He flipped me off out of the open passenger window as he drove past.

A simple gesture.

That guy was carrying some baggage, I figured. Like so many people these days. 

He was responding to my bumper sticker made out of white athletic tape on the tailgate of my old Ford truck with 270,562 miles on the odometer. It was a simple message that said “Rumpt Is Bad Person.” 
Seems like a true enough statement to me. On my old Eurovan with 206,371 miles on the odometer I have another simple message made out of a Trump sticker with a diagonal strip of white athletic tape across it that says “Bad person.”

I find it hard to not agree with those messages given all the rhetoric and actions taken by the fellow in the White House and all his soulless minions since he glided down the golden stairs at Trump Tower in 2015. It all started with calling people names and it has devolved into mayhem since then. By all accounts the list of mean-spirited talk and action has grown exponentially.

I’m not going to apologize but I agree a simple bumper sticker is a little like that as well. After all, it’s not a benign bumper sticker with a smiling motorist waving and saying that you’ve visited Carlsbad Caverns or Mt. Rushmore. I’m telling fellow motorists how I feel if they like it or not. 

Even though the message has been approved by the National Union of Friendly Americans (NUFA) as wholly appropriate, I understand it could be seen as an “in your face” statement, true as it is.
I get it.

For the hapless followers a flip off seems just the right medicine. I suppose it feels good to offer up your displeasure and anger with the old flip of the finger.  

A friend actually coined the phrase “bad person” many months ago. On his old red truck was a Trump sticker with a diagonal strip of white athletic tape that said “Bad Person.” I told him I liked it and could I use it as well, He said sure, “I’ve been using it since November. We should have used it before that.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Since that time there has been the steady beat of incivility, of a shapeless, formless anger, a stale list of apparent grievances doled out like a grocery list. A shallow pond of carefully crafted talking points is easy to digest and spit out over and over until the masses finish the sentence with a flip of the finger.

There have always been plenty of people with a chip on their shoulder in this world, no matter the millennia, but now those sorts of folks can broadcast their uncomplicated views to wider audiences and share those views until they become a kind of truth unto themselves, a self prophecy come true. 

I’m trying to tell my grandkids and the youth of the nation not to fall into the hole of superficial and inane thought. Dig out the facts. It’s easy to do. Maybe I say that because I was a newspaper editor and had to be watchful of getting something wrong and losing credibility with our readers. Sorry to say but there’s a flock of misinformants who care nothing about credibility. It’s a lost word. Means nothing.

How does a civil society keep its balance if credibility is tossed out the window? How do you teach your children the tenets of life if a basic trust is gone between peoples who interact with each other on a daily basis? 

When the falsification of basic truths gains a standard acceptance, with a shrug of the shoulders, a civil society will end at some point, mired in its own indifference. When a government of the people, by the people and for the people decides to erase histories it doesn’t like, as is happening now with the current administration, the civil society will end.

When podcasters spouting conspiracy theories gain more traction than journalists following the stories and news of our daily lives the civil society will end.

I hate to say, but it appears to be happening right before our eyes.

So a guy flips me off because he doesn’t agree with my bumper sticker. To me, it points to a larger issue. Not that he doesn’t have the right to disagree with my bumper sticker but more that he likely wouldn’t listen as I provide numerous reasons for my notion that “Rumpt is Bad Person.” 

Would you teach your children to call people names? Would you teach them about “truthful hyperbole” and the uncivic value of election denial and the fact that in 2020 all 50, count’em, all 50 Secretaries of State across the nation, both republican and democrat, certified the election as legitimate? That crowd then used the courts more than 50 times to delay and cloud the reality that a fair election was held and someone else would move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Bingo. The Big Lie.   

That all may be old news but it’s just another of the ways the loss of credibility injures a civil society. Oh, and that little speech fomenting the attack on the Capitol on January 6? The police were attacked, people were killed and an attempt to sabotage the counting of electoral votes was underway. Pardoning the perpetrators in this latest “law and order” moment says what to you Rep. Pete Stauber and the rest of the gullible half who appear to have given up all means of independent thought.

A civil society hangs in the balance and a simple flip off isn’t like it used to be.