When you start doing something new you’re a pioneer, a trailblazer, an innovator. When a few years have gone by though and you’re still pretty much the only person doing it, then there’s a pretty good chance that you’re crazy. I don’t mean that lightly, but when you’re looking for reasons, the possibility of mental illness is bound to come up... to any sane person at least.
Given that 1) protest should be like any other form of broadcasting and that audience numbers should count, 2) the courts are on my side, and 3) when the founding fathers wrote the First Amendment, signposting was one of about six things they were talking about, I feel fairly secure in my sanity and that eventually other people are bound to see the light. With about 100 million or so people in this country feeling the way I do about this President, and five of them already having joined me, it’s just a matter of time before the rest come around - hopefully before their signs say “Don’t get in the boxcars: It’s a trick!” While we’re waiting for that to happen though, I thought I’d regale you with a few instances where I did find myself wondering if I wasn’t perhaps a few bonespurs short of a deferment.
I put these up about two months ago, knowing they’d come across as conspiratorial at best, and that to many they’d seem like the work of someone entirely unhinged. The decision to stonewall Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination made absolutely no sense at the time: Hillary was a shoe-in and McConnell had to know she wasn’t going to pick anyone more suitable to his purposes. The only way blocking Garland made any sense at all for the Republicans was if they somehow knew Trump was going to win.
Take a look at some of McConnell’s statements at the time and you can see he was foundering. Scalia’s sudden death caught everyone off guard and “We’re going to block all liberal judges from now until forever...” was the best they could come up with for an excuse. Of course if you think about it, that’s almost as treasonous and Un-American as colluding with Russia to steal the election, which I believe is precisely what the evil bastards did.
It was just before the 2004 elections and I went back and forth over the above sign a lot. I knew Bush had clammed-up about Bin Laden because it interfered with his Saddam-as-the-worst-guy-ever narrative, but I was amazed that the media, along with what seemed to be the rest of America, was so willing to just let him get away with it. I ended up doing the sign for the one final catch-all reason in my quiver: if I don’t do it, who will?
The whole Osama-Saddam switcheroo thing was particularly bizarre for me though, the notion that we were supposed to all just collectively shift the blame for 9/11 to some new guy and forget all about the old one… I honestly didn’t know we did that sort of thing, and frankly it still doesn’t seem right. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I thought if there was one thing conservatives could be trusted to get right it would be violent retribution, but I guess I was wrong again. Anyway, the loneliness of sign hanging back then was amplified a bit by feeling like I was practically the only person who found switching bad guys the least bit problematic.
I had kind of a funny moment after putting this up. The Abu Ghraib photos had been out for two days or so, and how you thought about the war, even your country, depended a lot on whether or not you’d seen them. No matter how hard you squinted, there was no way to make us “the good guys.”
Once the word “Fiasco.” came into my head it just stayed there, bouncing around and refusing to leave — like “The Girl from Ipanema” except with one word of lyrics and no tune. Like the fetal kicking of a piece of art clamoring to be born, the word “Fiasco” was clearly not going to go away until I turned it into a sign. Since I already had whitewashed cardboard, making “Fiasco” took less than ten minutes, and half an hour later I had it up and photographed over I-5. Just as I’d thought, once made manifest, the word “Fiasco” finally stopped plaguing me, allowing my mind to get back to it’s usual routine of wandering aimlessly.
Maybe ten minutes go by and I’m driving back home, listening to music or maybe NPR, and I idly think about the sign again, maybe wondering how the pictures will turn out, when I realize I can’t remember what it said!
It was funny at first. I knew it was just one word, five or six letters… almost certain it began with an “F”… But I just couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was. As 30 seconds became a minute and I still couldn’t think of what I’d just finished painting in three foot tall letters and hanging over a freeway I started wondering if whatever I’d put up was even a real word at all... For whatever reason, it took almost another minute for the word “Fiasco” to return to my lexicon. And while I didn’t feel exactly “crazy” during this time, I was pretty sure it wasn’t the sort of predicament normally faced by the sane.
