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The world has become so polarized. It feels like every national election has become a life-or-death matter. In 2016, I brought my daughter with me for the first time. I was so excited to have her with me as I voted for the very first woman to make it on the ballot for president.
I spent election night watching my excitement turn to horror as the worst possible candidate, in my opinion, was elected that night.
To me, it didn’t matter who you voted for when you went into that election precinct that November in 2016. The people waiting in my very short line were my neighbors. They were people I waved to and walked beside as I traveled around my neighborhood. Granted, given the composition of my town, it was most likely that we would be voting for the same candidates. However, given the liveliness of our town Facebook group, there was a very real possibility that I would be voting next to someone that disagreed with my politics.
And I am completely okay with that.
My father’s politics couldn’t be more different than my own. But when we are together, we don’t discuss politics. Besides the fact that we don’t agree on the same policies, he lives in an entirely different state and a different town. We don’t have the same local issues that we are voting on. Of course, we are going to approach things differently. We talk about anything and everything except for politics.
And I am okay with that.
When you walk by my house, you can’t tell who I vote for based on the flowers that are growing outside or how I keep up my lawn. Or maybe you can tell.
I was thinking about that as I visited our place up by a lake in New Hampshire for the Fourth of July weekend. On my daily jogs through the backroads, there are always a few Trump 2024 signs (more so than in my neighborhood), but there are also some rainbow-painted rocks and a few “Hate Has No Home” here placards, much to my surprise.
But there is one house that stands out like a sore thumb. Between the beautiful pines and birch trees, the owner has strung up at least twenty gargantuan flags. They hang sadly down from the rope, flapping limply in the breeze. They range in imagery from standard pro-Trump flags to absurdly dystopian imagery, like a picture of a Rambo-ified Trump riding on a tank or flying on the back of an eagle.
Every time I jog past those sad, flapping advertisements of the owner’s derangement, I ask myself why they must shout to the world about how angry they are. The flags indicate to one and all that there is no nuance in this person’s worldview. Only hatred and anger. And an implacable desire to let the world know that they follow only one person.
I sigh, make my jogging music just a little bit louder and jog on. I also tell myself that I will chat more with folks that I see, no matter their political leanings, so that I can learn more about my fellow citizens. So that I can become more connected with the people that I interact with.
I won’t have to plaster my home with political slogans for people to know that I want to find connection with my fellow Americans. I want to light sparklers with them on the Fourth of July. I want to share hot dogs with them as we watch fireflies light up the tangle of blueberry bushes on the lakeside beaches. I want to share my culture with them and to take part in theirs.
Fourth of July and being a patriot to me means opening myself up to folks and not wrapping myself in flags that point our differences rather than seek out our connections.
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