The Ceremonial Removal of the Cynical Bumper Sticker

I decided, back in November, that when Obama was sworn in, I'd remove the "Dissent is not Disloyalty" bumper sticker from my car. It's been there since immediately after the oh-so-disappointing 2004 election. At 3:30PM yesterday, in the parking garage at work, I scraped it off.

Oh, I know I could have kept it. The thought still applies, and particularly to ongoing church issues in town. But I want to be optimistic going forward. I want think positively, and that bumper sticker is from a very pessimistic time.

I've been yelled at several times over that bumper sticker. People who vehemently disagreed with it and me, people who believed that not agreeing with the Bush administration was equivalent to treason and I should leave the country, I was bad mother, and so on. I'm not kidding. People who have never read Thomas Jefferson, basically.

Removing that bumper sticker, however, does not mean I will follow our new administration blindly (my second choice of bumper sticker back then was "United we stand, not blindly we follow"). Not at all. I will still question, and look at issues with a critical eye. That's one of my jobs in this democracy.

But for now, the bumper sticker is gone, and I feel pretty good about that.