Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Right-Wing Road-Rage

This (via Atrios) follows on nicely from the previous post:
He goes into reverse and starts screaming at me. I can’t really hear it except for a lot of f-bombs until he gets close. I yell back, “Why were you tailgating me like that? I was already going well over the speed limit!”

He’s now right in front of my driveway. Older guy–55? 60? Big walrus mustache, grey hair, relatively slight build, but kind of tough-looking.

“BECAUSE YOU’RE A FUCKING FAGGOT, FUCKER! YOU FUCK! I SHOULD HAVE FUCKING HIT YOU! I SHOULD HIT YOU NOW!” He goes on in that vein for a bit.
...
He leans out to point at my car bumper. Which is entirely unadorned except for a Kerry-Edwards sticker from 2004.

“YOU FAGGOT YOU VOTED FOR THAT WAR CRIMINAL. I’M GOING TO BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOU.” Guy is turning a shade of purple. I don’t think he’s just putting on a show. He actually sped up, nearly rammed with his car at high speed and is now seriously contemplating attacking me over a bumper sticker. I’m so astonished that I’m speechless. He looks at me, looks at the house, and I think he’s noticing that there’s another car there and therefore maybe someone who is going to call the cops if something happens.

All because of a Kerry 2004 bumpersticker.

I actually witnessed something very similar in my hometown, a very small community in rural Washington State. My brother and I were walking along the main street after getting a coffee or something, a couple years back, and we were at one of the main intersections in town. Suddenly we heard a man yelling and honking. There were a few vehicles waiting to turn left at the stoplight onto the main street, and a middle-aged man in a minivan was yelling and honking at the person in the vehicle in front of him, a 20-something young man in a pickup truck. The young man looked a bit hippyish, and I don't know if it was merely his appearance that set the older man off, or if the truck had an anti-war or anti-Bush sticker or what, but the older man was yelling at him to "go the hell back to Canada" and other nonsense I don't recall. The younger guy looked genuinely confused about what was going on. This guy was really worked up. In the couple of seconds that it took to suss the situation, my brother and I yelled back at the older man, telling him to fuck off and giving him the finger. He suddenly looked taken aback that other people were yelling at him, and as the light changed and he turned on to the main street he started yelling at us, and we just stood there bemused, giving him the finger. I genuinely wondered if he was gonna circle around and try to start something, but he just took off in his minivan.

It's just amazing that somebody could be so incensed by a bumpersticker, or by somebody's personal appearance, that they are on the verge of starting an altercation over it.

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