{"id":2549,"date":"2020-06-21T17:13:37","date_gmt":"2020-06-21T17:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/?p=2549"},"modified":"2020-06-21T17:13:37","modified_gmt":"2020-06-21T17:13:37","slug":"signs-of-the-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/21\/signs-of-the-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Signs of the Times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I visited family this weekend for Father&#8217;s Day and on the drive between here and there, I noted a fair number of pro-Trump signs and flags.  No Confederate flags this time, so that&#8217;s something. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> One yard had a number of wooden signs up on posts &#8211; a whole garden of messages.   There was a MAGA sign, a Trump-Pence 2020 sign, a few I didn&#8217;t catch, COIVD-19 Hoax, a Women For Trump (in bright pink, naturally).   And then the most eye catching and strange one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> L G B T<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Except, the letters had picograms above them to try and create a new meaning.  It is pride month, after all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Above the L was the Statue of Liberty.  So, L for Liberty &#8211; though I&#8217;m pretty sure that the statue itself is <em>supportive<\/em> of immigration.  You know, &#8220;Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free\u2026&#8221;.  Perhaps it only applies to immigrants from the non-shithole countries &#8211; I dunno.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> Above the G, a handgun.  Sigh, of course. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Above the B was a rectangle with rounded corners.  On my first trip past I couldn&#8217;t tell what it was &#8211; maybe a Bible?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Above the T was a not-very-flattering-but-recognizable cartoon side view of Trump himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> So, Liberty, Guns, Bible(?), Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the return trip, I got a closer look at the B and realized it wasn&#8217;t a Bible, it was a Beer stein.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Liberty, Guns, Beer, Trump<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Somehow, this now made even <em>less<\/em> sense.  I didn&#8217;t realize that Beer was something one would either be for or against.  Is there some Anti-beer movement that I don&#8217;t know about that this was protesting? If you aren&#8217;t Pro-beer, are you un-American?  Hmmm\u2026might have just answered that one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I got home, I risked polluting my search history and tried to look this up.  Sure enough, you can buy t-shirts, posters, and flags with the same message.  Liberty, Guns, Beer, Trump.   Or, to my surprise, Bible is a &#8220;valid&#8221; substitution for B in the message as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I could have been angry.  Especially this month when pride and LGBT is a thing to be celebrated.  How dare they take those letters and try to co-opt their meaning?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, I didn&#8217;t feel anger.  Just this wave of sadness.  How much of this amazing country are they missing out on by willfully excluding everyone who don&#8217;t think, look, or act like them?  And for all of the effort put into building that wall of signs, what do they get in return?  Just a poisonous swamp of hate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, I felt sad for them as I drove past their strange collection of signs.  I hope they find a reason to take down some of them one day and maybe make some new friends.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Who knows?  Maybe one of their kids will come out of the closet as Beer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I visited family this weekend for Father&#8217;s Day and on the drive between here and there, I noted a fair number of pro-Trump signs and flags. No Confederate flags this time, so that&#8217;s something. One yard had a number of wooden signs up on posts &#8211; a whole garden of messages. There was a MAGA [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2550,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions\/2550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}