Dig deeper. Yard signs won’t save America
I’ve spent the past two weeks working from my camper in Northern Minnesota where the fall colors are waning and tourism is officially on the downswing. By the weekend most of the leaves will disappear. What is not gone, though, is politics and its associated signage.
Up north, you’re likely to see hundreds of Trump yard signs, whereas in the cities you’ll see signs for Harris. It looks the same in much of America. It’s that rural-urban divide you hear so much about. But what it leads me to wonder is, what kind of person sees a political sign and thinks to themselves, “You know what? I was undecided, but that right there is a helluva sign.” I’ve heard tell of these undecided voters, and with all the information about the presidential candidates available out there, I do wonder, might a sign be the tipping point?
Some yards have half a dozen of the same signs, as if to emphasize the very nature of propaganda: simplify and repeat. Other signs outdo quantity by sheer size: I once saw a 10 foot wooden sign, like a barn door removed for the purpose. And I’ve seen flags flying the names of candidates as I speed by on the highway. Could a flag flutter just so and persuade me if I were undecided, or even convert me? Could a sign carry so much meaning? What about a hat, or a meme?
Of course, these signs are not designed so much to convert as to signal what team you’re on, and all that entails. Each side sees the opposing team’s sign and immediately says to themselves, “Ah, so they are that kind of person.”
As a person from a mixed family (one liberal and a lot of Republicans, all of us white), I’ve occasionally been surprised to find common ground with opposing team members. I wonder, if we the people were able to have discussions anymore—an increasingly unrealistic expectation given that the nature of politics is to prey on emotion, enrage, divide and demonize—would we find common ground with a player from the opposing team, like maybe mom, or even that one uncle? As it is, I think it is fair to say that we have instead become a hat and meme society, with the occasional yard sign thrown in for good measure.
Even the team jerseys have taken sides. One side seems to have claimed as its primary color red; the other, blue, like some kind of street warfare. Were those colors pulled from our flag, only white (the absence of color, by some definitions) would be left.
But I still can’t shake the idea that most of us aren’t that different. Some of us up here hunt grouse, and some hunt leaves. Some do both. Many of us fish. We all must like the outdoors. And lots of us are probably excited for tomato soup and grilled cheese season (aka late fall/winter). Unfortunately, our divisions are not easily solved by cheese, though a melted slice each of cheddar and provolone on pumpernickel or sourdough will certainly bring some of us to the table.
Ultimately, I suspect we’ll have to dig deeper than signs. If it gets much worse, maybe the flag of the United States will have to be stripped of color, reduced to its individual elements. The blue team, and the red. And so in the end what you have is three flags. A red, a white, and a blue, each on its own. Of course, white is not actually the absence of color. It’s the sum of all colors. Only when placed next to individual colors—say, red and blue—does it take on a meaning of its own.
Reprinted from the original, published at MinnPost.
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