Notes on Dallas

I just spent two months in Dallas. Tremendously nice, decent, curteous people; heirs of the South. All of my "friends" chuckled and told me before I left that I would probably come back a liberal after stewing in the repulsive Bush juices all summer.

They were wrong. If anything, I'm a bit more conservative. Why you ask? It was the bumper-stickers, of course.

I was raised in Berkeley, CA. The Bay Area is a punishment likely to turn any thinking person against the liberal spectrum, but its hallmark is the bumper sticker. It all began with "Save the Whales" and has now become "Everyone who disagrees with me and Mao is a bastard." I invite you all to visit Berkeley and see. It is borderline unbelieveable. The public vitriol and insults strewn about on '78 Volvo station wagons is impressive. What is most odd though is that no Republican is likely to ever see the insults... They aren't welcome in the region, and the Volvos certainly wouldn't make it on a freeway. Perhaps that is significant. Being that self-righteous in front of an adoring audience isn't very difficult, but to throw trash in someone else's house takes cohones of a different size.

I was assured that Dallas was simply the conservatives Berkeley. I was prepared for graffiti endorsing intimacy with cousins, public cross burnings at local malls, gas-driven checkers boards, etc.

I was shocked. There is a thriving gay community in Dallas, and more mixed clubs (gay/straight) than here in L.A.; loud Democrats; nice architecture; good public schools... Dallas is actually a very nice place, though too flat for my taste. Then there are the bumper stickers.

Firstly, yes, everyone does drive an SUV, and yes that is irritating, BUT... there are many "W" bumper stickers, but not much else. The Dallas political bumper stickers (which are somewhat few and far between) are not insulting, not childish, not vindictive. They state a preference for a politician (several Democrat endorsements on cars that were not burning, despite my friends assurances from California) or a policy, and then they end. They are not clever, not angry, not self-righteous.

The Dallas culture is one of spontenaity in the Nietzschean sense, and of general courtesy and tolerance. In short, Dallas culture is what Berkeley culture claims to be (and seemingly believes it is).

I encourage all who have beliefs, but no experience in both places to take a peek at both... Just read the bumper stickers. Both say more than perhaps the car-paint haters meant to.