In Oregon I use heavy boots to place signs beyond thickets of blackberry brambles. In the desert I use the cool of the dawn to place signs on mountainsides almost impossible to reach in the heat of the day. In Berkeley I use homeless people with solar. Adapting to and using the terrain to your advantage is one of the oldest rules in warfare, discovered around the time we realized it’s better to be the uphill guy in a rockfight. And there’s no better analogy for freewayblogging than guerrilla warfare, except we use the first amendment instead of the second one.
“You need to be aware of the terrain and its affect on your soldiers, as well as the enemy. This will allow you to fight with advantage.” -Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The main advantage the sign poster has over drivers is that drivers are essentially a captive audience, surrounded by things easily seen but not easily reached. Next time you’re driving, consider your surroundings in those terms and try to take them to the extremes: look for places that are easy to see but practically impossible to reach, like this:
That’s it. That’s the game. It’s you and your signs vs. those who would take them down and for once everything’s rigged in your favor. You pick the time, place and manner of posting. You decide what the sign says, how large or how small and whether you say it once or over and over again.
You act, they can only react. And trust me, they’re lazy as hell. The greatest defense your sign has is people’s laziness, sloth and unwillingness to get involved. We should change the national motto from E. Pluribus Unum to whatever the Latin is for “That’s not my job.”
And last but not least there’s always content-based protection. Here in California it’s relatively easy to enjoy our constitutional right to protest — other states, not so much. Despite the fact it’s absolutely unconstitutional, police and other authorities have no problem taking down protest signs while leaving flags and "patriotic displays" untouched. If you live in a red state, allow me to suggest this highly patriotic display saluting the brave men and women of law enforcement?
Here are a few other clever ways of ensuring visibility and protection of your First Amendment protected free speech, but let’s face it, we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves. The problem isn’t that Republicans aren’t taking down our signs: the problem is that we aren’t putting any up. Unfortunately my appeal to Vets hasn’t quite kicked in and my years of attempting to crowdsource this project to this community have summoned up less than I could accomplish on my own in a day.
This isn’t your fault, it’s mine. As Shakespeare once wrote: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” What he forgot to mention are those that have greatness thrust upon them but happen to suck at it, which is what I’m afraid is the case here. I like to consider myself pretty good at a lot of things, but salesmanship and leadership ain’t two of them. That I happened to stumble upon a way for John and Jane Q. Public to reach half a million or so of their John and Jane Q. Fellow-Citizens is just one of a great many cruel ironies in my life.
But this one’s important because it should be obvious by now our country is not only being led by a traitor, but that treason isn’t even the worst thing about him. And worse than that, the entire GOP, especially the leadership, has been acting squirrelly and odd — odd in the way people are when they’re trying to act normal — odd like someone who’s poisoned your wine and trying to make small talk while waiting for you to drink.
Trump, with or without the help of Vladimir Putin, has put the Republican Party in a desperate, all-or-nothing situation where going for broke may be the only way to keep from going to jail. There’s little question in my mind they’re going to try to illegally seize power (again...) and probably with help from overseas. (Again.) And honestly, can you really blame them? If there’s one thing we should’ve all learned from Bush V. Gore it’s that there’s absolutely no consequence to illegally seizing power here. If you steal an election in this country you’ll be sentenced to at least four years of community service spent running it. And let’s face it, the only way Republicans know how to run this country is into the ground.
It’s going to save us all a lot of time, money, heartache and probably lives if we let the GOP know in advance that stealing an election this time isn’t going to be another Bush V. Gore where we have a couple of demonstrations, ask each other “Where’s the outrage?” grumble about “next time...” and go shuffling back to business as usual. We need to shame the Republican Party into becoming Americans again, and let them know whatever they’ve got planned we’re not going along with it this time. Being led by Dick Cheney was bad enough, but we’ve gotta draw the goddam line at Vladimir Fucking Putin. We need to show them that whatever it is, it’s not going to work. We need to show them right up front that we’re gonna be ungovernable. Frankly I’m surprised we’re not doing that already.