Bumper Sticker People: a Useless Response

It's pointless to offer them a response, methinks, the Bumper Sticker People. Not because they don't deserve it, but because they don't have the mental capacity for it. If they did, they wouldn't be Bumper Sticker People. They are the ultimate expression of the sociology of our age. Where people in John Adams' and Thomas Jefferson's time expected their ideologies to be expressed in lifetime bodies of written works and three hour extemporaneous speeches, the intellects of today are happy to be represented by half a dozen words glued to the backs of their cars. But for the sake of argument, and not a little amusement, let's explore these one-line ideologies a wee bit deeper.

1) IF YOU AREN'T ANGRY, YOU HAVEN'T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION!

On the surface of it, this seems like a pretty bipartisan statement, right? And yet, is there any real question in your mind that the car bearing this bumper sticker belongs to a hardcore liberal Democrat? Of course there isn't. For some reason, anger is nearly synonymous with liberals. Can anyone really deny that they are generally the most pissed-off, self-righteous and unhappy people one will ever have the misfortune of meeting? I thought us puritanical racist war-mongering conservatives were supposed to be the irate ones, all red in the face and full of spittle-flying diatribes. If that was so, wouldn't we be the ones wearing the bumper stickers claiming how awesome it is to be pissed off all the time about stuff? But I digress.

I wonder if the people who live by that bumper sticker are still angry. After all, the new Democratic president has kept a bunch of the dreaded Patriot Act in place. He's also insulted our greatest allies while reaching out to Iranian and Taliban whackos, miss-spelled the one single word of Russian he emblazoned on a gag gift to Russia's leaders, lied about his knowledge of those AIG bonuses, done more immediate and direct damage to the nation's economy than any president in history, and cannot say more than four coherent words in a row without the assistance of a Teleprompter. These things, I imagine, could be construed as reasons for people to get angry. How much do you want to bet, however, that the Bumper Sticker People are still talking about George Bush when they tell us all how pissed off we should be? Hating George Bush is a nearly orgasmic experience for the BSP. For them, the anger only points to Republicans. The ugly litle secret, though, is that the BSP aren't angry with Republicans because they've been "paying attention" and had their ire righteously stoked, despite what their bumper stickers might say. The ugly secret is that the BSP are angry because they just don't know how NOT to be. They're miserable, unhappy people, and they can't rest until everyone else is miserable too. Republicans just make the easiest targets for their anger. Maybe because most Republicans are actually pretty happy? Hmmm.

2) WAR IS NOT PRO-LIFE!

No? Apparently allowing bad guys to run rampant over the earth, killing at their perverse whims, keeping millions of people imprisoned in poverty and fear, seeking power no matter what the cost to the lives of their minions, THAT's pro-life, right? This bumper sticker is the rallying cry of the pacifist, and we all know how great pacifism is in the global scheme of things. How about a new bumper sticker for pacifism, one that really gets to the nub of the issue: PACIFISM: LETTING THE BAD GUYS WIN SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME!

How is this attitude any different than Ghandhi allowing his wife to die of pneumonia because the pennicilin injection would "commit violence" against her body? How is it any different from the religious nutjobs who won't take their dying children to the hospital because "if God wanted them to live, he'd save them Himself"?

Pure pacifism only makes sense if your worldview is only as small as one single person. It falls apart as soon as you realize that the world is a big, scary place, full of bad guys who will hurt whoever they want if good people with guns don't stop them. Pacifism is the greatest ally of the worst people in the world. After all, what more does a murderer want than for his victims not to fight back?

To the contrary, war is one of the most pro-life activities a human can engage in. It is the choice of those who understand real love, who know that real love sometimes means sacrifice and pain, all in the cause of something far greater and better than any single individual. War has saved millions more lives than it has cost, just like surgery has saved far more blood than it has shed. Anyone who cannot see this is that especially dangerous kind of idiot-- the one whose idiocy is a loaded gun just waiting for a bad guy to pick up.

3) HATE IS NOT A FAMILY VALUE!

What about hating George W. Bush? Is there any doubt that the BSP who proudly proclaims this little ditty avidly teaches his kids that conservatives are the lowest form of human life and that if they don't grow up to vote Democrat they will probably be disowned and turned over to the mainstream-media thought police? Interestingly, most of the conservatives I know (including myself) do not hammer their kids with dogma about how evil Democrats are and how we should all hate this or that people group. The fact is, we want our kids to grow up to think for themselves, to come to their own conclusions based on intellectual pursuits. We will try to lead them in the best directions, but we most assuredly will not simply pound them into hating the people we disagree with. And I'll go a step further: conservatives themselves don't hate the people they disagree with. We don't think Democrats are evil. We just think they are stupid, or misguided, or short-sighted. Generally, we feel sorry for them, and for the people their policies have hobbled.

Of course, there are exceptions. There are a few crazy militia types and racists out there, working to teach their kids to hate those whom they hate. They are the fringe, the loons, the moonbats. The fact of the matter, however, is that mainstream hate is taught almost exclusively among the Democratic ranks. For them, hating conservatives and Republicans and George W. Bush and Sarah Palin and Christians and NRA members is more than just a family value, it is an outright virtue.

