This is my first diary entry. Be gentle. :)
I do a lot of driving every day with my long commute, and I see a lot of car stickers. Here in Massachusetts, it's 5 or 6 Kerry stickers to every W sticker. But, there are a lot more yellow ribbons and God Bless America ribbons than either of those put together. A certain $1.99 magnetic ribbon graphic has sold in the thousands and adorns the trunk lid of every seventh or eighth car I see.
There's a lot of talk in Dem circles about framing. "Tax relief", "the liberal media". Those are frames, and once they are entrenched they're tough to shift. And when we try to argue from within those frames we lose.
I submit to you that the yellow ribbon and the slogan "Support our Troops" is a frame too. And "God Bless America" is a big frame. Now, I'm no expert, but I'm willing to bet that someone with a yellow ribbon sticker on their car saying "Support our Troops" is going to lean right politically.
Please continue, I'm going somewhere with this.
Why is the yellow ribbon a frame? "Support our Troops." Sounds like a good slogan to me. Not "Support the War" or "Support Bush", although that is the clear subtext. The frame is shifted to our heroic men and women fighting overseas. By opposing the war, or by saying it was a bad idea, or worse yet by saying we're losing and need help, we "spit on those heroes". It's a great frame. By extension, if good Americans support the troops, then Anti-war activists don't support the troops. They are evil America-haters who loved Saddam and want America to lose. That is the frame being built. I bet there's lots of people with yellow ribbons who "don't follow politics", but they feel Bush and the military are protecting them from the evildoers by waging war in far-off countries that threatened us. So they support the troops. It's simple, attractive, makes people feel good.
And then there's "God Bless America". In our fight against evildoers, the ones who attacked us on 9/11, in Iraq, those stickers call upon the blessing of God to assist America in our hour of need. By extension it's the Christian God who should Bless us, and by extension Bush is the one who needs the blessings, and they will come in the form of electoral victory. "God Bless America" is the bumper sticker version of the ten commandments in the courthouse, the "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, the evangelical movement and the Constitution Restoration Act. And there's lots of people who might not "follow politics", but they believe in God, and they believe in America, and the Republicans have taken this frame and built it for them to inhabit, and provided a nice tidy worldview encompassed in that sticker. It's simple, attractive, and makes people feel good.
Both of those frames tend to give us liberals the heebie jeebies, which is why they're so popular among the right, and why it's very rare to see a yellow ribbon and a Kerry-Edwards sticker on the same car. Given the framing, it's "common sense". It just "feels wrong". Not that Democrats don't support the troops - or believe in God - or even want God to bless America - it's just that we don't seem to think the same way. Overt declarations like that make liberals uncomfortable. It's ironic because the red ribbon for AIDS, the pink ribbon for breast cancer, those were all liberal framing devices. The idea of a color coded ribbon proliferated and became ridiculous in the early 90s with dozens of ribbon campaigns and it burned itself out. But now, a decade later, the yellow ribbon and the red-white-and-blue ribbon have been adopted by the hawks. It's even the same loop shape as the red ribbon was. Graphically, it's punchy. And the particular stickers that are the most popular have tiny, script-font text, delicate and hard to read from a distance. It's intimate and close. Personal. A still, small voice that is tasteful and makes people feel good.
I propose a solution. Not to go out and put yellow ribbons on your car. And not to make a new ribbon or sticker with a simple slogan.
We should display the flag.
Right after 9/11, EVERYBODY, liberals, conservatives, even non-Americans in other countries displayed the Stars & Stripes proudly. It was an emotional symbol of unity in the face of horror. A thousand cars had flag stickers on them, flags hung from every overpass. The flag was for everyone.
Once again I'm no expert, but huge American flag stickers and eagles, etc. go together with those yellow ribbons like peanut butter and chocolate.
Somewhere along the line the flag became a conservative symbol again. Flag stickers came off most people's cars, except the Caprices and the Durangos. Flags only hung outside the door of the Republican families on the block.
We might not like ribbons, but the flag is and should be for all Americans. Liberal or conservative, Democrat, Republican or third-party, red or blue, we need to make the flag our symbol. It's a frame too. It's a frame of unity and respect. In this divided country we need more than ever to show our commonality and shared values with those people we can disagree on. Policy differences aside, we are all Americans, and I think liberal Americans need to show that more.
Especially in the event of a Kerry victory. The mostly-apolitical Bush voter center-right will be nervous and apprehensive if Bush loses. They will have been told relentlessly by Cheney and Bush and Fox that Kerry will usher in an era of Stalinist UN dictatorship and cave into Al-Qaeda. The framing has been intense in this election and the primary goal will be to reassure the God Bless America / Yellow Ribbon sticker people that the America they love is still around, and indeed stronger than ever now that Bush & Co. are gone. And what better way to display that than by a forest of American flags on November 3rd? America will be America again, and it falls upon Democrats to reinforce and show it.
This seems like a small thing, but I think it's bigger than it might sound at first.