Enemy of an Enemy, Friend of a Friend

Every day, along one of my dog routes, I walk by a car with a "Bush in 2000" bumper sticker and, next to it, "I Believe In Angels".

Whether the fact that these stickers are still on the car is a testimony to her devotion to President Bush and angels or to the bonding properties of glue, I do not know. I suppose the former, barring an angel tripping her and pushing her down the stairs since she affixed the sticker. Although it is hard to get a good look at the person pushing you down the stairs, and the angel could have taken on a deep voice and said "I'm the devil!" before planting his soft hands into her back.

But that is besides the point. The two slogans made me realize an interesting property of bumper stickers. Multiple bumper stickers can change the response one has to the idea in one of them merely through association with the other. To be specific, I would have rolled my eyes if just the Bush sticker were on her car, or thought nothing if she just had the angel sticker on her car. But with their might combined, now I think she is a dumb ass.

Neither sticker promotes the dumb-assiness of the owner by itself. Rather, the two stickers are taken together as a whole to produce a response too strong for just one of them to create.

My idea is to use this property for political warfare. What we do is put bumper stickers supporting President Bush on our cars and affixed next to it a sticker expressing an idea the Bush campaign would be embarrassed to be associated with. Like "Bush: 2004" and "I Hate Black People!". Or "Support President Bush And Our Troops" with " Nazis Are People Too".

Actually, to save time, we should just find cars with pro-Bush stickers on them. Just to save time. And if anyone wants to be extra clever, why stop at a total of two? "Bush 2004"; "Bush 2008: F*CK The Constitution!"; "Bush 2012: I Now Feel Better About Saying Fuck."