HotVines

People have opinions. There’s a commonly used simile floating around in our vernacular comparing opinions to an anatomical region which readily offends both the olfactory sense and cultural sensibility. It’s an interesting and humorous parallel to draw, but one that I don’t think is necessarily true. Personally I would rather listen to an opinion opposing my own delivered with calm and rationale instead of one which I agree with expressed in a sloppy and callous manner. In this case, the messenger is perfectly capable of killing himself by making a poor decision regarding his vehicle.

The worst example of this is car stickers. They used to be called “bumper” stickers but at some point the little buggers turned cancerous and spread to windows, doors, liftgates, tailgates, etc. When I’m trying to get from point A to point B quickly and safely, I don’t need to be wasting cognitive processing on your rolling sheet-metal-and-plastic personal billboard. I don’t care that your fourth grader is a Lions Club honors student at Generic Suburban Elementary. I don’t care that you think Calvin urinating on your favorite NASCAR villains number/competing domestic auto brand/Chevy Chase is an expression of your clever sense of humor. There’s at least a twenty percent chance that you’ve never even been to the “OBX”. I really don’t care who you voted for in the presidential election (which, by the way, is and has been over for months.) And I really, really, really don’t care that you think Barack Obama is a socialist or George W. Bush is the village idiot.

Except, I do care. I like people. I like to know things about them. I like to debate them, face to face, about what they think and feel. It’s fun. Slapping your opinions on your car takes away that element. It’s essentially saying, “Up yours, I’m right and if you disagree then too bad because I’m just going to keep driving.” Come to think of it, this isn’t only stupid it is cowardly. If you truly stand behind your opinion, forget about the stickers and print that thought on a t-shirt.

And wear it.

Lucky for me, I can usually tune out the noise. Every once in a while I’ll see something that makes me wish I could pull over the offending vehicle and debate the driver, but the urge passes quickly. So you’re asking, “Why the huge rant?” Well…

I first saw this sticker a few weeks ago and didn’t think much of it. Surely my eyes rolled for a second and I might have pulled a half scowl and thought something like “yeah that’s going to solve the problem.” The sentiment expressed here is flippant, inhumane, and frighteningly ignorant. However, even though the Triangle is probably the most progressive part of North Carolina, I see similarly backwards notions on cars regularly. So I let it go because hey, I was driving and had somewhere to be.

Fast forward to yesterday and what do I see when I’m walking through the parking lot at Brier Creek Commons? Yep. Same sticker. Same truck.

Completely different context. Literally, I stopped in my tracks. I thought of the graphic images I had seen on TV of Iranians dying in the streets. I thought of the very emotional CNN interview with a young Iranian-American woman whose father was protesting in Tehran and she had not heard from him in several days. I thought of tens of thousands of people who only wanted the same thing that I take for granted every day, and were willing to put their jobs, their health, even their lives on the line for it.

Then I thought about the driver of the truck. I wondered how much thinking he had done before putting on that sticker. I wondered if he had thought about the implications of his sticker in the context of the current situation in Iran. I thought about those throngs of protesters and that the only sentiment the driver of the truck had chosen to explicitly express to the world regarding them was that he would like to wipe them off the face of the Earth. I thought I was going to vomit.

Then I saw something I had missed the first time. Another sticker. “Marine Veteran for McCain.” Some things started to make more sense. Some things started to make less. Maybe he had been in Afghanistan or Iraq, had seen things I can’t begin to imagine, and had become hardened against anything and anyone who happened to be Muslim or Arabic. I still thought the sticker was wrong, even before the Iranian election, but after? He had to have been paying attention to what was happening over there. He had to realize that a lot of the people his sticker said he wanted to “nuke” were just like he was as a Marine: fighting for freedom, democracy, and justice. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it then, and even now I’m having a hard time.

I had hoped to write this first post on HotVines with more vitriol, sarcasm, and wit. I started with the intention of putting the driver of the truck on complete blast, calling him out as ignorant and stupid (as that is sort of the point here.) And I’ll go ahead and say that putting up the sticker in the first place was pretty stupid. However, I have to hold on to some hope that this guy isn’t still driving around with that statement screaming off the back of his truck while being fully aware of what is happening in Iran right now. I have to.

If you’re in or around Brier Creek in Raleigh, NC and you see this guy and can talk to him please do. I know I will. The questions are pretty obvious.

That’s all for today, kids. Welcome to HotVines!

Tags: Contradiction, Ignorance, Iran, Nuke, Opinion