Our neighborhood is 8 houses on a dead end private road in the woods. Half of us voted for Biden and identify as liberal. The other half have Trump bumper stickers, have Bible study, oand home school. With the exception of two grumpy guys, we are all friends. We look out for each others' animals and kids. We pitch in when someone gets stuck in a snow bank. Trumpers plow out our driveway for us, just to be nice, even though they know we have a snow thrower. A Trumper and a liberal together rescued my horses when we had a wildfires our hill. The evangelicals have nice kids and I've taken them trail riding and they helped me put up my new corral.

If they put up a black flag and we put up a rainbow flag, we'd all be laughing about it at the next potluck.

Don't get sucked into the "other" thing.

At some risk of coming off sounding provocative, I'm guessing you are all (or mostly) nice white people in a largely white state. [Checks notes: Montana is 86% white and only .5% black -- yes, there is a decimal place in front of the five].

I think it's harder to maintain that facade of civility, that we just have a polite disagreement about policy that is mostly distant and irrelevant to our daily lives, in an area where White Supremacy is harder to disentangle from the political stew. A place where the GOP is actively trying to restrict voting rights. A place where confederate flags symbolize manly rejection of modernity. And where Republicans in control actually do things to kill people, for political profit in the next election cycle.

quote:

Originally posted by markj:

quote:

Originally posted by Mary Anna:
I think Quirt should be wearing cowboy boots, myself.

He'd have to don the boots for me to take pictures.

quote:

Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
At some risk of coming off sounding provocative, I'm guessing you are all (or mostly) nice white people in a largely white state. [Checks notes: Montana is 86% white and only .5% black -- yes, there is a decimal place in front of the five].

I think it's harder to maintain that facade of civility, that we just have a polite disagreement about policy that is mostly distant and irrelevant to our daily lives, in an area where White Supremacy is harder to disentangle from the political stew. A place where the GOP is actively trying to restrict voting rights. A place where confederate flags symbolize manly rejection of modernity. And where Republicans in control actually do things to kill people, for political profit in the next election cycle.

Those things are all very much true where I live, except that we have a black Liberian refugee as our mayor, and the trumpers love him. And our major minority here is Native Americans. We have five large Indian reservations. And there are many black folks in town, and white folks who are raising black children.

Absolutely the Republicans in office here are trying to kill us. They have forbidden mask mandates and are requiring public sector workers to go to the office in an unmasked environment. They have gone after our voting rights. We have Nazis holding demonstrations on the street corners.

There's a difference between feeling threatened by policy and feeling threatened by individuals. When you start confusing the two, and start seeing people as policy or ideology, and not as fellow human beings, that's as, if not more, dangerous than the ideas they believe in.

I would certainly not walk up to my neighbor who sported a Trump sign and harass or harangue him. Would I worry about whether that neighbor might support a coup-like takeover, or worry about how he and his fellow travelers might behave if his "side" was emboldened by an authoritarian insurrection? Yassir ya betcha.

I wasn't around in the Scopes Trial era and I was a small child when Bull Connor was terrorizing Civil Rights marchers. I fear that the post WW2 "liberal" (small l) political consensus has irretrievably broken down. I do not trust my GOP neighbors with political power and I'm sure that they return the favor. I just heard Michael Beschloss speak at a conference. (He was my warm up act ). He left no one in any doubt that American democracy was at enormous risk of failing in 2022 and/or 2024.