Friday, September 07, 2007

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Stay awake!

Bumper sticker: Wake me when it's over!I saw a bumper sticker the other day, an anti-Bush one that I’m sure I’ve seen before. It’s one that bothers me, despite its being anti-Bush; there’s an image of it to the right.

It’s meant to be funny, but I don’t find its message funny. It’s apathetic. It conveys a message of boredom, rather than of outrage. It rejects any responsibility to address what’s happening and to work to change it. “This sucks; I’m just gonna sleep it out, man.” Maybe those who fly that flag have smoked too much weed and are over-mellow. Mellow is good in the right situations.

This isn’t one of them.

Now, one could be excused for having given up hope. I could understand if the message was, “I’ve shaken that tree, and the fruit isn’t coming down. There’s nothing left to do but wait it out.” I don’t agree: I think we have to keep working on it. But I understand those who are weary of trying.

This sticker is too much a message that the one displaying it doesn’t care, rather than that he has tried and given up. Come on, folks: you have to care.

And so this seems the time to throw in another plug for the September 15th march in Washington, DC. Stay awake. Make your presence known. Do something about it. If you try to sleep through it, it won’t work; the war won’t magically end on 20 January, 2009. And there’ll always be another W.

3 comments:

Thomas J. Brown said...

Good point. Once they know we've given up, we're ultra-screwed. We need to keep that fight going until the bitter end.

I think part of the problem is the seeming futility of it all. If Bush is impeached, Cheney takes over. Is that really better?

What really gets me are those videos of Bush from just a couple of decades ago. He's very well-spoken and seems quite confident. Now he's a bumbling idiot who immediately goes on the defensive, even before anyone asks the tough questions.

It's truly disheartening.

Barry Leiba said...

It's pretty clear that The Dick is already pulling many of the strings. In any case, impeachment won't get us a better president, but that's not the point. Impeachment will make the statement that we won't tolerate this behaviour. Without it, there's nothing to stop the next president from thinking that s/he can do what s/he likes with the office, the truth, the law, the constitution, the....

The Ridger, FCD said...

It seems to me to be more of a reference to having a nightmare rather than boredom. But I'd like it better if the message was to wake up now!

Also, there's no reason we can't impeach Cheney as soon as he makes a move.