Here’s your sign

So today I was following a big, black gas-guzzling SUV on President Street. Not because I was stalking him. We just happened to be going in the same direction.

Made in the USA.

He had pressed a preponderance of bumper stickers across his tinted rear window, and I wondered how he could even see out the back.

Although his line of sight may not have been clear, he was clearly showing the world who he is.

One read: Jet noise – the sound of freedom. (I simply thought jet noise meant you lived in the fly way of the airport. I thought the sound of freedom was casting a vote.)

You can get it in a tee shirt, too.

Another pictured an M16 machine gun surrounded by the words: Peace, the American Way. (I could just hear the strains of Toby Keith singing about a boot in the ass.) 

Another sign, covered in camo announced that he had served in the Gulf War. (The first one, under the other Bush.)

Another sticker urged all of us followers to STOP SOCIALISM, with a line drawing of President Barack Obama. (Define socialism, please. Oh, and fascism, capitalism, nationalism…and can I have my privacy back? Y’know the one that got gutted under, what was that called? Oh, yeah. The Patriot Act.)

You get the picture. (I was basically carrying on a one-sided conversation with this guy’s back end.)

It got me thinking, though, how I’ve never seen Vietnam, Korean or World War II veterans with such war-whoop stickers.

But, I have heard them speak through Tom Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation,” and Ken Burns’ PBS documentary, “The War,” and through “Letters Home from Vietnam,” and from “M*A*S*H.”

The older veterans spoke of hoping to create a world where a war like that would never have to be fought again and with a weariness from which they could not recover.

The Boomer vets from Vietnam still seemed to be seeking peace – of mind, of soul and spirit. Some sort of absolution that reconciled the horror with the sacrifice.

It seems as if the positive affirmations of the Reagan era, the tough talk of the Bushes, and the hawkish winds of the last few Pentagons has turned us into a bunch of trash-talkers. Might makes right. The best defense is a strong offense and all that jazz.

Maybe it’s easy to talk loudly and carry big sticks because we’ve sanitized ourselves about the real casualty of war…our soul.