Outrageous Bumper Sticker.
Tonight, while I was driving, I saw a bumper sticker that absolutely infuriated me. It read:
“RESIST! Obama is not MY president.”
Okay, I don’t even know where to begin with this. Clearly the person is really conservative and is not really happy with the outcome of the November 2008 election. I get that. My empathy is driven by having felt very similarly when President Bush was re-elected in 2004.
What gets me, though, is that this clearly uber-conservative person is probably one of the people who would have shaken their head in disgust and called me “unpatriotic” for criticizing Bush—just 8 short months ago. The difference between us, however, is that I never tried to claim that Bush was not my president. He was, very clearly, my president. I may not have been happy about the situation, but I accepted it because 51 percent of America thought that he would be the better choice in 2004—and that’s how democracy works.
And maybe this person was not one of those “you are unpatriotic for leveling criticism against our president when we are at war” people and instead was a active supporter of free speech (though I find this dubious). But even if this person was a fervent proponent of the first amendment, I find that go so far and say that Obama is not your president is as offensive to America and to our revered democracy as you can get. There are clearly far more productive ways to level your criticism. Get a bumper sticker saying that you are “Anti-tax. Anti-Obama” or “Pro-child. Anti-Obama.” But to go so far as to publicly disavow your president…I just find that pretty offensive to everything that America is supposed to stand for.
But then maybe the person driving the car is not from America and Obama really isn’t his or her president. Maybe.
