Stealing for politics

Someone stole the Obama car magnets that were on my and my wife's car last night. I'm not even that mad about it because it pretty much proves everything that I had previously assumed was true about McCain supporters. While there's no way for me to know whether the people that stole the magnets were actually supporters of McCain, they obviously despise Obama enough to steal someone else's property to further their political objectives. The theft of the magnets is definitely something that would support McCain's cause and if these people aren't supporters, they probably should be.

If doing something like this would actually accomplish something politically or bring anything positive to them, the campaign, or bring anything negative upon me I think I could better understand why you would steal a magnet. The thing is, things like this just go against the cause that you're fighting for and make other people take you and what you stand for less seriously.

This reminds me of all of the people that are stealing or defacing the "Yes on Prop 8" signs that I've been hearing and reading about. While I fully support and feel the same way that these people do (vote "No" on Prop 8 to support basic civil rights!), stealing or defacing someone else's property is not the way to get your message across. It gives people the wrong message and makes them think that you're just interested in furthering your own agenda instead of unbiasedly providing information about your cause and intelligently debating those that disagree.

There are much better ways to support something that you believe in without disrespecting others and their property. Volunteering at a polling station, spending time at your local candidate's election office, or donating to your candidate's campaign are a fantastic way to do this.

Whoever stole our magnets accomplished a couple of things and failed miserably at another. None of these things were likely their intention, though I'm not surprised that they wouldn't have considered these outcomes prior to their decision.

First, they made themselves look stupid. Apparently they're not confident enough with their decision to support a particular political candidate or intelligent enough to know why they support one and dislike the other. Stealing (and probably defacing others) objects that support the opposting candidate are the only thing they know to try and show support for their candidate, as counter-productive as it may be. Without the intelligence, courage, or confidence to initiate discussion or participate in a debate about their views and support for a candidate, stealing something late at night provides them an anonymous and cowardly way to pretend to be active in politics.

Second, they wound up supporting the candidate that they were trying to remove support for. Stealing our magnets do not make us support Obama any less or support McCain any more. Instead they essentially donated an extra $20 to the Obama campaign, which is going to be used to purchase two more car magnets that will replace those that were stolen. On top of that, they've earned Twitter updates and this blog post that likely won't garner much support for John McCain or his supporters.

And finally, they didn't make me mad. Letting myself get upset about something like this would give them one benefit for stealing the magnets. I'm not upset. It's a small annoyance in the scheme of things, but I'm not even going to let it annoy me that much. I refuse to give this uneducated coward any sort of (even if indirect) sense of accomplishment for what they did.