People don’t really want to know anything that changes their worldview.
   -Eric Alterman

I had some inspiration to write while I was driving home from work today, but now, a few hours later, I’m feeling rather burned out and incapable of assembling something coherent.

I have noticed a few bumper stickers on cars I see almost every day either at the parking lot at work or somewhere along my commute. Some have provoked a lot of thought in me, even though I don’t always agree. The first:

Never shoot to kill
Always shoot to live

I was raised in two different subcultures, the newly-evolved suburbia of subdivisions and the old, Southern rural farms. I was exposed to guns both for target shooting and for hunting, and they were not considered something evil in and of themselves. The philosophy expressed by “Never shoot to kill, always shoot to live” was really a part of my life, with no indoctrination of the sacred importance of the second amendment.

Another one I see frequently that always makes me think:

War is terrorism
with a bigger budget

Given that the now traditional philosophy of war is defeating the will of the enemy to fight, not merely killing the enemy, this succinct statement isn’t as far off base as a knee-jerk reaction against it might lead one to believe.

A related one:

We are making enemies faster than we can kill them.

The truth of this statement can be debated, but it is indeed a risk. However, the key is that it also prompts the thought that perhaps killing is not the best approach to defeating enemies.

A final one that prompts more wondering than real thought is a black square pasted on many rear windows, with the text in white, large, times-roman font:

W.
The president

While it may be viewed as an expression of strong support for George W. Bush, in this irony-saturated age it is almost impossible for me to see in it the simple message I suspect the car’s owner is trying to convey.

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