I live in New Jersey, a basically democratic state. By now during most election years every scrap of land along any roadside is festooned with little election signs. They are scattered everywhere on front lawns, along the roadsides almost anywhere. Most people are always eager to state their parties allegiance and encourage others to vote. This year is very different, the roadsides are bare, there are few if any signs. As I take my daily walks around our neighborhood I see no signs at all on peoples lawns. There are a few for the local school board election but nothing else. Until I came one house on a neighboring street to mime. This one was festooned with Printed Trump signs, American flags and some hand written signs as well.
I was shocked! The first thing that entered my head was ‘I had no idea this guy was a sexist, racist bigot’.
To me, that unbidden thought was even more shocking. I forced myself to walk on and think about what just popped into my head.
It was scary. When I saw those signs on my neighbours lawn it was as if someone had just told me a sex offender had been placed in my neighborhood. The people in this house were not just republicans anymore they were sexists and racist, they could be dangerous and should be avoided.
That was when I realized that this election has divided America like no other election every has. In the past we watched the opposing parties debate, listened to the TV and radio advertisements, went and voted then got on with life. If the person who lived down the street from you voted for the other party so what, that was their choice.
This year stating allegiance to Trump is not just saying you’re a republican it’s staying you believe in what this horrid man is saying. You think its fine to treat women as objects and deride them, you think its acceptable to treat anyone who is not white as lower class and basically not worthy of your attention. If you put those signs on your lawn you are declaring to the world that you believe all these things.
Perhaps it’s a good thing. If that is what these people believe, voluntarily putting signs out so everyone knows how you feel means we can now avoid them or at least take a lot more care if we have to deal with them.
Over lunch that day with a girlfriend I told her about my experience and how I shocked and alarmed I felt. She nodded at me in total agreement. She told me that they were thinking of having a ‘Florida room’ put on their house and had been talking to different contractors. One of them started talking politics and said he liked Trump and supported him. As soon as he was gone she told her husband that she did not want to hire him.
She had the same fears I did. If he was a Trump supporter surely the people he hired to work for him were too. A totally unfounded leap but one I could understand her taking.
My friend did not want to have contractors around who thought about women the way Trump does. She said she would not feel safe if she was alone in the house with such contractors working there.
Something like this would never have happened before this election. During the last election if the contractor has told her he intended to vote for Mitt Romney I don’t think it would have mattered at all and she would still have hired him. Looking at this reaction I suspect that this will be the response of many people to businesses and people who have shown that they support Trump. They wont want to deal with them because they are seen as dangerous and disrespectful, and I cant imagine many people wanting to have normal business dealings with someone who like Donald Trump. How could you ever trust him to do the job property? Since Trump has failed at more businesses than he has ever succeeded in would you want to hire a contractor or buy goods from a company with that kind of reputation, I would not.
This is what Trump has brought us to. An America divided not by political beliefs, not by national issues, but by fear. Fear for women, fear for minorities. Suspicion of a person or businesses ethical makeup. The elimination of this fear was supposed to be what America was all about. Freedom and equality. Trump has knocked America back to ‘the good old days when everyone had to keep a shotgun by the door to fend off raiders’. Is this why there are no election signs in front yards this year? Fear that declaring yourself a democrat is going to bring reprisals not from neighbours who just happen to vote for a different party but by those now seen as sexist, racists bigot republicans?