Even boy from Brussels
used to sow bad seeds
Perhaps you saw the bumper sticker from several years back that showed a little boy peeing on President Obama.
I was shocked to see such blatant disrespect to our president. At the time I simply branded the man behind the wheel (never saw a woman) as a bigot. I thought: “What a terrible image for West Virginia” and thought “there’s always one in ever crowd.”
Recently I have been reading a mystery by Louise Penny where the author mentioned a statue entitled “Maneken Pis” of a landmark bronze statue of a boy urinating in a fountain in Brussels (Belgium). Suddenly it dawned on me, “that’s the Bumper Sticker Boy.” Ms. Penny continued that the statue traditionally is the symbol of victory over one’s enemies.
That bumper sticker now assumed an expanded meaning that hinted why this little Boy traveled from Europe to West Virginia and why it came during the last days of the Obama presidency.
Was this Russian propaganda; a symbol brought here to stir up racism and hatred while a black president was still in office? Was the image distributed to organized groups — neo-Nazis — as a symbol of white dominance over people of color and immigrants? I think so.
A friend of mine mentioned that the Mueller Report described a deceased miner’s photo that was distributed by Russians in southern West Virginia to cause trouble at about the same time as the Obama sticker.
Intelligence professionals warn us that Putin is sowing the seeds of racial, ethnic and religious hate among all democracies. It’s time to realize that we are at war that is more insidious than those we fought and died for on the battlefield. It’s an invasion, an infiltration of our homeland.
I know our president calls it all a gigantic hoax, but I saw it with my own eyes on a truck’s bumper right here on W.Va. 7 in Sabraton. Our democracy is in danger from enemies like Putin and our enemy is being assisted by some of our misguided neighbors and certain leaders who are spreading hate and distrust of “others.” We must not succumb to this hate and fear if our democracy is to survive.
Robert Shumaker
Morgantown
