Bumper stickers get the controversial word out

Nikolina Hatton
The Advocate

Cars are great things. We drive them for freedom. We drive them to waste money. We fill them with pieces of our personal lives: clothes, coffee cups, books, music. And, most important, we use them to voice our opinions through our bumper stickers.

Right now I’m on a quest for my own.

My car is sticker-less so far, and I’m dying to fill the air with my own controversy, which brings up an interesting point. It’s interesting how people, and especially teenagers and college students, will voice their opinions with almost nothing to back themselves up. Today we have tons of controversies and tons of people willing to talk about them, but never willing to study up on what they care about and actually FIND OUT whether they’re right or not. So as a result, we are the same political party our friends are, and believe what we hear and happen to like.

The rude awakening comes when you immerse yourself in a belief system different from your own and find out they want to know where you got your facts, why you believe the way you do.

You find out you don’t actually know some of the things you espouse, and if you’re smart, you start to shut up.

But this is where bumper stickers come in. You can say anything you want, and most likely, no one will ever ask you to qualify your statement. In fact, some stickers are so controversial.

I wonder if the drivers themselves don’t actually entirely believe them, but just want to shock the masses. After a while of seeing a bunch of statements all directed one way, you want to go completely against the flow and throw out something really awful to get people’s attention.

Deep down inside, there must be something gratifying about making other people mad.

I know I want something that will make people’s hair stand on end, tick them off, but then maybe that’s just my personality, and yet, whether I really entirely back up what I say is another question, but bumper stickers are great, because you don’t have to back up what you say.

So, the question is, have we overused our freedom of speech?

Anymore, is it more helpful, or harmful? Because instead of using our freedoms to find out the truth, we use our freedoms to say anything we want.

Honestly, of all the college-age students (myself included) at Mt. Hood, how many of us can really talk authoritatively on any issues of political or cultural relevance? And yet we still do it, and when we do, do we just spread our own ignorance further? It’s easy to talk about something when everyone around agrees with you.

I’m thankful for our freedoms, but I wonder if we would all get a little bit more serious about what we believe, and check our facts before spouting them off, if we didn’t have this convenient freedom that so ironically manifests itself in our bumper stickers.

But hey, what can I say, I get a lot of entertainment reading people’s over-inflated opinions – especially in Portland. It’s especially fun when you don’t agree with them because then you can laugh at the absurdity (or get really mad – which is also quite satisfying).

I think it’s funny when drivers leave political stickers on their car after the election, especially when their candidate lost. I know they probably see it as a gallant revolt against the half of society that voted for the winner, but on the other hand, doesn’t the “winning side” just laugh and think “sucker!”

Then there are the apolitical stickers, like the ones that bash honor students. What’s up with that?

Sure the honor student stickers are just as stupid, but one has to admit they’re both so overdone they’ve worked themselves into permanent clichés.

And I want to know why people attending Mt. Hood have stickers from other universities on their cars. Are they ashamed? Is that where their boyfriend/girlfriend go? Or (this is the tough one) are they dropouts? Well, we would hope not, but one thinks about these things. Maybe they just want other people to think they go to these universities. Can you buy Harvard stickers online?

People have different reasons for gumming up their bumpers with nasty stickers, and only some of them have to do with voicing opinions that don’t belong to us. But next time I do see a piece of madly opinionated tape, I’ll wonder if that person even believes themself.