Remember when they told us that a computer would take the place of paper? At the time I had some swamp land I could sell you, too.
Now we write our words on every surface we can get our hands on, including our tattooed hands. TV and computer ads swell our brains, clog our vision, and personal signage demands our attention at every turn. We cover our children’s eyes when we pull behind a car that is F-bombed with a bumper sticker proclaiming a favorite cause or philosophy. It’s a visual pollution we are forced to inhale until we can cough away the tailpipe fumes.
I recently saw an advertisement for a lawn business on the side of a truck named “Kicking Your Grass.” I’m sorry, but were all the wholesome grass names in the English language already taken? I use a lawn service titled after the owner’s first name, Steve. He has enough confidence in his skills and services to mow a lawn without threatening to kick it anywhere.
What we are talking about here, of course, is free speech, one of those inalienable rights our forefathers gave us to ward off tyrannical censorship. The fine line, that between censorship and discretion, is one we have been walking ever since. It’s the line that gets stepped on when your free speech and my free speech cross over each other. In other words, my grass is yours until your dog poops on it, then it’s your job to clean it up. Not doing so sends us down a slippery slope of resentment, revenge and in this country even violence.
One of the saddest chapters in my life was my college days. I did a lot of dumb things back then. For example, I brazenly wore a t-shirt that said, “Spare the Sperm, Save Our Whales.” I thought the slogan was funny and got a lot of cheap laughs when I wore it. Now, I see that t-shirt as the exhortation of vulgarity, and an example of a derogatory jingle posing as a magic charm. I wonder how many parents had to cover their children’s eyes to protect them from my offensive whale trail?
I had an interesting conversation with ex-Marine the other day. He told me a story about a fellow Marine who couldn’t get anything right, and every time he messed up during basic training, it cost everyone in the unit. None of the Marines were allowed to take their frustration out on him in any way. Instead, when their fellow marine screwed up, they all paid by joining him in more marching, more push-ups, and more grueling drills. Their commanding officer made it clear that in battle there is no time for emotions. They would not be saved by their feelings or their opinions, but by their clear-headed thinking and the training of the guy next to them.
Hmmmmm. No time for emotions. Interesting. I wonder if the Marines have been onto something all these 250 years? You’ll not see a loud trendy sign polluting a Marine’s front yard, or a Marine wearing a t-shirt encouraging another shot at Willy Barracuda’s Tequila Bar. Their training has taught them to watch each other’s back, and that there is a risk in embedding oneself in their own impulses. They are trained to drop and give their fellow Marine twenty push-ups rather than pushing a personal viewpoint.
Unfortunately, the wholesale proliferation of our culture’s ridiculous signage has become part of the quicksand our country is slowly sinking into, one individual at a time. We cannot wiggle free of our polarized stance until we look to the guy next to us and give up some of our freedom of bad speech. In simple terms, that means editing our words, wherever we put them out there. In exchange, we may find ourselves able to get out of the quagmire we fell into and really be free. Perhaps we need to look at the values that matters most, instead of looking at the individual who matters most.
That Marine I met wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing one of those Save the Whale t-shirts, or any other with the latest logo, trend or cause. He would have been too busy, down in the trenches, doing something about it.