Just A Moment. But A Moment Is All It Took.

I have a bumper sticker on my car. It's been on any car I've had since 2017.

For it was then that this pestilence, this ugliness, officially descended upon America. You know what I'm talking about.

The whole societal discussion turned nasty and ridiculous. It has remained that way since. It has even gotten worse. Who in the world thought we would be discussing the value of shooting one's dog, to name a for instance?

But most of us on the side of decency, of propriety, of politeness, saw what was coming a full year before. We cruised along, though, secure in the false knowledge that the country wouldn't actually go where these people were heading--toward abject racism, endless insults, and incredible irrationality.

We're here, though. And it threatens to once again take over.

So I ordered the bumper sticker from a group called Common Dreams, and got a few for some political allies of mine. After I sent them out, I kept a couple, which was fortunate because in 2020, I got rear-ended by some fool who was paying attention to his wife and slammed me while I and a number of folks were stalled on the freeway (and never asked if I was all right--I was--never, in fact, made any comment). That car had one, too.

It reads:

Not Normal

RESIST 

Back in 2017, there were few people who wouldn't immediately know what that was referring to. But as in most things, normalization creeps in like the fog. We know in 2024 that this subterfuge of real political give-and-take will be with us for the foreseeable future. It is not a quick surge of emotional trash, like a garbage can that has been blown over by a sudden storm. Oh, no. It is more like garbage that has been forgotten, has been strewn and remained for weeks, if not months, and rats have visited and maintained their presence.

If nothing else, there is even more reason to display the bumper sticker. It still isn't normal out there. It's still terribly damaging to where politics should be taking us, but unless you've been hiding in Carlsbad Caverns, you get this by now. The destruction of any rational discussion is exactly the point of it, exactly the prelude to its cancellation. For without rationality, power can dominate anything, assume anything, put anything out there that makes no sense. Which is what's continuing to happen from one side and will completely happen if it wins again.

But you know the effects of bumper stickers; small, even negligible. People see them at stoplights or quickly passing you on the highway and don't bother to react. There is no real confrontation. No one has, to be best of my knowledge, beeped their horns and either have waved in agreement or flipped me off in dissent.

Until yesterday. I was dropping off a bill I had to pay, including the check with which I was paying it, at the Whitefish Bay Post Office, en route to another trip I had to take. Based on reports of some idiot locals breaking into corner post office boxes, opening the envelopes to steal the money within, I have since taken to go directly inside the buildings and drop the mail into the slots provided. I had pulled up to a parking place, and so had someone else.

The man was dressed in a button-down, dark plaid shirt with what might have been Dockers-kind of slacks: the kind of understated style that frequents that town with its understated but endless stream of old money. He wore glasses. He was clipped nicely. I wondered if he owned a sweatshirt. But he was neat, clean, and appropriate.

As I came to the door, he took a look at the bumper sticker and asked, "What's that all about?" It was the first time anyone had taken the bother to notice.

"(-----)," I said, mouthing the name of the main perpetrator, the dominant liar, for a rare moment. You will notice here that, consistent with previous practice, I do not print his name, and in conversations, I try to refer to him in an indirect yet obvious way. So it shall ever be, whether he tricks the country into re-electing him or not. I do not advance the names of rapists, of criminals, of otherwise disgusting maladroits, especially if still alive. I will have to come up with a new nickname for him should the country make another enormous mistake in November, but oh, there are so many possibilities.

Then I added, "There's nothing normal about him." It was, admittedly, a mild comment compared to many others I could have made, summarizing my intense loathing. But he really wanted to know. He really was mystified. I wondered whether he was another victim of the country's normalization of a hoodlum. 

I stood for a moment, wondering whether he would like to comment. He didn't. He looked stunned walking past, shaking his head gently and very slowly. He didn't want to take me on.

Lucky for him. I was in the kind of mood that I don't get into much anymore, in which I wait in the tall grass for someone to say something really stupid and leap on them like a panther. If he would have invited elaboration, I would have been too happy to oblige. Go ahead, I would probably have said, tell me any good he has done anyone, including himself, seeing as how he's been dragged to court in four different ways now. Tell me it's a conspiracy. Tell me it's so unfair. Be an ersatz victim, just like him.

Would he have agreed with the sticker's sentiment, I would have heard so quickly. I wondered if he thought I meant that resisting ex- was, in fact, not normal. But once he understood, he couldn't gather himself to put up a meaningful objection. I couldn't blame him. What else is there to say about this venom-filled snake? On the other hand, he has his money. What does he care?

It has boiled down to this, this in seven years: We all know where we are. There seems to be little discussion left. That takes only a moment, but a moment, and a glance, is all it took; a realization that the ruin that he has brought the country is still being noticed. In the meantime: This is not normal. Resist.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark