There aren’t many bright spots in German history. Even the nation’s most worthy achievements are overshadowed by its many misdeeds. But this stigma does have a positive side. Because Germans remain the standard-bearers for two-dimensional villainy, they’re more willing than most to permit button-pushing discourse. The legacy of the Weimar Republic also helps. (More…)
Three times each week, from August through December, I walked by this SUV on the way to teach my first class. My mind would sometimes be preoccupied with its bumper stickers as I hurried to the classroom. After a while, they started to seem like a political koan, a puzzle I wasn’t meant to solve. (More…)
Sometimes, after a hard week, the smallest serendipities can do wonders. I was driving along, physically and emotionally spent, when I spied the sort of vehicle I photograph to use for this feature. Because it was a pick-up truck and because I was in a part of southern Arizona not noted for its liberalism, the “Jesus is coming” sticker I spotted first inspired dark thoughts. (More…)
There are times when the exuberant heterogeneity of the bumper stickers I see on many American vehicles seems to realign itself into a synchronized statement. Take this vehicle I found myself inching along behind the other day. I photographed it for the anti-establishment message dating back to the 2012 Presidential campaign, in which both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are deemed to provoke disgust. (More…)
For over a decade, artists and intellectuals have been touting Berlin as an alternative to overpriced and overpopulated metropolises like London, Paris, New York and Tokyo. And even now, despite a rising tide of gentrification, the city’s rougher neighborhoods remain a bargain for people with a bourgeois support network. The problem, though, is that long-time natives of these neighborhoods typically lack one. (More…)
Plastering political bumper stickers on the back of your car or truck may win you friends and enemies, but paying for a customized wrap-around paint job takes vehicular self-expression to a whole new level. When I saw this SUV parked in front of my local Trader Joe’s recently, I had to tip my cap. Because even if I found the message it communicated a little monomaniacal, there was no denying the owner’s passion. (More…)
Although almost everyone around the world has a superficial knowledge of the American way of life, forced down their throats by the United States’ two most successful export industries, weaponry and media, deeper understanding can prove elusive. How, for example, can the people of a nation that has been a global superpower for the better part of a century still conceive of themselves as renegade underdogs, fighting for freedom? (More…)
In the part of the Tucson metro area where I live — the same part where Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was nearly assassinated in 2011 — anti-Obama sentiment has been strong since he first became a viable Presidential candidate. I take it for granted that I’m going to hear people disparaging him on a daily basis. (More…)
Bluntness can be a masquerade. The declaration here is unequivocal: “Henry Ford was an anti-Semite.” And the supporting evidence laid out below is hard to argue with. Ford did publish The International Jew, a pernicious slander that won the admiration of the future Führer. These are facts. But what does it mean to share them in this manner? (More…)
While leftists in Germany today often focus on the plight of immigrants, particularly from the Middle East and North Africa — and the corollary concerns in the homelands of those immigrants — attention is also directed at the self-righteous superpower whose long shadow still falls over Europe: the United States of America. (More…)
It’s really easy to overlook a bandit sign. Just a few words of text and a telephone number, pasted to telephone poles in poor neighborhoods, advertising a roofing company, or the number of someone who’ll pay cash for your home or car, they prey on the needy. Bandit signs are also an eyesore, creating more trash in already heavily polluted parts of American cities. And they’re illegal. (More…)
While there are good reasons why the denunciation of “fascists” has hardened into a reflex on the Left, there are also good reasons for restraining it. The relentless negativity of this fixation makes it difficult to articulate an alternative to capitalism free of fundamentalism and other reactionary discourses. Although visually all over the place, this poster takes a more positive approach, with significant implications. (More…)