What’s on Your Car’s Bumper?
Dents? Scratches? Or a message?
Bumper stickers. The ultimate in concise messaging. And a uniquely American form of self-expression. The rest of the world is much too discreet and polite to plaster their political thoughts where their fellow citizens see them every day.
Two bumper stickers stand out for me. They remain my favorites after seven decades on this planet (this time around).
Let’s go in reverse order. This is my No. 2 favorite, very close to my all-round winner.
During the 1974 congressional hearings in the political scandal known as Watergate, I had a part-time summer job between college semesters and thus was able to watch some of the televised sessions.
Never saw anything like it before or since. It was especially heartening to me. My first time voting was the 1972 presidential elections, and I was one of maybe three people in the country who marked her ballot for George McGovern.
I had, in fact, an unbroken record of voting for the losing presidential candidate until 1992, when I picked Bill Clinton and almost immediately experienced buyer’s remorse.
But I digress. As the Watergate hearings went on and the Washington Post published leak after embarrassing leak, President Richard Nixon was feeling the heat. Special prosecutor Archibald Cox was about to issue of subpoena for the newly revealed Oval Office tapes Nixon had been recording in secret.
Off with his damned head!
Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to sack Cox. Richardson resigned instead. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus quit, too.
Finally, Solicitor General Robert Bork did the sacking, and the nation was outraged. How quaint. Nixon’s law-breaking seems strictly amateur through the lens of today’s wholesale Trump administration corruption.
On that inspiring thought, on to my all-time No. 1 bumper sticker:
During my early college days, I considered majoring in philosophy. One introductory semester of the subject cured me of that foolish notion. I opted for history, the second most useless major in the business world.
(In my later college years, one of my dorm mates who did major in philosophy would wander the halls, muttering about Spinoza, dark circles from lack of sleep under her eyes. Good call, Candace Lynn.)
Not only did I cleverly avoid Spinoza, I also missed Friedrich Nietzsche’s garbage about a meaningless universe, a deceased Creator, and the will to power. Of course. It always seems to come back to the question of power. Who has it and who doesn’t.
Hitler, as just one example, took Nieszche’s power and will concepts and implemented them in the most horrific manner possible. The current occupant of the White House is certainly doing his damnedest to get more power than he legally or morally is entitled to have. Will we let him get away with it? The jury is still out on that question.
Power, where it truly arises and truly belongs, is one of the fundamental spiritual lessons of living on earth. As created souls, we are all wrestling with our profound sense of lack of power.
It is possible to reclaim our personal power, but not if we don’t acknowledge and use the spiritual and emotional parts of our being in the way they were intended to help us.
Finally, honorable mention goes to one of the many hilarious Mad Magazine fold-over back covers.
In 1972, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey bought Esso and changed its name to Exxon Corp. After Nixon was re-elected, on a back inside cover, MM placed a drawing of the White House with a billboard above it.
Fold the page over, and the billboard proclaimed, “Nixxon! But it’s still the same old gas.”
Amen.