You lie!

What’s with the bumper stickers in St. Louis? There are hundreds of cars in St. Louis with “OBAMA BIDEN” stickers jauntily displayed across the rear end. I have not, however, seen one single MCCAIN PALIN sticker! Help me out. I’m from Canada, where we’ve got different names for our political parties, so I’m not always clear on how things work here. Actually, I’m not always clear on how things work up there either! There are secret alliances and lots posturing in the Great White North, too!

Also, I’ve been living in Belgium, where there are multiple levels of government for which a myriad of parties with cryptic names jostle for their chance to reign at the federal, regional, local, language, and European parliament level. Those tired election signs get posted over and over again. Last round, someone who couldn’t take it any more stuck fluffy red clown noses on every single poster boy and girl on Avenue Louise! My kids loved that!

So, is it not Republican to use bumper stickers? Or is it more subtle than that? I have seen a few “NO-BAMA” stickers. Are those Hilary fans, or McCain supporters? Apparently the latest bumper sticker to hit the streets is, “You lie!” echoing US Congressman Joe Wilson’s accusation during President Obama’s health-care speech to a joint session of Congress. I guess “You lie!” stickers sort of indicate your political affiliation, don’t they?

But bumper stickers don’t have to be political. My father had several consecutive years of Canadian Automobile Association (like AAA) stickers neatly lined up across the back window of his wood-paneled station wagon when I was a kid. If you had car trouble, that sticker proved to the tow truck driver that you, in fact, had paid the insurance and could have a free tow or battery boost. Those bumper stickers said to the world: “Look at me. I planned ahead.” Looking back, I wonder if they were a bit smug. I mean, they all but taunted those other drivers who would see those stickers and silently chastise themselves for forgetting to buy roadside insurance. What if the other driver got a big of envy-style road rage?

Road rage is the reason I’d never put a bumper sticker on my car. Right now, the only thing I’d even want to put on is, “Ha! I’m getting 40 miles to the gallon”. You see, I’m driving this fabulous little Honda hybrid that gets incredible mileage. But the fear of road rage stops me. I figure the SUV drivers (including my husband) would mow me down for my smugness. With the mood of the nation being what it is right now, they’d back up and mow me down again for not buying a domestic car. Then they’d back up and mow me down again for good measure. I saw a “Stop Road Rage” sticker the other day – maybe that’s the one I need.

Rage at publicly stated opinion is not just expressed on the road. I recently learned that one of my neighbours is famous for fighting the local city for the right to post an anti-war sign in the front yard during a recent war. That was illegal here until this neighbour won in the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s ruling that the city’s ordinance against clutter violated the resident’s right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution!

As far as I know, we can post signs in Canada. In fact, my husband’s mother was an avid politician in a small, Canadian, rural town where if you lean right, you’re called blue and if you lean left, you’re called red. Well, she was caught trying to steal an opposition sign from a neighbour’s front yard in the small town where they lived. Not realizing that his mother was the culprit, my husband – then ten years old – and his best friend (whose parents’ signs were being stolen) had rigged a trap with criss-crossed lines of Christmas lights and a jack-in-the-box.

Well, what about funny bumper stickers that do not cause road rage? I like the encouraging ones that say, “Have a great day!” and happy ones that announce, “Baby on Board!” My daughter loves the one that says, “Never trust a dog with your food”. I like the ones advertising that the driver is a sponsoring friend of penguins or whales or eagles, although I daresay that’s political too. I mean, I’ve never seen one that says, “Keep drilling, there are other planets in the universe!”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about peace and whether hatred is bred or learned. So, I think I’d vote for a bumper sticker that says “One World”. How about you?