The Whining Stranger on Politics and Current Events

God Spelled Backwards is Still Dog



Stuck in traffic today, I had the good fortune to be crammed behind another jackassedly big pick-up truck, this time sporting a bumper sticker which read, "If you take the God out of America, it ceases to be America."

Oh, how I wanted to follow my fellow citizen to his destination and remind him that as that ol' loveable democratic homeboy, Thomas Jefferson (who surely articulated the best of democratic ideals while he shamelessly flouted them in practice) once wrote:

"Believing that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."

Alas, the light turned green, my fellow driver, Hoss--ever God-lovin', may he be blessed by Allah--sped away and I didn't get the chance to engage in a lively democratic exchange.

Later, and this is only mildly related, I was sitting in the waiting room at the car lot while my beloved fuel-efficient four-cylinder was getting its scheduled maintenance, and a big blustery bloke walked in, with a flat-top brush cut, and a cigar (!) sticking out of his mouth and an obnoxiously loud cellular phone, the ring tone of which was (I kid you not!) "What Would You Do with a Drunken Sailor." (I know this with certainty since he took three or four calls while we were sitting there.)

Fittingly, when I got back into the car and drove away from the lot, Donald Fagen was singing on my CD player, "In this everlasting twilight, home is just a sad abstraction."