Can I talk to you for five minutes about liberal bumper stickers?  Actually, I just want to talk about one.  I’ve only asked for five minutes of your time so I’ll have to save “Not my President”, “Meat is Murder”, and “The blood of New Orleans is on Republican hands” for another day.  I’m going to give up my ranting rights with those stickers to talk about another one that is more infectious than all other liberal stickers combined (probably because it has lots of pictures and only one word).  Indeed, the only thing liberals enjoy putting on their cars more than this sticker is a Subaru logo and Oregon plates.

I’m sure you’ve seen this sticker.  It was probably plastered to the ass end of a Prius outside a farmer’s market or college book store or abortion clinic in Vermont and you probably didn’t even look twice at it.  Maybe you thought it was clever.  Maybe you were dimly accepting of its message.  Well you were wrong.  It’s not clever, it’s not cute, it’s not creative.  It’s ignorant.  It also happens to be one of the three things a human being can do to make me instantly dislike them and discount everything they say from that point further:

1)      They can talk during an episode of LOST.

2)      They can say (during LOST or at any other time), “You know, George Lopez is actually pretty funny.”

3)      They can put a “Coexist” sticker on the bumper of their car.

coexist

For anyone remotely familiar with my political leanings (i.e. mostly confused but leaning toward conservative), it should come as no surprise that I despise these stickers.  What may surprise you is that the mere sight of a Coexist sticker is enough to induce a rage blackout during which vehicular homicide is given serious consideration.  (Note: The irony of this reversal of the sticker’s message is not lost on me.)

These stickers are intellectual travesties and my hatred of them has little to do with my love of holy wars.  I mean sure, I enjoy some good old-fashioned religious violence as much as the next Boondock Saints fan, but I’m willing to admit that it can occasionally get out of hand (i.e. the World Trade Center attacks, Battlefield Earth, pretty much everything that happened between 1095 and 1291, etc).  My problem with these stickers is that they – like most liberal platitudes – get praised for being “noble” and “inspiring” when what they really are is “inane” and “meaningless”.

These stickers carry the same intellectual legitimacy as a sticker saying “Abolish Mondays” or “Give Dinosaurs a Chance”.  It sounds nice.  It seems like something we could all get behind.  But it means nothing.  It’s like a Lil Wayne album or the Matrix trilogy, it sounds pretty good and it looks compelling, but, upon closer inspection, it doesn’t make any damn sense.  These stickers are pie-in-the-sky liberalism at its worst.  They give liberals a chance to engage in their favorite pastimes like raising awareness, hoping, and holding signs but they are have no grounding in the world most of us call home.

Let’s take a look at the groups depicted in the Coexist sticker.  One (Islam) is unwaveringly committed to the destruction of one of the others (Judaism).  Another (Wicca/Paganism) celebrates and worships all that one of the others (Christianity) considers evil.  A third one (female sign) is biologically wired to destroy all that another (male sign) holds dear.  It’s Ohio State vs. Michigan but with 3,000 years of bad blood behind it.  And now what?  Leaders of these mutually-exclusive congregations are supposed to set aside their dogmas, join hands, and dance around the mosquechurchogogue together because an REI employee from Seattle thought it was a good idea?  Give me a break.

I know I sound uncompassionate and defeatist saying these things, but that’s what happens when you make fun of liberals.  They have the moral high ground.  They love peace, poor people, and puppies and if you oppose them you must hate all those things.  Or, maybe you realize that certain things in the world aren’t going to change.  As long as religions exist there will be religious conflict.  We’re never going to outlaw currency.  Bumper stickers aren’t going to free Tibet.  Music isn’t going to change the world.  And people are going to keep handing Glenn Beck microphones.

Once we establish certain conditions as brute facts of the universe, we can stop wasting our time fighting them and start focusing on the things we can impact.  Like bringing back the McRib or getting Jay Leno off television.  I’ve had to do this in my own life.  I said to myself, “Ok, dinosaurs aren’t coming back. What else is there that could introduce some modicum of fulfillment into your existence?”  It was in this manner that I discovered writing half-assed articles on the internet.

It is time liberals did the same.  I just hope they don’t also discover writing half-assed articles on the internet.  That could be worse.