Post #73, in which I rudely respond to idiotic bumper stickers.

I believe it was my own dear father who used to say, "I pride myself on having a worldview too complicated to fit on a bumper sticker." I always found this quip striking and memorable, suggestive of nuance yet marked by simplicity--exactly what one should look for in a bumper sticker. Not surprisingly, I've adopted this guiding principle of my father's, and back in the days in which I drove and owned cars, my bumpers went proudly unbestickered. Trailing drivers were forced to wonder at the cultural and political beliefs of the enigmatic yet undeniably skilled driver in front of them.

From behind the wheel, I found bumper stickers generally a source of scorn and contempt. Sure, there were clever and amusing ones, stickers which jokingly referenced the size of Einstein's manhood or the inherently evil nature of higher education, but most bore tired political slogans for complex issues--cliched mantras, essentially, that had been chanted so many times all insight had been lost. Regardless of party affiliation, stickers were basically ostentatious presentations of gross over-simplification, resoundingly and blindly embracing one side without acknowledging or even effectively countering the arguments of the other. The purpose of the stickers seemed less about persuasion and more about announcing affiliation.

And all this struck me as inherently ugly and vulgar. I've met plenty of people who incessantly publicize their politics in daily conversation...people who, shortly after a first introduction, give their unsolicited opinion on very serious and controversial matters in which reasonable people can agree to disagree. This behavior is annoyingly snobbish as it suggests the person's company is to be kept exclusive. Such unsolicited political opinions act as a conversational litmus test: they are presented shortly after the exchange of names in order to determine if further association is necessary. Don't agree with my thoughts on, say, abortion? Well, I've no need to speak any further with you.

I typically loathe such people, and I'm certain I'm not the only one who does. It's been said that politics and religion are fairly safe bets for unpleasant conversation topics among strangers, and understandably so. Why, then, do we adorn our cars--the vehicular manifestations of ourselves--with such messages? Traffic, the interplay of automobiles, is basically conversation among strangers all united with a common purpose: to reach a destination. We signal when turning, we let people in our lane (or not), we sound the horn in alert or anger or as an announcement, we cut people off, we pass, we tailgate, etc. I like this conversation the way it is--there's something pure about it. So why the rude interjection of religion and politics? It's not as if anyone's ever been convinced by a bumper sticker, right?

Of the many cultural stereotypes of Japan, "Japanese people = polite" seems to be grounded largely in fact. Nevertheless, I was surprised to note that I've yet to see a bumper sticker. This realization came to me the other day, and I decided to take a bunch of pictures of cars--beautiful cars with shiny bumpers untainted with stale opinions--and use them as blank canvases in which I respond to bumper stickers I still remember from my driving days back in the United States. To make things fair to the original bumper sticker writers, my responses will be in bumper sticker form.

Seeing as how I currently live in the vacuum equivalent of a social life, with no liberal friends to talk to or interact with, I am slowly reverting to my innate conservatism. I don't believe conservative stickers are 100% correct or unassailable by critical thought. They just don't annoy me as much right now. Therefore, I hope no one minds me ruthlessly slaughtering a few cherished slogans of the left.

Any objections?

No?

OK, then ... bumper stickers on the left are authentic stickers I found for sale on the Internet, and stickers on the right are my reply. Click the pictures to enlarge. Enjoy!

Idiotic Bumper Sticker Theme #1: Historical Lament
These stickers can be about anything from Adam & Eve to Renaissance homosexuals & astronomers to Columbus to the settlement of the American (or Australian) continents. Is there anyone alive today who had anything at all to do with these things? Of course not. It's just bitching for the sake of bitching.



Idiotic Bumper Sticker Theme #2: Dippy New-Age Babble

Free Tibet? Why? Because putting vague Hindu imagery on your bumper makes you feel more enlightened than most of the cars on the road? Please. If it said "Free Iraq" you'd be derided by your fellow "progressive" loonies as an ignorant neocon. Other dippy new-age bumper stickers feature silly crap about God being a woman and the driver being a witch or a pagan or some other commitmentless "religion" adopted primarily for shock value. And don't even get me started on those "Eracist" bastards.



Idiotic Bumper Sticker Theme #3: The Noble Teacher Myth

Sad, but true: (a) the majority of the nation's public school teachers are culled from the bottom one-third (in terms of GPA) of college undergraduates; (b) there is zero correlation between teacher salary and student performance; (c) US public school students' performance on standardized tests are laughable in comparison with the rest of the modernized world. And yet we're all supposed to buy into this notion that teachers are there just because they've got big hearts full of love and they're all capable of getting higher-paying jobs elsewhere.

