| This Issue: |
|
Home Arts Forum News Sports |
| External Links: |
|
Bates.edu Dining Services Garnet Gateway Bates Catalog Bates Daily Bates Facebook Bates Handbook Bates Search Bates Webmail TheFacebook.com Weather |
Truthfully, I want to support our troops. But as I\'m on a tight budget, I really can\'t afford more than ten dollars to do so. So I have been exploring my options, and I\'ve found myself in more of a predicament than before. You see, there are simply too many ways in which I can support our troops: I\'ve been immobilized for fear of putting my limited time and resources in the wrong place. So if you\'ll indulge me, I\'ll walk you through my thoughts - perhaps they can act as a guide to anyone else who, like me, is wallowing in indecision as to how best to support our troops for under ten dollars.
Firstly, we have the plain yellow ribbon. A symbol of quiet, solemn reflection, this sticker is a testament to the long hours that its owner has sat in the dark, agonizing mentally over the sorrows faced by our military personnel. It is a promise to someday, somehow, pick up a gun and fly to Iraq on a C-130 transport, in order that the owner might, in his or her own turn, be supported. Its Spartan display of sorrow lets all other commuters know that your only impediment to supporting our troops is the state of crushing perpetual sympathy in which you exist due to your neverending wish that you could support our troops.
Next, we have the yellow ribbon \"Mark II\" as I like to call it: this is the simple yellow ribbon with \"Support Our Troops\" wrapped around its length in elegant calligraphy. A modern reinterpretation of its predecessor, it is the sticker for the man of action, the man who understands the aforementioned need for quiet and solicitude while really really definitely thinking about maybe enlisting. It allows the same sorrow and conveys the same pensiveness, and yet it states its message firmly and unequivocally. Not content with self-indulgent self-contained sorrow, the owner reaches beyond the inactions of those students of Heraclitus, and commands fellow-drivers to pull themselves out of the decadent, selfish haze in which they live and to not simply contemplate, but actually support our troops. I suggest beginning with blank yellow.
Of course, yellow isn\'t the only color in which these stickers come. For those who find this color anachronistic, who believe it does not address the needs of the drivers of our times and wars, there is another option. Its blue represents the bravery of our soldiers, its red represents the states that voted Republican \'04, and its white the anemic protest votes of John Kerry. That\'s right. Old glory now comes in half-mobius-loop form, sporting three of its original red and white stripes each, and nearly five of its stars. Its bright colors proclaim AMERICA day and night, and its traditional and recognizable shape allow quick access to its subtext. Because to wear such a ribbon on the back of one\'s car is to assert not only that one supports our troops; it reminds us whose troops these are. They are AMERICA\'S troops. Do you support AMERICA? Do you support her troops? Are you AMERICAN?
And yet I\'m unsure about the souped-up model, about the glitzy red-white-and-blue-\"support-our-troops\" support-ribbon. I may be old-fashioned, but I prefer a quieter, more stately approach. And that\'s why my car will soon be sporting that strange confluence of quiet assertiveness and bombastic pride, the no-writing-red-white-and-blue-support-ribbon. I will, however, allow my fervent display of militaristic pride one small show of flare: I believe I will \'hang\' it around my radio antenna, to thereby give a sense of realism to my sticker. A realism that makes people double-take, wondering if the sticker is not a sticker but a real ribbon. A ribbon as real as my love for AMERICA, as real as my will to support our troops, as real as my four dollars and ninety-five cents.