Are You Marginalizing People if You Put a Trump Sign in Your Yard?

A friend of mine who put up a Trump sign in his yard showed me this anonymous letter. Twenty years ago, who would have imagined that a neighbor would object if you put up a sign for the Republican candidate? What will it be like in twenty more years?

It’s not just the sending of the letter, but the details. The anonymous Neighbor is posing as a kind and tolerant person. He understands how different people have different beliefs. He likes having a “sweet and supportive community”.

But what does that mean? Not what you’d expect.

For many of us, these signs aren’t just political expressions— they represent a broader set of beliefs that feel harmful and exclusionary. The voter suppression, and authoritarianism, evoke fear and uncertainty for people who value equality, justice, and a fair democratic process. . . . I hope you’ll consider how seeing these signs day after day makes some of your neighbors feel— especially those who feel vulnerable or marginalized because of the divisive messages they convey.

A sweet and supportive community is one with no Republicans. Their presence is offensive. They are a threat to others. They must be marginalized, for the sake of the vulnerable and marginalized, even though Neighbor’s city is Bloomington, Indiana, a college town where the city and county governments have been 100% controlled by Democrats for many years. Republicans are voter suppressors and authoritarian, unjust, unfair, and undemocratic. Even a yard sign showing a Republican still lives there, proud and uncowed, is intolerable; it inevitably induces fear and hatred.

The fear and hatred will be there even without Republicans, though, if I may make a prediction. One sometimes sees yard signs like “Hate has no home here” from people like the Neighbor. A person who posts “Hate has no home here” is not against hate. Everybody knows he means, “Conservatives, we hate you. Leave. Your very presence pollutes our neighborhood. Be warned.” His sign is meant to insult and to show hatred. Have you ever seen a sign saying, “Immigrants have no home here?” Can you imagine someone writing a neighbor who put up a Harris/Walz sign telling them it’s offensive? No. The hate is all on one side. And it increases in venom as the haters feel safer in their dominance.

Pretending to be kind-and-tolerant sweet, the Neighbor is passive-aggressive sour. We can see through it. “Take down that sign. I know it’s just me and my feelings, but you’re causing me pain. You’re hurting me, even if you didn’t mean it, though probably you did. To cure my hurt, you should leave. Plus you’re making me put out all this effort criticizing you— how selfish you are!” It’s like reacting to the two Trump assassination attemptings by saying Trump was divisive and inflammatory.¹ “It’s his fault. He was purposely provocative. People get pushed beyond their limit by his heated rhetoric. Violence has no place in America— but rhetoric is a form of violence.”

Social justice warriors are the ultimate hypocrites. Their masters use the Big Lie technique of going on offense and accusing the other side of what they do themselves. The opposition politician prosecuted by the government is authoritarian; anyone who questions whether an election was fair is a threat to democracy; the government media that suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story is fighting misinformation; the opposition is “fake media” for publishing the story. How can they be so blind?

The letter helps us understand. In their view, there is no truth. There are just competing narratives, competing views of the world. Reality is socially constructed. Narratives are not true or false, just progressive or reactionary. The Neighbor says,

We may live in different media environments, but even if you think ‘our’ media environment is not truthful, it is just as real as yours.

In the past, someone who started by saying we all have different points of view might be expected to say that he respects you even though he thinks you’re wrong. Not here. Neighbor is saying he knows that conservatives have their own beliefs, but all that matters is how he and his allies feel. If you say something that bothers them, you have hurt their feelings, and you are cruel. It isn’t a matter of how you say it: even a sign with a name on it can be offensive. It is cruel to tell someone that Trump supporters are not just demonic rednecks, but their own neighbors, real people. How about the feeling of Trump supporters? Trump supporters are bad people, so their feelings don’t matter. They probably don’t have real feelings anyway.

People like the Neighbor are why Trump must win. The biggest threat to democracy is the loss of the democratic spirit in those who govern. How can you trust a government to someone who writes creepy letters telling people they shouldn’t put Trump signs on their lawns? What would Neighbor do if he was put in charge of the FBI? What would he do if he was a prosecutor, and his twin was the judge? What would he do if he could put pressure on social media to throttle stories? What would he do if he were counting ballots, and Trump was ahead?

With Kamala Harris as President, and people just like the Neighbor replace even the traditiona, tolerant liberals in Washington, what will happen to our commonwealth? I do not think it will be sweet and supportive.

1. See “Despite Shooting, ABC, CBS and NBC Blast Trump with 95% Bad Press”. I couldn’t find this story with Google. I had the bright idea to try searching with Twitter, and found it immediately. The bias of search engines is a serious problem. If you are trying to find the truth about a news story, you need to dig deep. The top search results will all have the same liberal bias. The stories will all repeat the official narrative, and the other side will be lost in the crowd, way down in the list.