(Trump) Sign of the Times

 

So here’s what happened.

Last week, my 14-year-old daughter and her 15-year-old friend walked to a neighbor’s house, seven down from our own, to swim in their small backyard pool. On the way home, three houses away and across the street from our house, they encountered a Trump yard sign. Their conversation, according to their report and the video they naturally took, went like this:

 

Friend: Oh my god. A Trump sign. Have you ever seen one before?

Daughter: No. Never.

Friend: Me neither.

Daughter: What should we do?

Friend: I don’t know. Should we kick it over?

Daughter: Okay.

Daughter: [Kick.]

Neighbor: Hey! What are you doing to my Trump sign?

At which point they skedaddled on home as fast as their legs could carry them. This will not surprise anyone who knows teenagers. They seem tough, but they’re not.

I was in the living room when they arrived. Though ‘arrived’ is probably the wrong word. What they actually did was lurch into the house, slamming the door behind them, their legs collapsing under them as they did that hysterical half-laugh, half-cry thing, the story bursting from them as they thrust their phones forward so I could watch the video.

See! Oh my God. Mom, look, isn’t this crazy?

I did look, quickly — this all happened very quickly — at 7 seconds of video, and then looked at my husband with Parent Wide-Eyes, which indicate concern. He looked back at me with Parent Clench-Eyes, which indicate anger. He was pissed.

Let me just say, straightaway, that this was extremely out of character for our daughter, who hates getting in trouble.

My biggest fear in the world, she tells me later, when she is sobbing on the porch, because not only myself and my husband, but also her grandfather and her aunt, have expressed their surprise and dismay at what she’s done, is that you and dad will be disappointed in me.

While this is partly the hyperbole of a teenager, it’s pretty true of our daughter, who prides herself on being a good child, a good citizen. She’s grown up with us, after all, and we are fairly intense, morally speaking. We don’t let a whole lot slide. Politically, we’re liberals, but parenting-wise, I’d say we’re more middling-conservative.

Here’s some background.

We moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, from Portland, Oregon, just a month ago, for many reasons: Portland was getting too expensive. My husband’s stepmother died unexpectedly in February. My husband’s dad found himself suddenly alone in a house that was too big, both physically and emotionally, without her. We’d talked for years about bucking the nuclear family model in favor of an intergenerational one, and now seemed the perfect time for us to take that model for a test drive.

When making our decision, we knew it would be difficult to leave the comfort that comes from living around a majority of people whose views align with ours. Many “values” Portland prides itself on are ones we share—LGBT rights, ardent environmentalism, and Bernie Sanders-style bank-busting, for example. In Wilmington, we knew, we would be pretty far to the left of a lot of people. Friends in Portland worried about us coming to a place that seemed to them — and I know this sounds terrible — a touch regressive. I assured them that once here I would be a force for “good.” I imagined myself joining anti-bathroom-bill protests, maybe, or going door to door for the Democrats. I said, If everyone with Portland values lives in Portland, what good does that do?

Pretty smug, really.

Nothing is ever simple, and neither is any place. Certainly North Carolina isn’t. It is, after all, a purple state. It went to Obama in 2008. Romney took it in 2012, but it was close. The people here — like everywhere — run the gamut politically, socially, economically, racially, and personally. There are nuances within every region, every neighborhood. And we are the newcomers here. It’s not nice to come to a new place and start throwing your beliefs around. Seek to understand rather than to be understood, that’s what I want to do. At least in theory.

In our new neighborhood, I’m already in a walking group. Every single sweaty morning I meet up with three women to walk a three-mile loop. One is the daughter of Greek immigrants. She asks, on the morning after the newspapers announces the North Carolina Voter ID law has been struck down, Can someone tell me this–why can’t they just get an ID? It takes five minutes.

Another of the ladies, a self-professed “somewhat conservative liberal” who works as a nurse educator at a local trauma rehab center, says, Don’t let her fool you. She’s the most Democratic Republican you’ll ever meet. She goes on to tell me about the troubled high school kid the Greek woman took in for years. How he’d gotten off drugs thanks to her. How her daughter spoke up at the school-board meeting in favor of bussing kids from our neighborhood to the inner city school.

A third woman has one son in the Navy. He’s out at sea. Her other sons go to a charter school. Though I don’t yet have a handle on her politics, I do know that, according to the nurse, she’s the one who always follows up later with facts.

