The First Amendment

A bit earlier this evening, my wife sent me out to retrieve dinner. In a neighborhood I was passing through, I drove passed this graffiti. On my way home, I parked the car at an empty school across the intersection, got out, and took a picture. This was worth it. The state I live in is one of America’s most “red” states. In Missouri, we are right in the middle of a very conservative swath of American states. To find graffiti like this just….it makes you hit your brakes, stop your car, park it, and get out and take a picture.

Why black and white when the picture came from a big new iPhone known for capturing color extraordinarily well? A stylistic choice. For one, we’re wrapping up one of the hottest midwestern summers on record. That means, there’s just not a lot of color to see. The grass is dying fast, the trees are green, and there’s only some blue sky. I must be honest with the audience – I try not to bring too many political opinions to my site, but they still show up because art is sometimes political. I did not vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020. I did not vote for him in 2024 either. The first amendment does guarantee such liberties as protesting your leadership – though that does not make defacing public properly legal. A sign of your own lawfully obtained materials would have been a more constitutionally friendly choice than a public power station.

You’ll also note above the graffiti is a plaque saying “uninterruptible power supply,” even more ironic given our president’s clear lust for power and a seemingly uninterruptible support of conservative America to fuel it.

Whoever did this could have done it in a more lawful way, but at the same time, I have to admit that they aren’t wrong. Shoot photos, not each other!