I’ve never had a bumper sticker on my car. Never really had anything I felt all that strongly about, maybe.
Or maybe I just never had anything I felt really strongly about that I thought could be captured on a bumper sticker. Or that anything that could be captured on a bumper sticker, and widely understood, necessarily had to be so simple a thing as to be trivial, even trite – and therefore insufficiently descriptive. So simple as to almost be insulting to the depth of complexity in thought and experience we grant ourselves free of charge. Even as we all too often tend to ascribe ill motive and bad faith to those we do not know well, but with whom we disagree on some topic. Believing as we do, that our complexity affords us some degree of authenticity in which The Other, acting as he is in manifest bad faith (for daring to disagree with us) cannot share.
Disagreeing as he does on some topic, like the one you can occasionally see on a bumper sticker.
I have mentioned this before, I think. This encapsulation of the One True Thing that we must – WE MUST! – permanently affix to our cars. As a way of building coalitions of like minded souls perhaps.
Perhaps.
But much more often, it seems to me, these bumper stickers are designed not to build alliances with people whom, for the most part, avoiding highway accidents, we will never really meet, but rather those whom we pass, or who pass us, anonymously. You cannot build comradeship with someone you will never meet.
But you can – you can – seek to offend those who would disagree with you on that One True Thing you hold so dear. And you can do so anonymously, without any need to further explain or defend your point of view, without any fear of rebuttal or disgrace. How pleasant it must be to hold an unpopular opinion, and be able to rub into the faces of the brain-dead sheeple, and never have to worry about getting shaken down for your lunch money after, like in high school. What a secret, humid pleasure, what private, moist, furtive joy…
You will want to know at this point what has me going on in such a manner. Briefly, thus: Returning home today from the salt mines, I saw one of those hybrid cars that all of us, gas going at $3.00 to the gallon, are starting to look at thoughtfully. On his rear window, this single message:
“Save a soldier – buy a hybrid.”
Ah.
Do you not see it, gentle reader? Is it not brilliant in its self-satisfied smugness? Is it not entirely complete, a thing of unique, navel-gazing beauty in and of itself? Is anything further required to see all the cherished assumptions facts fall into line?
We did not go to war in Iraq to protect ourselves from WMD’s, or to plant the seed of democracy in the heart of tyrannical darkness, or any of the other 19, mutually supportive reasons given by public men and women in the open debate before the war, or even Just Because. We did it for the OIL!!!
And you, not having yet made the choice – and it is still a choice – to buy a hybrid vehicle, are not only spending too much on gas, gentle reader. You are morally deficient. Because you don’t care about the soldiers!
I pulled up alongside the hybrid vehicle atop my two-banger, opposed cylinder, 40 mile to the gallon BMW R1150GS motorcycle and looked into the driver’s side glass for a long moment. He didn’t look back at me. Didn’t make eye contact. Didn’t want to acknowledge my existence. I’d already served my role in his little theatre. I could go now.
He’d made his point.
Maybe never a bumpersticker, but the base sticker on your POV may very well make a similar statement to the inbred with the hybrid sentiment so proudly displayed. “The rider atop the Bavarian-bike is but a mindless automaton; a Mars-like cretin with unquenched blood-lust”. I know of what I speak having, in the past, been the target of some of the fairer sex’s glares, apparently the result of my Tailhook Association license plate frame. I seek solace in the fact that those damsels senior enough to remember the “witch hunt” are for the most part bobbing in the wake.
Well said, Lex.
It seems (to me) the Left, and the enviro-whacko subset thereof, never seem to run out of ways to irritate me. And yeah, I tend to take that stuff personally.Bumper stickers: I only recently scraped my “Bush-Cheney” sticker off the rear window, replacing it with one of these.
And you wouldn’t believe how many times I was flipped off while driving with the Bush sticker on the car. Especially in Santa Fe.
Darn. I thought I closed that tag. And the comment should have said “…never seem to run out of ways.”
Gomen.
“inbred with the hybrid” –COOL!
Double mocha capa cinna latte –Check
All-Whine All the Time NPR Radio –Check
“FREE TIBET” adhesive sentiment –Check
Morally superior chin elevation–Check
/and it gets 45 self-delusions to the gallon too…
Liberals love dead Americans.
Way back in the day (’81), I had a bumper sticker that said “Born Again Capitalist” – I was 19; it was hilarious, especially on my ’73 Cougar Convertible, with its V8, 351 Cleveland engine and dual exhausts…guess that would be even funnier if I still had the car today.
No bumper stickers now; just a discreet American Flag in the back window of each car. I almost feel sorry for those poor people who put “Gore” or “Kerry” stickers on their cars, and haven’t taken them off yet. Almost…
Lex says: “so simple a thing as to be trivial, even trite”
Worth less than the sum of its parts.
We all know that we have stood in the face of all those that would deny that weenie the right to put such tripe on his weenie car.
The we are the smug ones after all.
