Political and personal fascism

Via Crooked Timber (and a tip from Jim Flannery), comes this remarkable and chilling piece from brushstroke.tv about the dangers of festooning one's vehicle with Howard Dean bumper stickers:

Bad dogs

Not long ago, almost as a joke, I stuck a Howard Dean bumper sticker on my brother's 25 year old, buttercup yellow, diesel Mercedes sedan. He's not very political, but didn't object to the sticker. I stuck one on his Republican girlfriend's car too, over the Bush/Cheney sticker already there, but that's another story. Let's just say she didn't appreciate my sense of humor.

Over the Christmas holiday, my brother left Atlanta for Louisiana with his two Catahoula hounds loaded in the back seat of Buttercup. Ordinarily, he could reach the relative civilization of Covington before needing to refuel the diesel, but that's without the dogs. Shortly after entering Alabama, he pulled over at a rest stop and followed the signs for pet owners. As he got out of the car, a redneck trucker parked close by began to heckle him. Less than a minute later, the rest stop attendant zipped up in a golf cart and told him to move. Not wanting a confrontation, he piled the dogs back in the car before they had a chance to "go", and headed down the road.

A few miles further, he pulled over on the side of the road to let the dogs out. As he got out of the car, he noticed a different trucker (but one he'd also seen at the rest stop), pull off the highway, onto the shoulder and head straight for his car. As he tried to pull the dogs away from the car, the trucker veered off at the last millisecond, just before hitting them.

A couple of hours later, while still in Alabama, but close to the Mississippi border, he stopped at a gas station for a drink. As he got out of the car, a team of three crackers approached him and tried to pick a fight. Seeing the large dogs, they backed off, but by this point he'd had enough. Before entering Mississippi, he pulled off the road and ripped the Dean sticker off his bumper. I can't say as I blame him.

I can attest that this is not simply a phenomenon in the South. This is largely the situation in most rural places in America right now.

I travel a lot to rural quarters. I talk to a lot of people there. I gave up some time ago putting any kinds of bumper stickers -- beyond the obligatory Sonics and Vandal fare -- on my vehicles. Even those reveal more than I want sometimes.

But I've been waiting for the liberal-bashing rhetoric to escalate into action for some time now, and have long figured that it will arise in small ways, and more than likely around the defense of George W. Bush's tenuous hold on power. If I had to guess, I'd say that little incidents like these are more than likely occurring with greater frequency and are simply not showing up on the radar because the harassment, threats, and assaults aren't being reported. Yet.

This kind of behavior, obviously, is what Ann Coulter referred to when she extolled the virtues of exploiting the physical intimidation of liberals: "My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that's because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism."

If any of you hear about incidents like these, please be sure to report them here. I'll at least give them some broadband.