Stickybuffalo.com

Today begins the Fourth-of-July weekend. Five years ago, I marked Independence Day with an attempt at a political post which actually focused almost entirely on positive ideas. It makes interesting reading, I think, from the perspective of its nickel anniversary; I’m definitely still proud of it.

For this year, figuring that I wasn’t going come up with any kind of adequate positive statement, I had the following queued up instead. But I’ve had a better idea, which will appear on Sunday. In the meantime, being as vain as a summer day is long and therefore loathe to waste any of my precious brilliance (or a good profanity exercise; must keep in practice), I’m posting this bit today. Wherein I offer up a little reply to all those people out there tooling around, proudly sporting the message “please don’t put my flag on your foreign car” on their vehicle’s bumper. So:

Dear Self-Righteous Nationalistic Dumbass,

Shut the hell up. You really need to just shut up now. Because even for those of you not puffed up with pride in your Ford truck that you use to haul around a motorcycle, four-wheeler or jet-ski made by Honda or Kawasaki, and setting aside the fact that your allegedly-American car is only moving thanks to massive transfers of American money (borrowed from the Chinese) to countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela which, last I looked, were not flying the U.S. flag above their capitols, you are stupid and the sentiment expressed on your imbecilic bumper sticker is completely goddamn asinine.

The most obvious reason for this is, of course, the fact that the “non-foreign” car, in which you take such indignant pride, ranks third place at best in terms of its “American-ness.” Because the number one and two cars on Cars.com’s American-Made Index, which “recognizes cars that are built here, have a high amount of domestic parts and are bought in large numbers by American consumers,” are both rice-burning foreign jobbies. The Honda Accord, assembled in part right here in Ohio, and the all-’round all-American car of the past decade or so, the Toyota Camry. Which, oh look, happens to be the same make and model as my own personal transportation.

And before you start huffing and puffing, rest assured that I don’t give a flying fuck about your insipid belief that Cars.com’s list is invalid because Honda and Toyota are foreign-owned companies and their products must somehow still be tainted with un-American “yellow peril” in some way, despite the fact that they employ Americans in America to assemble American parts into cars which are then sold to Americans.

More important, though, is the bottom-line reality that you’re a fucking moron, and this great country’s star-spangled-banner is just as much mine as it is “yours.” I can do whatever the hell I feel like with Old Glory, up to and including burning it (which is thankfully still legal in spite of efforts to the contrary by twits like you and even, while in campaign mode, our Secretary of State, and which is in fact the prescribed, ceremonial fate for a worn-out flag according to any basic list of rules for handling the flag with respect).

Just as you have the right to display the flag’s image on a sticker (probably made in Mexico) expressing your ignorant and intolerant nativist opinions, I have the right to display it from whatever I feel like, be it a Toyota, a Citroen, an Italian scooter, a Chinese take-out restaurant or an English bulldog. (Though the bulldog may have its own ideas if I were to attempt it.)

So, why don’t you please take your stupid bumper sticker, and shove it up your goddamned ass.

Thank you.