Driven to Distraction by Virtue Signaling

Because nothing says conviction like a slogan that fits on a bumper.

Oct 02, 2025

Driving the other day, I stopped just short of rear-ending a car as I strained to read its mass of bumper stickers. Then, I was pulled up short, as I reread one: “But It Was Assigned Gulf of Mexico at Birth.”

Efficient, I thought, a two-fer: A dig at renaming the body of water, formerly known as the “Gulf of Mexico,” the “Gulf of America,” and one simultaneously striking at the assertion that one can’t unilaterally change a biologically assigned gender.

In the world of virtue signaling, this passed as clever. Never mind that the logic could work backwards as well: If you can’t unilaterally change the Gulf of Mexico’s originally assigned name, then an individual can’t unilaterally change their biologically assigned gender either.

Of course, such is the confused way of virtue signaling.

Many, if not most consciousness-raising phrases also work opposite to the way intended.

For example, “Stopping Racism Starts Here”—which was also on the car ahead—implies that the displaying individuals are the cause of racism and that addressing racism needs to begin by converting them from their racist ways. It sort of makes you want to pull alongside and tell the driver to shape up.

The car pulled away; however, I couldn’t pull out of my immersion in virtue-signaling.

Living in Northern Virginia (which really should be known as “Southern D.C.,” only with lower taxes and crime), I see a lot of virtue-signaling. And being Northern Virginia (or Southern D.C.), most of it runs to a decidedly leftward slant.

You see it a lot—both on a lot of cars and, often, you see a lot of it on individual cars.

If the truth be told, some drivers around here are so socially conscious that they can barely see to drive through their applied flurry of causes and concerns.

I have also come to realize that, ironically enough, many of these virtue signalers do not bother to actually signal with their vehicles’ turn indicators. For most of these I can understand their reluctance to even countenance that they would make a right turn, and they would certainly not want to signal it to society at large.

However, as they appear ever willing to go left, it would seem that they would particularly enjoy signaling this. They don’t. As you read their vehicles, you must also be aware that they either have no idea where they are going or, at the very least, have no intention of informing you of their destination.

You also come to realize that bumper stickers have an unparalleled ability to reduce the most complex issues to idiocy.

Short of space, they are even shorter of thought. Many times, there is no pretense of thought at all. Only anger.

This they can communicate very well. These—usually with a vulgarity attached—are sort of like getting Greta Thunberg to ride shotgun beside you with the window rolled down.

Such bumper stickers make no pretense of attempting to convert the unaligned viewer only offend them or confirm themselves to the other like-minded. However, they do beg the question as to whether virtue signaling bumper stickers ever convince others?

Do people occasionally pull up beside the virtue signaler and confess, “You know, I used to not believe in global warming, but seeing your bumper sticker about it over your car’s tailpipe changed my mind.”

Of course, we all know—and presumably they know, deep down—that virtue signaling is not about changing others’ minds or behavior. Virtue signaling bumper stickers are like tattoos for autos. Like tattoos, they seem to come with a logic that if one is good two is better. And so on and on.

Unlike tattoos, they do not hurt to put on (except to the Honda Civic, but if you’ve made a Honda Civic, you knew that this was coming. Eventually).

Also, unlike tattoos, you don’t have to hurt yourself in trying to remove them. They come off of their own accord—the weather fading away the McGovern ’72, like the candidate himself. Or, you can simply put another over the top of any you may come to regret—like the Harris-Walz 2024 one, after reading her new book.

Virtue signaling here in Southern D.C. is not limited to cars alone. Houses, too, have their yard signs and flags. The yards signs can go into far greater detail than bumper stickers. Yet despite the added space, they come with no greater thought. Only more words. A particular favorite around here is one that tells you that the house’s occupants believe “Love is Love,” among many other things—including apparently that redundant is redundant.

The problem with virtue signaling via yard signs is: How do you ever take them down?

Unlike bumper stickers that live in the limited space of a bumper (or back window), yards have a lot of space—at least, in Southern D.C. So, you can signal many, many virtues. Yet, as with all things, even causes and concerns, which were righteous once, see time take its toll—despite the cause or concern having not been addressed or solved.

So, do you creep out at night and surreptitiously take down your “Fight Climate Change” sign?

Do you hope that another virtue signaling neighbor doesn’t notice that it’s gone?

Flags seemingly make for easier virtue signaling. They are just colors for the most part, so there are no words to slog through with meanings to parse.

However, their simplicity is deceptive.

What once passed for height-of-consciousness virtue signaling, the simple colors of the rainbow, is now a crowded impassioned palette. What do you do with the old rainbow one? Surely, you don’t want to be seen as signaling less than the full panoply of virtue?

Yet new colors are being added all the time. When you buy one, can you go back to where you got it and get a new streak of color to stitch onto your old flag? And what if a color should fall off? After all, Teslas were once their own virtue signaling bumper stickers; now for their drivers to be virtuous, they must sport bumper stickers disavowing Elon Musk.

Even houses of worship in Southern D.C. have virtue signaling signs and flags. At least the leftward-leaning houses of worship do. It used to be that a house of worship was virtue signaling on its own. Just going in meant that you were at least somewhat virtuous—or sought to be… or sought to mask that you weren’t.

No longer is that enough for many houses of worship. They have the same accoutrements of consciousness that the houses do and then some. Of course, they do not tell you anything about the person whose house it actually is—God—but they tell you everything about the congregation. Houses of worship’s virtue signaling is sort of a two-way mirror: While they are enjoying looking at themselves, we can see in at the same time.

The same applies for virtue signaling overall. It allows people to preen in their own self-image. They like what they see. Yet they cannot see what others see of them. To quote Robert Burns: