The Canadian wildfires are filling the skies with smoke and my evening’s open mic in Ellicott City has actually been canceled due to how bad the air quality is, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that happening. Not so long ago we were all chased out doors by particulates from one another, now we’re chased indoors by by particulates from the sky. It seems Canada has finally betrayed us, and we can feel it in the backs of our throats and in the itching of our eyes.
Lots of conversations this morning. Lots to think about as we head home.
As we travel once again, playing the purple states, playing small towns and big towns and staying in them. I’m reminded again at how closed our minds have become, so afraid of one another. The Trump sign here that means to many of my friends that you’re probably a racist gun owner who relies on Medicare while thinking no-one should pay taxes. The BLM sign that means to others that you’re a socialist anarchist in favour of mobs shooting police offices and the removal of penises from school kids.
No really, not everyone who flies any given flag is an extremist.
Sigh. Wishing We could just get over it. Understand context. Read more than a bumper sticker.
When you declare yourself so hard-edged, what do you think the end game is? You’re not changing anyone’s minds… so do you forget anyone doesn’t think like you? Do you not care? What’s the plan? Undermine them in the next election and not care about the rage? Secession? It might be a LOT easier if the states just parted ways, but sheesh, that’s not really what we fought for.
It just makes me sad. Don’t jump to conclusions and maybe think about what you’re declaring to others with your dollar fifty bumper sticker.
In any case – it’s been an excellent trip, but the last 72 hours have been exhausting. 96 hours ago we were in Oklahoma, and we were thinking a LOT about the subtle differences in bumper stickers. Our friend Grover (who Lives in Grove) has a very interesting gun sticker that’s worth thinking twice about that was very HIM (and honestly, probably pretty similar in thinking to a lot of right wing friends) – an ex-marine, I guess it’s not surprising he’s got a sticker on his truck with an AR-15 on it – but the slogan’s “You give peace a chance, and I’ll cover you if it doesn’t work out”.
There’s a lot to unpack there. Reality, practicality, the desire to protect, acknowledgement that we’re different. I’m probably reading into it a lot more than Grover thought about it when he nabbed it. But it’s a good sticker. And it’s got an AR-15 on it so I feel like I know EXACTLY how most people would respond instinctively to it, but it’s worth thinking twice about. Most people’s bumperstickers are completely mindless and tell you just one thing from which you extrapolate a LOT. I kinda really, really like that sticker the more I think too much about it.
*pause*
I took a break from my rant to listen to the second half of the Broadway production of Into The Woods with Bernadette Peters. Just so you know. During that entire time (about three quarters of our drive home from Erie, PA) I’d kept my eyes peeled for bumper stickers since while we’d been talking about it earlier Chris would point out that sign or this one, and I had to check myself and remind BOTH of us of how many we’d passed that DIDN’T have any such signage. And so I was going to count how many cars I saw between overtly pointed stickers while on the highway today, just to pass the time, and as of now (just turned left on Breezewood) my non-scientific experiment’s truly been thwarted – we haven’t passed or been passed by a SINGLE bumpersticker that matched my requirements during the entire drive so I never started counting.
But I guess that’s a result too.