C'mon: they're largely liberal goons intellectually incapable of working anywhere else (outside fast food) and so instead have decided to monkey around in the heads of gullible kids.

Also, I don't want to rip on Public School teachers unfairly. I went to private school, and most of our teachers were morons too unqualified to teach at a public school.



Idiotic Bumper Sticker Theme #4: Raising Awareness of Whatever

I'm amused by the notion that things are so horribly screwed-up today that everyone--every last person--shouldn't meander in awe of the beauties of this planet, but rather stomp through life shrieking at the horror of it all. Y'know, 'cuz that's what enlightened people do.



Idiotic Bumper Sticker Theme #5: Peace = Pleasant and other shocking revelations

I was thinking about it: while brief states of peace are always nice, struggle is what we, as humans, do. We struggle to make money as part of the larger biological struggle to eat, which inevitably initiates a smaller struggle to defecate in the appropriate place. We also struggle to make manifest our wishes and desires, and in social situations this struggle is to get the right people to like us, and the important people to think like us. Some people enjoy this life of struggle, particularly aspects which entail struggling against other humans, while others instead struggle for peaceful relations among everyone. But the fact will always remain that, as long as people struggle for competing and mutually exclusive goals, conflicts of varying degrees of messiness will inevitably evolve. There is no one single correct way to deal with every conflict, and sometimes the conflict is made tangible in ugly ways that aren't pleasant for anyone.

That said, WELCOME TO HUMANITY. IF YOU DON'T LIKE WHAT THE STRUGGLE MIGHT ENTAIL, PERHAPS YOU'LL FIND DEATH MORE PEACEFUL. (hint, hint.)

Starboard bumper sticker courtesy of Cox & Forkum

Idiotic Bumper Sticker Theme #6: Dude ... think for yourself!

Who is the moron who actually believes sporting a bumper sticker instantly makes a person a rebellious maverick? You''ll find a sticker on one in every three or so cars. Furthermore, if I "Question Authority" just because your bumper sticker told me to, isn't your bumper sticker now my authority? And if your bumper sticker is my authority, then what's the point of questioning its message if its message might be determined wrong under my piercing scrutiny and thus rendered unworthy of questioning?

Now I have a headache. Bottom line: this theme is stupid because it assumes the reader is unfamiliar with the concept that forms of authority might be fallible, and it positions the sticker-bearer as some kind of enlightened figure who knows what's valid and what's bullshit.

Know what's bullshit, pal? Your stupid bumper sticker.



Idiotic Bumper Sticker Theme #7: Miscalculated Self-Congratulation

It's tough to admire a braggadocio, particularly when they've wildly overestimated themselves or their accomplishments. This is something that bothers me on both sides of the political spectrum. I think it's moronic when conservatives celebrate their imaginary morally-superior or chosen-by-God status, and I think it's moronic when liberals insist they're better educated, mysteriously enlightened, and ... well ... "progressive". Both sides erroneously think it is they who represent the little person, the poor person, and the oppressed person.

What the ego-maniacs fail to realize is that while it is easy to fashion an imaginary reputation of high esteem for yourself, it's just as easy for others to conceptualize you as precisely the opposite.



Idiotic Bumper Sticker Theme #8: Driver VS Internal Paranoid Fantasies

Your life isn't David and Goliath. There is no "The Man", and even if there were, you certainly aren't "stickin' it to him" with your stupid bumper sticker. With conservatives in charge of the executive branch, liberals seem inordinately predisposed to this theme, as seen below. However, I still remember the moronic "Janet Reno is out to get me" conservatives of the Clinton years.



Idiotic Bumper Sticker Theme #9: It rhymes? Must be true.

Anyone who's had to hang out with education majors knows their annoying predilection toward rhyming maxims. To be perfectly honest--and this goes back to Theme #3--education students are a bunch of fucking morons. And it hurts to say this because, technically, I'm one of them. Here's a few sayings I had to endure from nitwits while getting my M.A.:

• lesson plan model = "Think, Pair, Share"
  
• teacher's 'ideal' classroom presence strategy = "Be the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage."
• Groupwork is Poopwork!
  

OK, the last one I made up myself, but you hopefully understand the astounding idiocy I had to endure on a daily basis. It was like babysitting at retard day camp or something.

I digress. I now hate all simplistic, cutesy, rhymesy slogans. In fact, I'm beginning to think manifestations of this theme have actually been false in nearly every conceivable instance since Ogden Nash wrote, "candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker."

The following picture is an example. I ran out of automobile surface area, but rest assured: I could've written 30 or 40 more bumper stickers pointing out the shocking stupidity of this one rhyming piece of shit.



Idiotic Bumper Sticker Theme #10: I went to school in the short bus, but the DMV gave me a license anyhow!