In this oval bumper sticker, an Orwellian all-seeing eye is incorporated into the classic icon of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The message: we may have a new president who ran on hope and change, but under his new administration, Big Brother is Still Watching. The Patriot Act is still in effect. The Military Commissions Act is still in effect. The FISA Amendments Act is still in effect. Barack Obama has committed to continue using tools of warrantless surveillance in contravention of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The election is over. It doesn’t matter whether Barack Obama was on “your team,” or whether you campaigned as part of “his team.” As of his inauguration, he will be the principal executor of a surveillance state. As long as the president and the agents of the president are watching, it is incumbent upon defenders of liberty to watch back.
The oddness of American culture is exposed by our interaction with sporting. Sports teams around the country are celebrated… for perfect winning seasons. Then “we” won with “our” team and it shows the superiority of “us” and “our city” or “our school.” Losing teams in football, baseball, basketball quickly become “them,” and “they” are ignored as not reflecting “our” good city or school. As the Detroit Lions face the planting of a perfect 0-16 season in the firm cement of history this Sunday, how will we react? Will fans turn their faces? Counteract the alienating amnesia of loss by noting the negative exception:
… then reassure the aspirational part of your soul with this mathematical truth: there is no way to go but up.
What is on the collective mind of liberal thinkers as the year 2008 draws to a close? One indication is in the choice of stickers liberals choose to decorate their cars with. We’re a pretty sticky bunch, we lefties, and some ideas (Get Your Laws Off My Body, Not all Who Wander are Lost) are perennial favorites, while others (That One ‘08) are more fleeting. Here are the notions most often sticking in our craws right now (click on any of these bumper stickers to get one for yourself):
1.
Barack 2008, Michele 2016 Bumper Sticker. Looking forward a bit much, are we? You can’t call us a dour bunch anymore, I think.
2.
Go Solar Bumper Sticker. The sun rises on this car decal.
3.
Obama ‘08: Mission Accomplished. Yes, yes, we heard. It’s true if the mission is an election. If the mission is the implementation of progressive policy then we’re not there yet.
4.
Peace, Earth, Love. Aw, how sweet… and literally iconic on this wordless bumper sticker.
5.
Welcome to America: Now Speak Cherokee. A rejoinder to those who suppose that English was invented in the USA.
6.
Peace Sign Earth Bumper Sticker. To care for one, ensure the other.
7.
1-20-09 Car Decal. Celebrating the Inauguration of President Barack Obama pre-emptively. Better than pre-emptive war!
8.
That SUV Makes Your Butt Look Big. Or does it make your head look small?
9.
O: The President Bumper Sticker. It’s not W: The President any longer.
10.
Don’t Let the Door Hit You On the Way Out, George. The extra gloaty bumper sticker of the season.
This bumper sticker is for all the infuriated people of Illinois and America, reading their morning paper with disgust. We’ve just learned about Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s profanity-laced corrupt phone calls, declaring with such scatalogical glee his intention to milk his office for money that newspapers were forced to insert “[expletive deleted]” into their stories on a regular basis.
Enough with the bribery. Enough with the corruption. Enough with the Illinois political machine. So hey, Guv. Yeah, you, Rod Blagojevich. [Expletive Deleted] You!
Consider what the world of the bumper sticker was like before the year 2000, when George W. Bush came to power. Bumper sticker design was for big organizations with big money. Those big organizations failed to respond to the problem of President Bush, however, and so, during Bush’s first term in office, a movement of grassroots bumper sticker design was begun.
That anti-Bush bumper sticker movement crested in early 2005, and then was replaced by the phenomenon of the Barack Obama presidential campaign. That campaign, unlike the campaign against Bush in 2004, was centered around one personality, and so the grassroots bumper sticker approach of individuals expressing themselves creatively was replaced by a flash again of the old way of movement uniformity.
Look out on the road today, and you see the result - a lot of official Obama for President bumper stickers, and not very many independently produced items. As long as Obama holds sway over the imagination of the progressive imagination, that’s how it’s going to be, and ironically, that centralized, personality-focused approach, as effective as it has been at electing Obama himself, may be the undoing of progressive idealism itself.
So we see the emergence of a new, post-election group of bumper stickers, with themes such as thank me, I voted for Obama.
Almost disappeared are the issue bumper stickers, and now, the Obama campaign itself is disappearing, to transition through Inauguration 2009 into the Obama Administration.
What will become of progressive activism? Can the progressive grassroots survive, when the White House accepts responsibility for progressive action itself?
During last night’s debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, McCain dismissively referred to Obama as “That One.” In less than a month, John McCain will learn the peril of dismissing Barack Obama. Until then, show your support for Barack Obama as he runs for President with this bumper sticker:
For the last four years, one of the most popular political slogans in the United States as been against George W. Bush: Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot.
The trick was that Bush wasn’t really from Texas - he was from Connecticut, and was more of a citizen of the state than any place in particular, given the way that he rode his father’s coattails all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Sarah Palin is another story - a genuine village idiot. Everyone knows the village Sarah Palin is from, and that makes the equivalent slogan for Sarah Palin more specific:
The animosity Sarah Palin showed as mayor of Wasilla against the village librarian isn’t just a case of a personal feud or a problem with a few books. At its core, Sarah Palin’s attempt to intimidate the village librarian into censoring books from the Wasilla library is a problem because of the authoritarian and theocratic philosophy it reflects.
The practice of banning books, as Sarah Palin tried to do, is founded upon the idea that books are dangerous things that pollute the minds of the people who read them. Sarah Palin believes that it’s a good idea for the government to control the books that people read, because Sarah Palin believes that the government knows better than the American people what ideas are good for them.
Not just any government, of course. Sarah Palin hates the idea of the constitutional democracy established back in the 1700s at the birth of the USA with the Bill of Rights. Palin can’t stand the idea of the separation of church and state, or the right to a free press.
No, the kind of government that Sarah Palin seeks to lead is a theocratic government, in which fundamentalist Christian religion uses the federal government of the United States to force its beliefs on everyone else. She wants her religious beliefs taught in public school science classes. She wants libraries to ban the reading of books that don’t support her extremist right wing version of Christianity. Like the ayatollahs of Iran, Sarah Palin wants to ban books.
Unfortunately, a large segment of the population of the United States agrees with Sarah Palin. They love the idea of censoring books and other forms of free speech. They believe that it’s the government’s job to protect people from dissent.
Sound the warning that Sarah Palin, who would likely inherit the presidency from an elderly President John McCain, is an authoritarian who has no respect for the foundations of American liberty. Put this bumper sticker on your car to warn against the book burners for Palin.
Sarah Palin and other conservative Republicans mock Barack Obama’s experience as a community organizer, and Sarah Palin extols her identity as a governor. Sarah Palin also extols her credentials as a conservative Christian. Christian, governor, community organizer… isn’t there something in the Bible about all this?
The more you look around, the more communities you’ll find that have been disrespected by John McCain and Sarah Palin. Skateboarders, for example.
While she was mayor of the village of Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin instituted a new law that outlawed the use of skateboards, in-line skates, scooters, and even bicycles in certain areas. Palin also declared that fines would be imposed against offending skaters and bicyclists, and their skates and bikes would be confiscated. (Source: Frontiersman, September 18, 1998)
In these days when big cars and trucks are burning up the planet with their gas guzzling engines, we ought to be encouraging people to find alternative forms of transportation - not punishing them. Sarah Palin and John McCain don’t understand that.
