Read on Twitter
Visited a bunch of small towns on my way to high school football stadiums last week, and mostly enjoyed it, but haven’t been able to shake something. I’ll admit up front, this isn’t a groundbreaking observation, but anyway...
I grew up in a small town. If there were 700 residents, I knew each of them by name (and by vehicle). But in 1992, when I was 15, I’m not sure I could have told you how any single one of them voted. Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, but it’s the truth.
Today I looked it up. That year my county went 45% Bush, 34% Clinton, and 20% Perot, which sounds about right. But I had no idea which were my neighbors, or my coaches, or my teachers, or my friends’ parents. Don’t recall yard signs. It just wasn’t part of anybody’s identity.
Now, I’m not naive to political trends. But it still was jarring to drive 150 miles of farm road and see giant Trump flags EVERYWHERE: on ranch houses, on trailers, on barns, next to schools, even on flagpoles right under the stars and stripes, where the state flag used to fly.
It’s not just that people are voting a certain way. It’s that at some point it became a bigger source of public pride than the football team, or the band, or even the town itself (to be clear, not speaking of my town here). The “us vs. them” message couldn’t be more clear.
And I reckon it makes me thankful it wasn't always that way. Or at least it didn’t seem to be.