BTW, nice bike. Mine’s a R95 much suited to the twisty roads of my abode.
Lex, I keep tellin ya what that right boot is for while 2 wheelin’…………
Of course if’n you’re too sore from that split you did sword-fightin…
B2
I’ve got a “my other car is an F-8 Crusader” license plate frame and 2 ‘Sader stickers (both as a tribute to my uncle) and a POW/MIA sticker on my ’05 Mustang (Yeah baby!!!). Of course because I’m from Chicago the necessary White Sox sticker.
When I see a car with a lib sticker I make sure to drive slowly in front of them until I know they see it…then sprint away usually waving.
Libs I see give me dirty looks with these stickers (maybe they are Cubs fans).
God I love being a war monger!!!
I need to take the Bush/Cheney stickers off my vehicles, but then I see a car with a Kerry/Edwards sticker still on it and think, maybe another month. But thats just because I think my stickers probably irritate some people.
Hey, it’s a hobby.
Are you sure it’s just a hobby, Jon?
Jonboy got me thinking about ‘that’ variety of bumper sticker.
Somebody did try to peel off my “Bush-Cheney 2000″ (yep-that old) sticker off’n my 1991 Izuzu in the parking lot of a hunting area last winter. Some of them libs sure do live dangerously!
BTW, the “Sink Kerry Swiftly” sticker rotted off on its own!
B2
I think stickers are fairly idiotic, these days. Concur with Lex’s sentiments.
However, I did have one on my truck in ’84.
“I’d rather be killing Communists in Central America” Very un P.C.
I got more than a few thumbs up, on the road, and a mention in the S.F. Chronicle. (I was stationed in Alameda!)
I love dawgin’ out the Left!
The only bumper sticker I’ve had on my car(s) in YEARS (maybe ever, now that I think about it), is on there now. It says “You can’t support the troops if you don’t support the mission.”
I bought one for me, one for my brother, and one for my Mom. We all proudly display them.
I think it’s illustrative of just how deep the political divide is in this country today that you still see bumper stickers from the 2000 and 2004 elections on cars. Maybe it’s just because I live in Washington that I see more of them, but I still see a lot in the other places I go to on my travels. I don’t think it’s healthy.
When I was a kid, my dad used to go out on the Saturday morning after Election Day and scrape off all the political bumper stickers on his car. (And he had a lot, too, used to cover both front and rear bumpers with the things.) The signs in the yard came down, the buttons went in his dresser drawer, and the shredded stickers went in the trash. And that was it as far as political displays until the next election rolled around. Win or lose.
Well Ted I’ll tell ya, someone put that sticker on my car over six years ago during that hot period back in early Nov 99. Since then, I’ve had more important things to do than take it off.
But I’ll take it off myself. Know what I mean?
No one has ever shot me the bird that I can figure, for having it either, but of course, I’m 60 miles from the beltway or maybe it’s that gleam in my eye…..
b2
I saw one the other day that made me giggle a little bit. Some Ford 350 super whathaveyou had foot-high white block letters on the back window of the cab that read “RAM IN THE BUSH”.
By the way, does anyone else find it amusing that lex saying: “. . .anything that could be captured on a bumper sticker, and widely understood, necessarily had to be so simple a thing as to be trivial, even trite – and therefore insufficiently descriptive.” spurs discussion of all the bumper stickers people have affixed to their cars?
(I have one sticker on the rear window of my stylish but sensible honda civic with the name and mascot of my alma mater)
Back about ten years or so, in rural New Hampshire, I was following a pick-up truck that had a camper set in the bed. A woman was driving. Like the truck she had some miles on her and looked a little rough around the edges.(I could see her face in the side mirror) The back of the camper was covered with stickers of all persuasions…. my all time favorite simply said ” WHADDYA MEAN,I DON’T KNOW JACK S..T, I’M MARRIED TO HIM !!”. Says it all and still brings a smile to this old dogs face, Best
The only stickers I felt were appropriate (agreeing with much of Lex’s sentiments) were my unit logos – 1st MARDIV, 11th & 15th MEU SOC, and of course, the omnipresent round, silver UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS eagle, globe and anchor. Which kinda says a lot, in its own way.
http://www.fototime.com/7C46A8DDBAEB02D/standard.jpg
I will own up to “Mother of a Marine: toughest job in the Corps” and a quote from JRR Tolkein (I was a fan LONG before the movie fuss) “Not all those who wander are lost”.
Though I think the gate guard at the back gate of Lejeune weekend before last would grin at that because, at the point he met me, lost I certainly was. I had pulled over, of course, for Taps and missed my turn to the beach area totally. Nothing like driving half an hour out of your way on the way to dinner ::headdesk::
The daughter of a friend has this on her college car:
“Beware of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.”
[...] Lex had some interesting thoughts about bumper stickers… Now Lex is a subtle soul, well versed in the ways of diplomacy and civility… [...]