Apparently their discussions get pretty heated. This is an opinionated group, but there’s one opinion they share. In the nurse’s words: We run the gamut politically, but there’s one thing we all agree on: Donald Trump cannot become president.

Here’s some more background.

My daughter’s grandfather, whom we now live with in Wilmington, was the Democratic precinct captain for the 2008 and 2012 elections. The last thing he needs is for word to get out that his liberal hooligan granddaughter is running through the neighborhood trampling people’s property and undermining their right to free speech, especially people of the Republican sort. Two days after the incident — I don’t know what to call it, though The Kicking has kind of a nice ring to it — he is firmly in the camp that she should say sorry, not just to us, but to the neighbor.

I sit with him in his van, a southern storm raging outside us, following a tense trip to Lowe’s to buy grass seed. In addition to attempting to understand the dynamics of a brand new town, I am trying to figure out a whole new kind of garden. In Portland, all you have to do to grow something is throw it in the general direction of the ground. Here — well, I have no idea yet, but it looks like it’s a lot harder.

Her grandpa thought we, the parents, had handled the situation poorly. Felt we were too easy on our daughter, who, from his perspective, seemed to take what happened too lightly. To be fair, he didn’t know about the many apologies she gave to us, or about the hours she spent crying on the porch, embarrassed by what she’d done.

He says, When I was young, I lived with my grandfather. He was the only registered Democrat in his small Illinois Republican town. I can tell you right now, he would have made me march right back over there and take responsibility for what I’d done.

I sit and listen as rain falls outside the van, making rivers on the glass.

I say, Yes. I hear you. And if you think she should go apologize, she will, though I know in my gut that I don’t want to make her do that.

He says, If we kick over signs without apologizing, we are no better than those tacitly or vocally supporting Trump’s calls for violence. I nod in agreement.

Now, days have gone by — a week and a half — and I have not made her go.

During that time Donald Trump’s rhetoric has become more divisive, so much so that much of the party he represents have seen fit to denounce him.

Also during that time I have looked for, and overlooked, opportunities to talk to the Trump-sign man myself. One morning, after the walk, I see a young guy, mid-twenties, maybe, pull out of the driveway in a big black truck. There was no time to talk to him, then, and to be honest, I found him a little intimidating.

But there he was, a person whose life, and whose opinions, I could — and, I tell myself, probably should — seek to understand. I hold as a deep and abiding belief the principle that every single person, from the best behaved to the worst, deserves my compassion, respect, and, as far as I can muster it, my love. Even people whose ideas I find destructive. Why? Well, for lots of reasons. They, like me, did not invent the world. They’re just trying to live here. And it’s not an easy place to live. There are so many things to fear. Unfortunately, a fearful heart can too often become a hardened heart. A hardened heart doesn’t need to be bashed or ridiculed or told it’s ugly or scary or bad, it needs to be handled with compassion and clarity and care.

On the other hand, people with hardened hearts should not, I believe, be allowed to run the show. They lack the awareness, kindness, and courage needed not only to live in this difficult world, but to help re-invent it.

I do neighbor smile-nod at him as he drives by, but later in the day I don’t look to see if he’s come home. I don’t cross over to say hello. I stay on my side of the street.

Something my daughter said to me during her crying hours on the porch stays with me.

Why aren’t you doing anything to stop Trump? Why am I the only one in the whole family who has done anything about it?

I tell her we can find productive ways to work against Donald Trump. We can register people to vote. We can phone bank for a candidate we feel is less divisive.

These are not my ideas. These are not the province of an overly moralistic people. They are the very rules we have established as essential to a working American democracy. And right now, a vocal minority, led by a vocal destroyer, are refusing to play by those rules.

My daughter, too, has broken two of the rules. She has impeded someone’s right to property and his right to free speech. In a smallish way, but still. It is our job to keep our side of the street clean. I know this.

Why can’t I make her do it?

Believe me, I’m very clear that this would be a much easier piece to write if it ended with my self-righteous report that she apologized and learned her lesson and we did our part for American democracy and civil discourse. I’m the one who is not tying this story up with a neat bow. If it had been a Romney sign, or even a Cruz sign, people whose core beliefs and policies I am completely against, I would have walked her over there myself.