I struggled long and hard with this last one. It was inspired by something I’d heard months before by Bay Area comedian Will Durst:
Support the Troops? Support the Troops?
Jesus Christ, OF COURSE I support the TROOPS!
It’s the President that’s the MURDERING ASSHOLE...
When they’re done right, words can have a huge and lasting effect on me, and the way “Murdering Asshole!” roared out of his mouth sent it straight into a part of my brain where it’s stayed ever since. Mostly it was the power of the word “murdering,” and replacing “assholes” with “bastards” for the sake of the freeway didn’t seem to dilute the message. Still, there was really no way to paint those words that size without looking - let’s face it — a little crazy. On the other hand, so what? It’s not like anyone knew who I was.
Up until then all my signs had been pretty much straight from the heart - but this was the first where I felt like an imposter, pretending to a level of anger that wasn’t really mine to express. And even though I knew I was probably already on all kinds of lists, calling the President and Vice-President “murdering bastards” felt like one of those things I was probably going to end up regretting, To be honest I don’t remember exactly why I finally decided to do it. Part of it was feeling like it was a sentiment that needed to be expressed, and knowing that if I didn’t do it nobody would. Part of it was probably just the basic artistic imperative: I painted it simply because I wanted to see what it would look like.
But I’m sure part of it was to show the “Support our Troops” guy he was going to have to step up his game.
I started hanging signs on freeways in response to the Bush V. Gore decision — that was the point where I realized that rules didn’t matter anymore. But I didn’t really kick things into high gear until the reasons for the Iraq war started unravelling. Two and a half years of hearing how Clinton lied (“He Lied... LIED!”) about a blowjob, and I knew in my heart that Bush was going to get to skate on lying about a war. Even though I knew the sign would look like the work of a crazy person, I didn’t really care. I was damned if I was going to just shrug the whole thing off like everyone else seemed to be doing and since nobody even knew I was the one who did it, who cares how crazy it looked?
At some point we’re going to have to address this whole “People who put signs on freeways are crazy...” thing though, because I think that’s a big part of what’s keeping you all from doing it. You can tell yourselves it’s illegal, but not only are you wrong, you’re wrong in a way that cancels out the very best part of American Democracy. You can tell yourselves it’s dangerous and distracting, but since I don’t hear any outcry over all the billboards and jumbotron screens, I’m not going to believe you much. What it is, is weird — it’s a social aberration — and there’s not much I can do about that on my own. In my heart I know there’s about 10,000 of you who’d do it tomorrow if you knew that 5,000 had done it today. I’m still working on that.
Someone once commented on one of my diaries that “People just aren’t comfortable putting signs up.” And I get that. But comfort isn’t really what we’re going for here, is it? Because if it is then I’ll do my resisting on the beaches of Thailand, tracing “Trump Sucks” in tiny little letters in the sand. I think it’s worth bearing in mind that a whole lot of people have died — violently — for our right to speak out as much and as loud as we can. And that both before they died and while they were dying, they were extremely uncomfortable. Uncomfortable in ways that would make sign-hanging seem like a day at a spa: fun, relaxing and rejuvenating. Which, incidentally, it is.
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. It turns out they’re wrong because I just looked it up and the definition of insanity is actually “the state of being seriously mentally ill; madness.” and “extreme foolishness or irrationality.” But they’re also wrong because if they were right that would mean after so many years of trying, I’m insane for thinking I can get any of you to help me. Which of course I am not.
What I am, simply, is right while everyone else is wrong… nothing crazy about that. And mind you, this is only on this one little issue. I’m perfectly willing to be wrong on pretty much everything else, but the signs-on-freeways thing? That I’m right about. If it helps, replace “signs-on-freeways” with “Use your First Amendment rights to their fullest to influence the greatest number of people as deeply and positively as you can.” Now who could argue with that?
Of course the most important thing you can do is vote. But that’s only on election day. On all the other days the most important thing you can do is put a bunch of signs on freeways saying the President is a traitor.
