What's with the liberal infatuation with bumper stickers?

Their ideas/values are simplistic enough to be able to be captured in <7 words?

Here are some conservative ones
Before we start a debate over simplicity.

Republicans, being wealthier, tend to not want to sully their new cars with a lot of bumper stickers.

They make you feel like your the only parent who has a kid who made the honor role.

@fireside Yep, that’s a beauty all right. So am I just suffering from a geographically induced illusion?

Harp, I’m in a real red state and I see the same thing. It’s always lefies that have the whole back of their cars covered. It seems like those lefies are screaming to get pulled over and the righties might just not want the windows broken in their BMWs.

I’m with peyton.

“CHANGE” sure fits better on a bumper sticker than “KEEP THE STATUS QUO”
Or just have the face of St. obama? I will admit, that may better than McCain’s face on there.

but honestly, who wants to be targeted? Liberal folks are dumb to plaster their cars…esp. in red states. The car just screams “Vandalize me, please!”

@Harp – it’s probably more of a demographically effected issue. I see more bumper stickers of both ilks in the inner city or the rural areas than i do in suburbs or metropolitan areas.

I think it boils down to liberal vs. conservative. If you’re conservative, you probalby still subscribe to doing things the way they’re done, the way they should be done, the way they’ve always been done. Which means you keep your car pristine, take pride in ownership, and don’t do something like using it as a billboard to express yourself. Liberals, being by definition, willing to try new things and put themselves out there are going to be more likely to say hey, I can express my individuality this way. Indeed, you see a guy with 3 nipple rings and the cattle brand on his forehead, if you had to guess whether he was a liberal or a conservative…what would you guess. Same question, only this guy has a power haircut, a power suit, a power briefcase and is driving a Lexus, not guaranteed he’s who you think he is, but if you had to guess…lib or conservative? Which guy is more likely to put a bumper sticker on his car? Which one is the picture of expressing himself in a very visual way to the outside world and which one is a picture of button down conformity?

I never saw it as “button down conformity”. I think liberals are more likely to use bumper stickers because liberals are more vocal and take pride in wearing their emotions/beliefs on their sleeve. Conservatives don’t feel this need to project themselves to the world…nor to spend the money on the stickers themselves. It’s a matter of preference.

I personally don’t like bummer stickers. I find that some of them leave a gummy residue that’s very difficult to get off.

To add to dalepetrie’s excellent observations, I would also like to note that liberals come from a protest tradition. Conservatives, especially amongst neo-nazis and anti-choice groups, have also picked up the idea of direct action, but in general, liberals use these tactics much more often.

Papering your car with stickers is a kind of protest statement. A rolling protest statement. Whereever you go, people will know instantly how you stand on things. This is necessary for liberals, because there is so far to go in order to fix our country.

Conservatives don’t use direct action very much, and they have no need to advertise their positions, because things are going their way, and have been for decades.

Of course, some liberals don’t paper their cars for exactly the same reason. I don’t want the attention. I’m not willing to risk being attacked for my point of view. I’m just not that brave. So I’m a secret progressive, arguing from behind the anonymous screen. I don’t think I’m being too cautious. The FBI and police and now the security agency have all suspected liberals from time immemorial. People, even in this country, have been locked up for their views. There are too many, “America: Love it or Leave it” folks out there. I love it, but I sure don’t see things the same way as people who profess that sentiment.

…says the guy with the tattooed bum

Liberals are not scared to express.

I think bumper stickers are like tattoos. The more uptight you are the less likely you are to have them, whether you are left or right politically.

That being said, I am pretty liberal. My car is 12 years old with a few dings, rust spots and a cluttered back seat. I am a Sr citizen too, with my own scars, age spots and junk in my trunk. I would no more put a bumper sticker on my car than tattoo barbed wire around my flabby upper arm.

I live in West Virginia, and see way more right leaning stickers here.(NRA, My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter, Jesus fish, Buy American, It’s Not a Choice it’s a Child, McCain/Palin, etc) However, in cases of the back of the car being full of stickers the messages are usually liberal (Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries, Peace is Patriotic, Hate is not a Family Value, Obama/Biden, etc).

Not all liberals have bumper stickers so maybe. I would bet most dont. Maybe having bumpers stickers isn’t related to political leanings. Maybe there’s some other factor that leads people to get bumper stickers. Maybe the stickers tend to be political because, lets face it, most bumper stickers are political. Maybe people who put stickers on their car just like how it looks.

@bodyhead—I don’t understand why you’d think having bumper stickers is like asking to be pulled over, as far as I know having stickers and lawlessness are unrelated activities.

Old cars. That’s what leads to bumper stickers. You don’t care, any more, what your wheels look like.

@fundevogel, Having the back of your car plastered in bumper stickers is totally asking to be pulled over.

Just one example, at two in the morning you see two cars with tail lights out. Would you pull over the car with 25 bumper stickers or the one zero bumper stickers. Otherwise, both cars are clean and the paint jobs are in good shape.

If I was a cop, I’d pull over the one that screams I NEED ATTENTION. If you need attention that way, what other way do you need attention. Driving drunk? Doing drugs?

Free expression isn’t illegal but it does make you stand out in a crowd. That’s good or bad considering what else you do.