Example: I had a liberal friend who once pointed me to a news story about a pastor who'd gotten accidentally electrocuted by his microphone while standing in a baptismal tank in front of his entire congregation. She thought this was funny. I, myself, didn't even laugh when Saddam Hussein was executed. It was simply justice, pure and simple-- a dirty, sad job that morality demanded, but not something to celebrate. My liberal friend, who prides herself in being compassionate, caring, and filled with love, thought the accidental public electrocution of a pastor-- whose only sin was believing a philosophy she disdains-- was humorous.

Now ask yourself: who is really teaching hate?

4) TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL!

I really am a little mystified about why this one bothers me so much. Maybe it's that, when I see this bumper sticker on someone's car, the driver is almost always some granola-jockey kid who surely has no children of their own. I have two, myself, and I have to admit that being instructed on child-rearing by a childless BSP raises my ire just a wee bit.

Then again, maybe it is the obnoxiously self righteous implication that any parent needs to be told this. I am trying to imagine a scenario where the sight of this bumper sticker might actually make a positive difference in the mind of a cruddy father. He sees the bumper sticker while screaming at his kids, stops, and thinks to himself, "You know, maybe they're right. This whole 'teaching my kids poorly' thing may not be the best choice after all. Maybe I should do what the bumper sticker tells me to do. I can't imagine why it didn't occur to me before. It seems so obvious in retrospect." Maybe I'm just a cynical bastard, but I'm having a hard time imagining that scenario actually happening. The truth is, ALL parents THINK they are raising their children well. Even the liberal ones who are teaching them hate as a family value. Thus, the only person this bumper sticker really benefits is the childless moron who displays it, since it allows them that one essential thing all liberals need: an excuse to believe they are better than everyone else.

On the other hand, maybe the thing I hate most about this bumper sticker is the unspoken fact that what it really means is this: TEACH YOUR KIDS THE STUFF I WANT THEM TO BELIEVE IN!

In other words, why should the public education system do all the work?

5) IF YOU CAN'T TRUST ME WITH A CHOICE, HOW CAN YOU TRUST ME WITH A BABY?

This is a new one. I saw it for the first time the other day, and I have to admit, when I read it, I was pretty stumped. It's a damn, damn good question.

I thought about it for quite awhile. Here's what I finally came up with. The essential flaw in the axiom is that it creates a false division between the two statements. I don't remember much about algebra, but it seems to me that if you reduced this bumper sticker to its most basic elements, it would look like this: "How can you trust me with X, when you can't trust me with X?" In short, there is no distinction between trusting someone with a choice and trusting them with a baby, when the choice in question is about what they'll do with the baby.

Remember recently when that muslim guy (who, somewhat ironically, started a muslim television station to show Americans that not all muslims were violent) cut off his wife's head because she wanted to divorce him? Let's imagine him with a bumper sticker on his car that reads: IF YOU CAN'T TRUST ME WITH THE CHOICE OF WHETHER OR NOT TO SAW OFF MY WIFE'S HEAD, HOW CAN YOU TRUST ME WITH A WIFE?

To which we might all say, "good question." But you see the problem, yes? You cannot seperate the two concepts. The choice is not distinct from the person the choice is about. The choice IS the person. The only difference between the choice to kill an unborn baby and the choice of a muslim man to kill his wife is that it is illegal for a muslim man to kill his wife.

At least in this country.

So far.

6) SOMEDAY SCHOOLS WILL HAVE ENOUGH MONEY AND THE MILITARY WILL HAVE TO HOLD A BAKE SALE TO BUY MORE BOMBS.

Response: Someday good guys will have finally killed all the bad guys and obnoxious self righteous twits will have to go back to writing shampoo jingles instead of oversimplistic bumper stickers.

7) INSTEAD OF WAR INVEST IN PEOPLE!

This one is sort of a cop-out, because if we don’t wage war against the bad guys, they’ll probably kill most the people the bumper sticker claims to want to invest in. This, in fact, is the perfect picture of liberal compassion in action

IN CONCLUSION: I suspect that the bumper sticker is by far the most popular form of expression of those with a more liberal bent, since it allows them to feel smart without the burden of actually thinking.

I've never put a bumper sticker on my car, mainly because my ideologies are bigger than a four by twelve inch piece of vinyl. Further, I can defend them in great detail, without a Teleprompter. I don't often get into those kinds of discussions, however, because those of opposing viewpoints get irrational and even occasionally violent about it. They are insulted, offended and infuriated by the idea that anyone would expect them to have a logical defense to their bumper stickers. We live in a sound-byte culture, perfectly suited to the simplistic philosophies of the Bumper Sticker People. Not only would one of our nation's founder's extemporanneous speeches bore them to death within ninety seconds, the typical liberal of today wouldn't even have the capacity to understand it, much less debate it. This is not an insult, just an observation. Maybe I could sum it up with a bumper sticker of my own: "Those who can think, do. Those who can't, use bumper stickers".

Or to quote one more bumper sticker I recently observed: "I THINK, THEREFORE I VOTE CONSERVATIVE."