Bumper Sticker Psychics!

As of today - as far as I know, I still write a regular column for the Plymouth Bulletin, one of several hundred allegedly local papers owned by Gatehouse Media. I say as far as I know, because I do this freelance - and I never hear word one from the management, except when they say they can't afford to give me a raise. Why do I keep writing it then? Well, because I need an outlet, because I think I have something to say, and to be part of a kind of virtual neighborhood of writers, bloggers, anonymous commentators, and street people. The writing community is a kind of Star Wars bar scene, these days at least, and I need a place to hang. Which is my usual circuitous way of getting to my subject - the aforementioned Bumper Sticker Psychics.... There was a Letter to the Editor recently, from one Prudence Darigan, which suggested that so-called liberals were flocking to bumper sticker stores (?) in the wake of Obama's victory, to acquire bumper stickers with messages that - distilled down to their core, were gloating over the victory, and salivating at the prospect of Bush run out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered, etcetera, etcetera. Now, while I don't disagree with the general notion that many people hope to see Bush pay in some legal fashion, for the crimes of his administration, I would argue that instead of gloating, liberals are actually behaving in a quite civil, and constructive manner. I think perhaps that Prudence, and those of her ilk, don't realize the extent of their pain and so are, instead, mis-perceiving the behavior of others. What does this have to do with our work-in-progress, our manifesto? Not much - except perhaps, to highlight again the importance of dispelling these long-held myths about liberals, and to suggest that door to door and the like, is the best way to accomplish that. The people that went to NH, and Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, surely had amongst them, rabid and radical leftists - but were in the majority comprised of intelligent, committed, reasonable people. In my experience anger is not well suited to canvassing, or phone banking, or any of the real grassroots activities. Anger perhaps is a good raw material for poster making, or bumper sticking conceptualization... but to go knocking on stranger's doors you have to have a base of idealism, a positive outlook, and a long-term commitment to achieving specific political ends, like health care, and peace, and social justice in general. Prudence may think she can 'read' the bumper stickers of the cars in front of her, but again I think it more likely that she is projecting her own disappointment.