If you are at a music festival and everyone is in a nice suit except you. You will stand out. Even if everyone is smoking pot, you will get arrested if you are wearing a sweatshirt and have green dreadlocks.

It’s not right but that’s the way it is.

For the record I know a couple of people who have covered the back of their cars with bumper stickers. Yea, they were all drug users. (Maybe only occasional users but in any case they sometimes drove with drugs in the car).

@bodyhead—Um, I’d pull over both cars with tail lights out, cause that would be my job, it’s the same job regardless of the car. If I don’t I’m only doing part of my job aren’t I?

fundevogel, I don’t really care if you believe me or not. Plastering the back of your car with bumper stickers invites the cops into your life.

I have a hard time believing that on your first day on the job (as it would be), you would pull over two cars at once with your one car. If you try to pull them both over, they both get away and you are there flustered and pissed off and they both get away. You’re doing about as good a job as you would be sleeping on the side of the road.

Not to mention two cars is twice the paperwork and one of those cars is much more likely to have illegal substance in it.

*edit: Maybe I wasn’t clear. You see both of these cars at the same time. Pulling one over lets the other get away. You can argue semantics all you want but it doesn’t change my point of view. It’s great to be different until you break the smallest little law (which every single person I know does including my own good Christian mother).

I think the big problem is you’re both right in what you are saying. @fundevogel, it’s true that what is “right” would be for everyone to respect everyone else’s right to free expression…there is no reason a cop should single out one lawbreaker from another. But this pre-assumes that all cops do their jobs as they are supposed to. @bodyhead, it’s certainly true that the police will be more suspicious of certain activity, it doesn’t necessarily mean they will be making the “right” decision.

@dalepetrie – I agree, in my past experience, police are far more likely to pull someone over if their friends are hanging off the roof than not. I didn’t really think that it was fair for them to stop me instead of the other car that had passed but they must have had their reasons.

I agree dale. I never said it was right. I’m just saying that if you look different from the status quo or are doing something different from the status quo, you will be singled out by the cops. It sucks. It’s wrong. But in their experience it’s statisticly accurate (or at least it seems to be).

@bodyhead – yeah, I didn’t realize you meant both at once. But I’m basically in agreement with Dalepetrie. I might be idealistic, but I still want to hold what maybe less than perfect cops up to a fair standard.

I think I’ll have to apply for a job as a diplomat and use you two as references :)

Its because liberals are dependent on liberalism for their identity.

Its the same reason why early hybrids that looked just like their non hybrid counterparts havent been successful.

The bumpersticker that reads: ‘War Is Not The Answer’ is the perfect example:

Its purpose is not to inform us as to what the answer is, its purpose is to identify the driver as the smug, self righteous, supporter of pacifism for its own sake he is.

@Noel_S_Leitmotiv – more good examples of the purpose of a bumper sticker being to identify the driver as a smug, self righteous blowhard…

“Insured by Smith and Wesson”
“These Colors Don’t Run”
“Nobama”
“Guns Don’t Kill People…Abortion Clinics Kill People”

Anyway, good way to try to paint all liberals with the same brush “Its because liberals are dependent on liberalism for their identity.” But of course it reveals your own ignorance about liberalism and your own self righteous, smug attitude.

And going after people who prefer peace to war? Well, that’s just sad.

@dalepetrie: Lets go back to the OP

Why do you suppose Harp worded the quesion the way he/ she did?

I suggest its becuase ‘chat cars’ are more commonly owned by liberals.

Sure, you might find some smug conservative statements out there but they are fewer, IMO because conservateves dont feel they have so much to prove and they are more concerned about whats good for themselves and their fellow man than how their viewed by others.

And ‘going after people who prefer peace to war’ is gross oversimplification and you know it.

@Noel_S_Leitmotiv – in my view, the liberal preponderance for bumper stickers generally only seems to apply to those who would plaster their car with such statements, and then yes, I agree that often there are people who are basically screaming “look at me” because of their personal insecurities. But in terms of one bumper sticker on a car vs. another I see just as many smug self important expressions on the left as on the right. Bottom line is you did not say “some” liberals are dependent on liberalism for their identity, you made an ignorant blanket statement.

And you seem to be saying via your turning around my ‘prefer peace to war’ into ‘prefer war to peace’ that I was making a statement that this is the conservative preference. In fact, I was doing nothing of the kind, but I think you are making a blanket assumption (and remember, when you ass/u/me…well you get the picture) that the ONLY people who would like to see an end to war enough to express that opinion on their bumpers would be liberals.

By your standard, someone who says “war is not the answer” on their bumper sticker is a) automatically assumed to be a liberal who looks to liberalism for his own self identity (sheesh, talk about a gross oversimplification), and b) shows himself to be smug and self-gratifying by not proposing an alternative. What, on a fucking BUMPER? You think the answer to ending all the world’s conflicts is simple enough to express in 2 lines of text?

In my view, pointing out that war is not the answer (and NO, I do NOT have that bumper sticker) is simply pointing out that perhaps there are other ways. Maybe not giving you a highly distilled version of their answer, something along the lines of “DIPLOMACY NOW” will make you think, gee, maybe there IS another way, let’s think about this problem and come up with something say too substantive to put on a bumper sticker.

I find your dismissal and the motivations you ascribe to a blanket group of people to be arrogant and ignorant.

okay