Signs

I’m worried about my neighbors. I don’t know them personally, or even their names, but I’m worried nonetheless. Every day, I drive by the same few houses with lawn signs supporting Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election.

The regularity with which I drive by these homes lends them a familiarity. Sometimes, in the evening, I can see inside while driving by and spy a lighted dining room or a television screen. From my short glimpses into their homes, everything appears to be completely casual.

There’s an elderly man I’ve seen edging his lawn, shirtless, in ninety-degree heat. He has signs for Trump and every other state and local Republican candidate running this year. Taken for their aesthetic value alone, their bright colors against his stunningly manicured green lawn is a joyful sight. If you didn’t read them as you drove by, you might think, “Well, there is a fun household!” Instead, I see them and contemplate the gravity of our state’s senate race this year and the potential ramifications on balance between the two parties during the next presidential term, and wonder if he is worrying about the same thing for his team.

One of the roads I travel to work is populated with large, moderately luxurious homes on about two acres each, overlooking a majestic state wetland. Two houses, about a quarter mile apart, have Trump signs right at the front of their lawns. In this age where people don’t typically talk to their neighbors much, I wonder if they know each other and if their children play together. Do they cook out together on Sunday afternoons and talk about cutting from education and healthcare to fund Trump’s absurd wall?

And what about the neighbors who live in between the Trump-supporting houses? Are they Democrats whose votes will negate their neighbors’ votes for Trump? Do they have brown skin,  same-sex partners, or observe a non-Christian faith? Do they feel threatened or unsafe living among Trump supporters? Do they even care how their neighbors plan to vote? Perhaps they don’t see or choose not to see, and then I worry for them, too.

But those lawn signs have me bemused; the consternation nags at me. They don’t fit with the landscape of this community as I understand it — everyone I know, even casually, seems nice enough. It’s as if a surrealist plopped these lawn signs into the idyllic scene to jar the audience out of their lull — to wake us up from our champagne and canapés to the bleak, perverted reality that there is fear and hate in our midst.

My default is always to look for and uphold the good in people. When it comes to my neighbors and Donald Trump, however, concern takes over. I question the inherent goodness of the people who live in those houses and, while many would be derisive and dismissive to anyone who so overtly supports a bigoted megalomaniac, my response is to try to understand what motivates them.

There is an important distinction between being a Republican or not liking one of the other candidates and being a Trump supporter. Putting up a Trump sign on one’s lawn is tantamount to raising a Confederate flag — it’s a way of saying, “I publicly support and endorse an institution that exists for the advancement of whiteness, white privilege, and patriarchal values. I am unashamed to announce to my community that I believe the majority of you are less valuable to society than I am, and if I could, I would eradicate you because your existence threatens my conception of how the world is supposed to be.” This is the bare, brutal truth of the status quo. This is what the old guard would uphold.

Whenever I see a Trump sign in my community, I wonder what that person is afraid of. Not the overt fear of “brown people” or “the gay agenda” or “taxes,” but the deeper fears that inform their personal moral code — the “why” of it all. I have not yet been able to put my finger on that particular pulse, but I am convinced that that kind of hatred and intolerance has roots beyond narrow-mindedness passed down from grandma and grandpa.

While I don’t tolerate it or abide it, I recognize that life experiences have the power to form bias and bigotry in a person. And I just want to sit my neighbors down and take their hands, look into their eyes, and get them to talk. I want to really listen to them. Not to the rhetoric they parrot like a skipped record, but to the stories behind it. I want them to witness me see them as whole people.

I want to go with them back to the time they were scared, victimized, disenfranchised, or invisible and soothe those wounds. Tell them that everything is actually already all right. Help them understand that they don’t have to fear or hate anyone in order to be unapologetically alive and thriving.

It really sounds like “I’d like to buy the world a Coke,” I know. But my desire to understand is rooted in the hope that I can someday reach those people and help them realize a more loving and tolerant perspective. The power for healing is beyond our comprehension. I’ve seen it happen, I’ve been part of it, and hope that it keeps happening.

Scholars suggest that the only way we can systematically overcome bigotry in our society is through direct conversation, and confronting it every time we see it. While I don’t have much  influence over strangers and am not likely to start knocking on the doors of my neighbors, I do have your attention here, now. Is there a Trump sign on your lawn or in your neighborhood? What are you afraid of? Sit with me and let’s talk about it.

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The above is a personal essay that that was submitted to the Yeah Write Super Challenge essay contest in August 2016; the prompt for this essay was to include the word "bemused." Please visit Vote411.org and take advantage of their tools for learning more about the voting process and the candidates running for election in your city, county, state, and country. You can also check out the League of Women Voters and join efforts with other people in your community to make your voices count on the issues that matter to you. Their non-partisan membership is open to all people 18 and older.