Aggressive Alienation

A rainy shopping trip, yesterday, the whole nine yards: Costco, Walmart, Kroger. It was Saturday afternoon when NPR has one of those programs I cannot stand, hence I drove between locations just observing. Ahead of me, on the way home, a very natty white pickup truck with a bumper sticker that caught my eye: GOD, GUNS & GUTS. There might have been more there—but, as I say, it was raining. Today I started to investigate—and learned that I had chanced across a rather extensive subculture. The words I didn’t see were MADE AMERICA GREAT—which phrase, added to the first, makes the title of a book, the phrase you can wear on a T-shirt, and on and on. I discovered car dealers who gave away a hand gun with each new car purchased and saw their sales soaring—hence planning to give away AK-47s next. And this reported on CNN yet. Amazing. Utterly amazing. A kind of post modern or latter-day fusion here. A deep-seated but baffled rage fusing religion, violence, testosterone, and commerce. And we worry about getting meningitis when we have a chronic back-ache?