I have to confess that I had more fun with the ‘If You Have to Say You’re a Man You Ain’t a Man’ piece than I should have. As I was writing it, I felt a little bad for taking so much license. Now that its posted and the more I think of it, it rings even more true. Since the big boys have all the serious election stuff covered pretty well, I’ll take one more stretch of license, go out on the street and come up with some more profile’n truth. My focus here are the local homes sporting Harris-Walz signs.
My day occupation exposes me to numerous communities in the county and after a while, you feel like you know the inhabitants of different homes. How they keep the house, the landscaping, their cars, their schedule coming and going, their apparent station in life, and the dozens of little semiotic clues they inadvertently show facing the public. Electioneering signs are a considerable ‘tell’.
As for the county, it’s prosperous and growing but by no means glitzy. One major corridor is considerably ‘challenged’, economically and otherwise, and the flip side are many varieties of farms, few of which are any longer scaled to big-ag demands. Scattered throughout are comfortable homesteads that sometimes belie the extent of comfortable wealth therein. There’s also a handful of hidden grand estates and some old money and blue blood tucked in some older quiet enclaves. In contemporary times and probably much longer, the county has skewed conservative and mostly Republican. It has a prominent history during and after the American Revolution that I suspect very few people are aware of. Overall, we are solidly middle class.
Democrats have always had some stake here, just not as a majority, thus we are a target for larger forces to invade, primarily by pushing high density housing followed by Democrat friendly constituencies. Overall, we have lower taxes and better schools based on merit but I doubt they’re happy with that; think California moving to Texas. Democrats want to bring the county into their fold and beam us up to their mothership. That’s the basic meaning of the Kamala/Walz signs.
I’ve wondered why any of our residents enjoying the fruits of our conservative tradition upon moving here, would want to crap in their own tub? The county has a reputation for affordable sanity and people move here for these benefits; which makes it all the more perplexing that they want to advance the political party that advances the agenda that has demonstrated the tragic opposite of what this county represents. With this piece here, I create some fictitious households all sporting Harris-Walz signs and try to get in their head a little to figure out what they hope to bring to their community. All of these are based on real homes that I pass in my local travels but the inhabitants are fictional constructs based on superficial roadside impressions. I have no idea what the real inhabitants real story and disposition is but let’s read the signs and make an educated guess:
Jen and Cathy, a lesbian couple came from several states away and somehow decided to set up camp in the middle of ‘Trump country’, deep Trump country due to its remote rural surrounding many miles even from even a small town unless you count the one that’s became functionally extinct by 1953. The house is situated on what used to be a farm but is now leased fields and sold lots for small modular houses and people seeking to live on the cheap. Jen and Cathy didn’t just move here, they’re missionaries for the cause, standing up to what they think are withering looks from their neighbors and attending the local United Methodist church which they, along with a few other outlanders, have managed to take over from eight blue haired women with just three withered husbands left living among them. They keep a substantial ‘PRIDE’ flag hanging on their front porch and a ‘Love Is Love’ banner hanging on the rail. Of course, the preacher is 100% supportive of their mission. They believe in Kamala Harris over abortion, deeply, as they both had them – Jen had two – back when they dated men and Jen was married to a guy for eighteen months. In fact, abortion is what ended the marriage. Nevertheless, Jen and Cathy talk about maybe one day adopting a kid, even now. In the meantime, Harris 2024.
Jack and Camille are long time Democrats and by long time, that means their whole lives since they joined up while in college back in the mid-seventies and never looked back. Their home is older, comfortable, even a bit bespoke as it’s situated in a community among other houses with a historical pedigree to include signage of a date of inception, ca 1827. Jack and Camille, now both retired, have been through thick and thin for their party and its struggle in the county, attending countless BBQs and cocktail parties where they mix with pearl wearing tanned matrons fresh back from St Croix just in time for the next election season to start. Many a night going home, they talked between themselves about all the changes they’ve seen pushed their way, but they’ve never attempted to question the enthusiastic, earnest, maybe angry bearers of new initiatives and loyalties. Jack and Camille started out as anti-war people and yet they’ve quietly swallowed the new Democrat profile, doing things like religiously sending tens of billions to Ukraine instead of our own poverty-stricken communities, and the whole beatdown of RFK Jr. this year and last. Never once did they open their mouth about it to their friends at the fund-raiser while the ice in their gin and tonic tinkled away all evening. They were also passionate about civil rights, but they sit in their easy chairs at night wondering if Kamala’s program to subsidize only black businesses is really just. It’s like this with everything. They dropped that Harris-Walz sign in their lawn with pride, but not without a lot doubt, but they will never tell. They are good and loyal Democrats.
Benny and Jill are on the other side of the economic spectrum, hard working with a boy and girl in middle school and with Democrat roots in the family and Benny’s time in the union at a job that no longer exists due to technology. They consider themselves fortunate (now) to have a modest single-family house they bought twelve years ago because they know full well, if they were starting out now, they’d never be able to afford it, in fact, they’d not be able to afford to rent either. They hear about inflation on the news but don’t really understand it, but they feel they should agree with Kamala Harris and their watching of The View and other such shows when they’re told Trump is to blame for all the inflation and how no one can afford anything anymore. After all, if a President is rich and he uses his position to get richer like they said, it’s going to affect everything, right? That’s what they were told and it makes sense to them. Of course, abortion is also a big deal to them but not from any personal experience and not from any real future consideration except to say they want their daughter to have the choice to abort any baby that would come along at any time and for any reason. That’s the only compassionate thing, right? What kind of monster would not want their kid to have an abortion if she damn well pleases? Benny and Jill are ‘all in’ as they say, for Harris-Walz so they didn’t hesitate when Benny’s aunt asked them to put a sign in their lawn.
Geoff and Lily are young, upwardly mobile, well educated, have jobs in the tech sector, and have accumulated a lot more savings than most people their age. They don’t have kids, and don’t intend to have any. Their house is a lot more house than they’d ever need just for the two of them, but they enjoy the deliberate year-in year-out effort to improve it to suit their taste. They both travel a lot for work. Each of them grew up in conservative homes but eagerly embraced everything progressive as college freshmen. It represented a sort of liberation from their roots. For Geoff, that included Christian homeschooling, and some of those experiences scarred him, so progressivism was a natural release. They volunteered help for a campaign as college seniors which deepened their loyalties. They believe in abortion, gay and trans issues, progressive economic policies, and globalist causes even though none of those are directly tangential to their personal experience. Their life is their careers, their experiences, their vacations, their house and their selves. They don’t get along well with their parents, and they’ve sworn off children. They are as close to an island as anyone could get. Harris-Walz seems to align with their values, so they took that extra step and planted the sign in their yard.
If you’d like to comment on this post, feel free to do so on Twitter. Follow me: @leestanNEreader