But it wasn’t. It was a Trump sign. And that is important here. Not for the moral rightness of it. It’s still wrong. But here’s the thing. Many children are on to Trump, and see him for exactly what he is: a bully. Have we not wronged the children of our nation by allowing someone like Donald Trump to get this close to the presidency? Do we not owe them a pretty serious explanation, gained by way of some pretty serious soul searching? How can we require civility from our children when we don’t demand it of our leaders? Do we, individually and collectively, know what our democracy is based on, and how to protect it? A Trump sign represents what Trump represents. Support for his hateful beliefs, hateful speech, and hateful calls for violence. That includes the comment made at a rally less than half an hour ago, less than half a mile from where I sit, on the campus of The University of North Carolina-Wilmington.

He first worked up the crowd by saying that Hillary Clinton will essentially gut the Second Amendment by choosing liberal judges for the Supreme Court. Then he delivers the thinly veiled call for violence.

If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people—maybe there is, I don’t know.

In America, in the America I believe in, a candidate may represent a difference of opinion, but not a difference as to whether you may or may not joke about your opponent being assassinated.

What if it our daughter had torn down a Nazi flag? Well, I guess that depends on when and where the sign was. 1930s Germany? I would argue that her moral duty would be to tear it down, to protest evil. Here, in 2016? I would argue that her moral duty would be to protect the person’s right to free speech, but also to exercise her right to free speech by standing across the street and mounting a protest.

What I really want is something I can’t have — an America that acts according to its stated principles.

In my Rockwell-ian fantasy, the neighbor is a conservative, kindly man. My daughter kicks over his sign. We explain to her all the reasons it is wrong to do so. She goes to him and apologizes. He chides her. But because he’s wise, he takes the opportunity to provide a lesson in American civics. To explain that here in America differences in political opinion are decided through the democratic process. That everyone’s voice is heard. That violence is not the order of the day, or the price for dissent. That we can strongly disagree with one another but still be neighborly. But given how protesters are treated at his rallies — booed and threatened and punched and ejected — I don’t trust that any such interaction will be instructive or constructive. Deep down, I think he may have forfeited his right to an apology by supporting someone who comports himself so anti-Democratically.

Just to be clear, this is not about the issues. If I sat down and talked to a Trump supporter — and I probably will, as my son plays football and many of his teammates parents’ are surely not voting for Clinton. Come to think of it, the couple at whose house my daughter was swimming are life-long Republicans, too. The husband is a retired police officer. They may well be voting for Trump, and I feel obligated to say that I like them very much. Anyway, If I sat down with a Trump supporter we would probably agree on several points. I too think ISIS is scary. I’m afraid of terrorists. I don’t take that threat lightly. Nor do I take lightly the decimation of the middle class and the white lower class. Though in my view they are victims of the Republican policies they support, I can definitely relate to their anger, and feel their sense of powerlessness and pain. I firmly believe that we should be outraged by the recent politically motivated killing of police officers, though I am just as convinced that police officers must work to change the culture that leads to the disproportionate killing of people of color.

This is about trying to find our way, collectively, to some kind of America we can all live in together.

Who has claim to the moral high ground? Is it possible that our daughter can claim some, for her activist spirit and willingness to stand up for what she believes in? Surely her grandfather can, for his certainty that the most important thing to do is to respect your neighbor. The Trump supporter, with the sign he has no idea has sent us into such turmoil, can too. I’m pretty clear that I do not. I’m okay with that for now. It’s good to sit humbly in the knowledge that I can just as easily sow the seeds of bad behavior as others can.

As I sit in my indecision, trying to finish this story, Leigh, one of my most gracious friends, calls. She was born and raised in Virginia and now lives in Portland. I explain my dilemma to her. I tell her that my conflict lies in which set of values trumps the other, no pun intended. The set that tells me to stand up against bullying, meanness, and lies, or the set that tells me to trust in and follow my beloved principles of democracy, and the principles of loving my neighbor.

Leigh says it’s a delicate balance. She’s right. Not only within myself, but within our nation. If we can’t find this balance, or at the very least seek it, we may fall into an abyss from which we can’t return.

Me: Yes, but should I make her go apologize?

Leigh: How about this: Go full-on Southern style. Have her bake some blueberry muffins, then walk over and leave them on his porch. Make a card that has some apologetic humor in it. I think you could all feel good about that.

I like this idea. I have not yet committed to it, but I like it. I hope the coming weeks find me learning — and teaching — lessons like this. Lessons in tolerance. I hope they find me living a combination of all my highest principles, my light raised high as Lady Liberty’s.

I hope that for our country, too.

 

[Image credit: Wiki commons.]