Red State Bumpers

In addition to the profusion of BC’04 stickers, American flags, NASCAR emblems, Calvins pissing on various international enemies, Jesus fish, ribbon-shaped magnets, and strange hybrids of the last two (my favorite being a yellow Support the Troops ribbon shaped like a Jesus fish, with the fish’s tail parts turning into American flags), there are lots of interesting bumper stickers out here in red state land.

Mannion recently wrote a post about a truly annoying bumper sticker he’d seen, to which I responded that my all-time most detested bumper sticker is:

WARNING: In case of Rapture, this car will be unmanned.

Every time I see it, it makes me believe in God, just long enough to pray, "Please take them. Please take them all as soon as possible." I’m willing to navigate a few careening, driverless cars for a chance at life on earth without the Rapture Gang.

This morning, I saw one which ranks right up there with the worst, though:

1 cross + 3 nails = 4GVN

“What the fook’s a GVN?” Mr. Shakes asked. He’s a heathen, you know.

“One cross plus three nails equals forgiven,” I explained.

“Wanker,” he muttered, then launched into his usual Yosemite Scot routine (fookin wankin jibbety flibbet haggis and tatties!) when we saw that all four doors of the car were emblazoned with giant American flag stickers.

It’s not that he hates America; he loves it. In fact, he’s prepared to die for it—one of the requisites of immigrating to America is signing your name to an acknowledgement that if there’s a draft, you know you’ll be first in line. But he also comes from an ex-empire, where the dangers, the foolhardiness, of blind nationalism and viewing your country as infallible, haven't been forgotten. And the whole intertwining of church and state didn’t always work out so well for them, either. (Just ask Lady Jane.)

You don't have to be from Britain to know these things, of course—only a student of history, and not a particularly fervent one, at that. But even history is political these days; not a half hour after seeing my new favorite bumper sticker, I heard a Republican State Senator on some rightwing radio morning chat show talking about how he switched his major from history to accounting at university because he realized that East Coast history professors wouldn’t make room for the views of a Midwestern boy. I wondered what that meant, exactly. I wondered if perhaps he had views like one of my high school history teachers, who was, if you can believe it, a slavery apologist. (We loathed him thoroughly.) Maybe the GOP-er on the radio wasn’t that bad…or maybe he was worse. He didn’t say. He just explained that the liberal view of history was what turned him away from the field.

The thing about red state bumpers is that they remind me how many people either have a skewed view of history or are willing to reject its lessons, and recklessly drive headlong into making the same mistakes others have made. I try to stay away from these bumpers as much as possible, lest I inadvertently follow them down the same perilous road…or just in case the Rapture comes during rush hour.