assault allegations, and the conviction in a civil court of rape and defamation. I also told the driver that if he worked for Trump instead of Uber, he would never get paid. He’d be a contractor with a bigly, unpaid invoice.
Then, I finished with how Trump mocked Biden for stuttering. “I was a stutterer when I was a kid,” I said. “I don’t like mean people. You seem like a nice guy. Someone who wouldn’t like mean people, either.”
I could almost hear my arguments bounce around the big Black Expedition’s interior like they were made out of rubber. And they bounced off the nice old Uber driver, too. He quickly pivoted into something called Project Mockingbird.
“You’ve heard of that, right?”
No, of course not, I thought.
The Uber driver explained to me that Project Mockingbird is why so many in his cult (my word, not his) won’t pay any attention to mainstream news sources (the few that haven’t capitulated since the election). “The news media is completely run by the Deep State.” (me: Still?)
Fortunately, just as he was saying, “You need to check it out, it explains everything,” my destination was at hand. I tried to open the door, but it was heavier than the tall office building I was about to enter.
I was trapped. My overactive imagination sensed a sardonic smile on the driver’s face as he thought about my future in the Owned Libs Gulag, but it was probably just a regular smile. Like I said, he seemed like a nice guy. And I can overthink a handshake.
“The entire media is controlled by the government,” he said as I leaned desperately into the door, which finally opened and spilled me out onto the curb in front of the building.
I kicked the door closed with both feet while sitting on my ass, waving goodbye with a stupid grin on my face.
Driver Two
After my appointment, I tapped up Uber for a ride home. My driver was a wonderful old Black dude who told me his story about how ten years ago he was “right there at that gas station,” which he pointed to as we drove by, where, in those days, he was “begging for money.”
My Uber conversations are often like this. In my experience, Uber drivers love to talk. Or, maybe I bring out their desire to tell stories. I’ve never really thought about it. I’ve probably taken a couple of hundred trips since I started using the service four years ago. I think one reason I have five stars as a rider is because I like to hear these stories and egg the drivers on so I can get the details.
I liked his story a lot.
He told me that he spent six months at a Salvation Army recovery residence, where he learned fundamentals of living that nobody had taught him in the mean streets of Birmingham, Alabama.
He described his crack addiction in some detail. Not a day went by that he wanted to keep living, he told me, but he wanted the crack more than he wanted to kill himself.
Now, every day is a blessing, he said. “There ain’t no storm I can’t drive through today,” he smiled as it began to rain outside, “because every day is a gift.” You hear that a lot from people in recovery, but he radiated the feelings as he said the words.
He had a successful business, an auto body shop, he said, and spent his weekends driving for Uber because he loved the extra cash and driving around the city.
He was married to a woman he met at the Salvation Army, a volunteer, who is “as beautiful now as the day I met her.”
I didn’t like him any more or less than the first driver. They were both nice people. But the second driver didn’t lead me into a rabbit hole through an itch that, admittedly, I didn’t need to scratch, but did anyway.
I knew that when Driver Number Two dropped me off at my house, I needed to learn more about Project Mockingbird.
The rabbit hole
When I got home, I did a brief search to discover that Project Mockingbird was, according to Wikipedia,3 “the name of an operation in 1963 which wiretapped two journalists who had published articles based on classified material.”
Project Mockingbird was revealed by newly unclassified documents in 2007. The CIA had been wiretapping journalists who were reporting on the way the CIA was conducting domestic surveillance on foreigners.
That didn’t seem like it could really be what he was talking about, so I carefully proceeded a little further down the rabbit hole and found something called Operation Mockingbird.
Ironically, Operation Mockingbird was among a large number of covert operations uncovered by a Senate committee4 led by Democrat Frank Church, which found, among other things, according to Wikipedia:
Operation MKULTRA, which involved the drugging and torture of unwitting US citizens as part of human experimentation on mind control;[1][2] COINTELPRO, which involved the surveillance and infiltration of American political and civil-rights organizations;[3] and Family Jewels, a CIA program to covertly assassinate foreign leaders.[4][5][6][7]
The irony is that the discoveries were made by a Democratic senator, not a Republican one.
Another fun fact: Frank Church represented the state of Idaho. Idaho! My, how things have changed.
Final thoughts
Well, this isn’t a story about Operation Mockingbird. I ended my investigations there, assuming the only way to dig deeper into my Uber driver’s understanding of it would require me to visit parts of the web I didn’t want to see.
But it gave me a glimpse into what Americans who are concerned about our immediate future are up against.
We all know that conspiracy theories have gone mainstream, but there are nests of wild ones I’ve never heard of buried all over the internet.
I tried my best with Uber Driver Number One. Getting into a hostile conflict with him wouldn’t have helped at all. Maybe, just maybe, when the Epstein Files finally see the light of day, and they will, my driver will remember what I had to say, because he said he really appreciated talking to me, and wished me well, as I did for him.
Notes
Some of this story was embellished for entertainment purposes, mostly my exit from the large black Expedition.
Sal’s Crematorium is fictional. Calling them to arrange for your cranky granddad’s funeral will probably lead you into a conversation with a shady lawyer.
Have you read my fictional short story about a white dude who wakes up in a woke America? You really should. No red hatters were harmed in its creation, development, or writing:
Thanks for reading!
Or…
Footnotes
Pintavorn, Trisha, and Trisha Pintavorn. 2025. “50 Outstanding Black-Owned Restaurants in Atlanta.” Best Places to Eat in Atlanta, GA | Atlanta Eats. February 2025. https://www.atlantaeats.com/blog/50-black-owned-restaurants-in-atlanta/.
Some things are just not designed for profit-taking. Obvious example: People hate toll roads. And for-profit healthcare is a uniquely American and insidious concept.
to, Contributors. 2007. “American Wiretapping Operation.” Wikipedia.org. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. June 29, 2007. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mockingbird.
Contributors. 2004. “Committee Investigating Governmental Abuses in the U.S. Intelligence Community.” Wikipedia.org. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. December 7, 2004. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee.
“…because even though I’m not supposed to, I profile people, especially old white guys…”. I’m right there with you, bro.
And I too get junk mail and spam emails from cremation services and cemeteries. And who knew you could buy from Costco online your very own coffin? I’m waiting for a floor model in the warehouse. Just need to crawl in and try it out for size. Maybe take a nap.
And I do remember Sen. Frank Church (D-ID). The scary thing is COINTELPRO was practiced all the way down to the local level by state and local governments.
near as I can tell, the reference to Mockingbird is a revival of a conspiracy theory that the CIA is into everything and the media is keeping it under wraps. I saw a reference to Tulsi Gabbard promoting it, but didn't follow up because anything Tulsi does or says is a waste of time.