Bahá’í are to refrain from politics, in order to promote unity (and not encourage chaos, havoc, or fruitless intellectual meleé), but what are we supposed to do when we think of a great punchline for a political bumper sticker?
Not say it. Or certainly not post it on a publicly-readable website.
Which internal dialogue continues with “but I want to say it; how often do you get to actually use something like this?” What’s option #2? How about try to neutralize it by removing the context?
Suppose that a government was, for whatever reasons, and I have to say that it happens pretty often, running a deficit, and, maybe, the things that the money was being spent on might or might not actually bear useful fruit for future generations who would probably have to pay off that deficit. Consider also that people hadn’t yet forgotten the music of the Rolling Stones. You might make up a bumper sticker that looked kind of like this:
All he left me was a loan.
Fortunately, very few people will ever read this.
Most interesting. It is so HARD sometimes not to say something. It’s not that the saying of the something is necessary wrong or forbidden — but more that the hearer has to be attuned to it in just the “right” way. The speaker has to be conveying it as valuable information — that is, as information that has a truly positive (enlightening and truth-directing) purpose.
A bumper sticker with the “forbidden” content left out. A novel idea! Perhaps a whole new enterprise. It isn’t easy to come up with contentless lines!
I’m not saying what I don’t give a fig for. How about you?
That’s another unmentionable idea.
Refute what is vain – if you can figure it out.
Don’t vote for … amyone bad.