The local news in my part of Florida is humming over a peculiar act of vandalism. At some point over the weekend, someone posted a set of well-made yellow street signs reading “Illegal Alien Crossing.” Identical signs were posted on either side of a pedestrian crossing, so drivers heading both ways would see them.
Of course, the signs were quickly removed by the county. One of the drivers who reported them said, “I drove by and did a double-take. At first, I thought I didn’t just read that. I’m very angry. They’re cowards. That’s what I think.” This is exactly right. People who attempt to distort serious debates with acts of political graffiti are cowards. In the age of the Internet, there are plenty of opportunities to engage in open and honest persuasion. Drive-by political arguments are the tool of weak-minded bullies who prefer unsuspecting audiences that can’t answer back. Rude insults are unacceptable whether they’re hammered into tin, or spray-painted on a restroom wall.
Argument by graffiti is distressingly common these days. It often takes the form of crude political slams mixed into movie reviews, sports columns, and other places where the reader is not expecting to be assaulted. It’s one thing to encounter political arguments when a pundit openly expresses the desire to examine the social impact of a pop-culture phenomenon, like The Dark Knight or Avatar. It’s another to get a load of propaganda in the face while enjoying ostensibly non-partisan entertainment. Since the Left dominates popular culture, conservative audiences become accustomed to stepping on these ideological land mines, but the sheer volume of it grows annoying when the Left makes one of its frequent shifts into crusader mode. 2011 is going to be an irritating year.
This kind of guerrilla sloganeering is only shocking when it’s not deployed in the service of liberal ideals. If an environmentalist group had modified some street signs to read “STOP Global Warming – Drive Less,” it would have been the same class of vandalism… but you’d have seen a lot less anger from the media and their man-on-the-street interviewees. There would probably be disclaimers that the message was worthy, but the method of communication showed a regrettable lack of judgment. It happens all the time, when the media report on green, animal rights, or socialist street theater.
Another local resident commenting on the “Illegal Alien Crossing” signs, herself an immigrant from Mexico, said “not everyone is illegal. It’s supposed to be democratic and freedom, but that’s not how it is.” This is a fine demonstration of the success of argument by graffiti from the other side. Opposition to illegal immigration, even when expressed in lowbrow terms, is not equivalent to xenophobia. Some imbecile putting up a couple of stupid prank signs hardly constitutes the negation of freedom and democracy… but that’s the kind of hyperbole deployed by the open-borders lobby, to shut down rational thought and debate on the issue. Their graffiti says all insistence on border security is racist, enforcement of immigration law is hateful, and there is no difference between legal immigrants and illegal aliens. It’s spray-painted across the network news, and scribbled into pointless lawsuits designed to spend millions of taxpayer dollars stirring up racial paranoia.
Replacing reason and deliberation with provocative slogans and viral memes gets you a bloated government that manages to drown in debt without actually accomplishing anything. Smothering debate over health care, with mantras about how “no one should have to die because they don’t have insurance,” resulted in a horrific statist system that will bankrupt the country and kill people. Marxist battle cries about “making the rich pay their fair share” result in endless unemployment benefits paid to a swelling jobless population by picking the pockets of unborn children. Children’s programming becomes a clockwork orange of environmentalist propaganda… producing a generation that reaches for the illusion of “sustainable energy” as it totters over the precipice of environmentally disastrous, pre-industrial poverty.
I think we’re all tired of activists trying to ram forklifts into our brains, so they can raise our consciousness. Argument by graffiti is hollow and tedious, because it hides half of the problem, and provides none of the solution. None of the issues facing us will be resolved by cowards lurking in the shadows with sharpened insults clenched in their fists.
Cross-posted at Hot Air.
Doctor Zero: Year One now available from Amazon.com!
Interesting take. How did you come down on the “Miss me yet?” billboards that were seen earlier this year?
That may not be an apples for apples argument (the billboards were paid for, the illegal alien signs were a form of vandalism), but the conversations that sprang from it were the intended results the proponents were seeking.
It really takes a lot for the general American public to get excited about an issue. With the stakes so high, the statists and non-statists are doing whatever it takes to force the matter. Come to think of it, civil disobedience is wired into our American DNA, going way back to the founding of the country.
We’ve never been ones to “play nice” or “stay within the lines.” No danger of that status quo changing any time soon…
@ itzWicks:
Indeed, the Miss Me Yet billboards were bought and paid for and do not constitute vandalism at all. Personally, I totally cracked up having seen one on southbound I35 in Minnesota.
Doc’s larger point of sloganeering substituting for debate is valid. Slogans and cliche’s are easy, actually dredging up the substance behind a political position potentially exposes ones ignorance. Worn out, tried and true platitudes like the rich get richer while the poor get poorer are meaningless when run up against the facts, but they are no less effective in getting a point across. I think the inability to sum up some of the virtues of free market capitalism in simple slogans is one of the reasons Republicans and conservatives have had such a hard time (since Reagan left the scene) articulating a simple compelling (TV) message.
“Argument by graffiti is hollow and tedious, because it hides half of the problem, and provides none of the solution.”
Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.
Yes, that’s very high-minded and nuanced of you to say but speaking AS a political stickerbomber – I guess you’d call me a vandal – I say if your enemies are resorting to hyperbolic visuals to get their point across, then game on. This is a war we’re in, and if they have art on their side, then it’s time to for our side to visit AC Moore as well.
My latest work, “The Amazing Socialist” can be seen – and bulk-photocopied – here: http://www.myspace.com/obamaisnotmypresident
This is war. All means are permissible. The government is inexorably growing, is unable to restrain its own growth, and intends to create an electorate that will legitimize that growth by all means and any means, one of these means being the mass importation of voters from Mexico.
Indeed, one of the main reasons for “diversity” is to de-legitimize opposition to this transformation of the electorate.
Doc,
You mention the Age of the Internet as a means for dialogue, but consider that an estimated 30% of Americans do not have/use the Internet. This falls in with the NYT editors telling their reporters not to use “tweet” in stories because high enough percetages of people simply don’t know what it means. Unforunately, millions of Americans lack access to the Internet and therein to the truth behind the perpetual media spin machines on the left and right.
BTW: Drive-by graffiti could aslo be referred to as a “captive audience”. I experience this a few years ago at a U2 concert where the audience was lectured about war and told that “Sundy Bloody Sundy” was now America’s song…
Ya lost me on this one, Doc. A sadly humorous sign is “vandalism”?
Perhaps you’ve never seen the GOVERNMENT posted “Immigrant Crossing” signs on I-5 north of San Diego warning motorists to watch out for illegals running across the highway.
You’re an excellent writer, Doc, but don’t get caught up in the small stuff.
~(Ä)~
I’m sorry this insignificant incident has turned you into a faux-moralistic whiner. You didn’t used to be. Too bad.