Sign Language
By Fled the Asylum
Last week, I stopped by the Harris County Democratic Party outreach office in Midtown Houston to pick up an Obama yard sign. It cost me five bucks. The volunteer who sold it to me said, “Keep an eye on it. They’re disappearing all over town.”
I picked my kids up from daycare that day, and we put it up in the front yard together. “What’s that sign for?” Fleduardo, the three-year-old (four in January) asked.
“It’s our Barack Obama sign, buddy.”
“He’s gonna be our next president?”
“Rocko Bama? Our next president?” Flederick, my two-year-old (three in February…really) asked.
“I hope so, guys.”
I wasn’t going to do the yard sign. I don’t think any amount of design work can address their inherent unattractiveness. However, when I saw the pink McCain-Palin signs springing up around the neighborhood, I couldn’t leave them unanswered. Even Mrs. Asylum — the firewall of my bad taste — was on-board.
I had the sign up for about a day, when our next door neighbor came over. “I saw your sign. I just told my husband, I knew I liked the Asylums for a reason.”
THIS is why we bought the sign. Come on out Democrats. You’re safe. Even in West Houston.
As I drove to work, each morning, I actually considered putting the sign in the house. I figured that after the election, it could join the other tasteful design elements on the walls of my garage — a poster of Churchill holding a tommy gun, looking like a gangster, an inexplicable cardboard box that says “protective underwear.” I looked around at my neighborhood and my quiet street, thought about the folks who have McCain signs up — the guy who owns his own business, the retired couple. We’re neighbors. I know them; they know me. Here, my sign is safe.
We spent this last weekend visiting friends and family in Central Texas and came home Sunday to find our sign missing. I should have known. It might have been my neighbors. It might have been someone driving through. The McCain signs are all still there, though, so I’ve ruled out terrorists who are angered by our freedom as the perpetrators of this particular crime.
I guess I saw it coming, because I wasn’t really surprised. I am disappointed, though, and for the first time I actually understand the argument that how citizens choose to use their money in support of a candidate is speech. I don’t think this should be the foundation of our campaign finance laws, but I absolutely felt, and feel, a sense of political intimidation.
Looking at those McCain-Palin signs unmolested makes my stomach turn. I want to make a sweep of the neighborhood, and get rid of them all. Or put them all up in my yard as an ironic fu*ck you to the jerk who stole from me. I don’t think he’d appreciate it, though, and I know Mrs. Asylum wouldn’t. I asked her.
I also asked her about painting a new sign, “Some McCain Thug Stole My Obama Sign.”
“I’m angry too,” she said, “but I don’t want the house vandalized, or to provoke anything that would scare the boys. You know they would. And it would be super tacky.”
She’s right. On all counts. They would, and it would. That’s the world we live in, and we paid the smallest of prices for a political campaign that has gotten out of hand.
It’s not just about a belief that some of us harbor thoughts that are anti-American. To hear Focus on the Family tell it, it’s about a threat to our domestic peace and our whole way of life.
A recent “Letter from the Future” by that group points to a four year period, even worse than the last eight. Russia has occupied Eastern Europe, Iran waged a nuclear attack on Israel, religious radio has been banned, four American cities have been hit by terrorist attacks, genocide in Iraq, and the Boy Scouts closed up shop, rather than be forced to bed homosexual leaders in the same tents as young boys.
If any of this were believable, it would be terrifying. For that matter, anyone who really loves this country (or Israel) would be obligated to make sure that it wouldn’t happen… if this were believable.
What might be legitimately scary though is that there are people who believe this, and there are people who will do anything they can to keep it from happening.
On Monday, the US District Court in Jackson Tennessee unsealed documents, revealing a plot, by two would-be assassins to kill Senator Obama, along with dozens of others. A homegrown terrorist operation, on a scale unseen since the Oklahoma City bombing. Fortunately, the conspirators were, among other things, idiots and captured, but this will not be the last we hear of something like this.
When actual presidential campaigns, and gigantic organizations like Focus on the Family play zero-sum games with political fear and intimidation, there are real world consequences, beyond the outcomes of elections.
I still believe that a President McCain would not be as bad as a candidate McCain. I think that we would see a president who understands the separation of powers, and who can actually work with the House and Senate — even if he has said very nasty things about them. I think that he actually could deploy a foreign policy that is moderated by the errors of the last eight years. I don’t think President McCain would be the red-faced ideologue we’ve been seeing on the stump since this Summer. There is still good in him. I can sense it.
However, it can’t be allowed to happen, because if this campaign is successful, what does that mean for 2012? If guilt by association tactics, and lies about someone’s faith and family are an effective way to the White House, why not email lies discrediting incumbent President McCain’s Vietnam service, and conduct in the Hanoi Hilton? If scare tactics work, why not do absolutely everything you can to smear your opponent? If intimidation is allowed to work, why not put it into practice, in ways large and small?
I actually believe that we can back away from the brink here. I think the country can denounce Swift Boat tactics, rather than make them the default, but at this point there’s only one way to do it, and that’s to elect Obama.
For my part, I’m gonna go buy another sign.