My Friends and Neighbors

I took my grands to the pool on Saturday. It was a pretty lowkey experience in all: the pool wasn’t too crowded, the weather was mild and everyone was enjoying themselves. It didn’t occur to me until afterwards how freeing it felt not knowing anything about anyone’s political affiliation who was there. For a while, that topic was totally off the table. No one came in wearing a MAGA red cap, or the opposite for that matter. No one had anything provocative on a t-shirt. We all were just bathers on a lovely summer afternoon. Unfortunately, that is not the case so often these days, and if you’re a Republican and I’m a Democrat, it’s understood that we’re very nearly enemies in today’s political climate.

Case in point was the young couple at the Three Rivers Arts Festival a couple of weeks before. I had stopped at the booth of one of my favorite local photographers and was picking out some gifts. My husband, long bored by shopping for trinkets, was leaning against the railing opposite, when I noticed him gesturing wildly for me to come over. We’re not spring chickens, so the first thing I thought was he was having some sort of medical emergency, but he looked fine. I sort of cocked my head at him, the universal symbol for, “WTF?” and he just made the gestures bigger. So, then thinking something was wrong at the booth (sad fact is very few of us go anywhere in a crowd and not realize there’s the possibility of violence – as a matter of fact, there was a shooting at a street festival in nearby Ohio that same day), so I put down my finds and trotted over. Turns out, he was trying to get me away from a young couple sporting the infamous MAGA caps. I turned back to look at them. Two blondish, clean-cut, healthy-looking Gen Z’ers, clearly in their twenties, looking admittedly a bit self-satisfied, but not causing any issues or talking to anyone, were turning to walk away from the booth. I have no idea if they’d seen him call me over or not. At first, I thought it was a joke, but he was very serious. I was wearing a Pride Pirates hat, so I wasn’t the only one at the booth who was “labeled,” if you will. He genuinely thought they might use that to try and cause a scene and wanted me to step away. This is where we are in American society. Diverse viewpoints aren’t celebrated as a cherished right of the American experience; they’ve got the potential to be a reason to rumble. I don’t know if that would have been true of this young couple, but my husband hasn’t forgotten them and insists that it could have been. Why else, he argues, would they have been meandering through an arts festival on the day of the Pride Parade? We’ll never know, but we do know that the very fact he sees someone in MAGA attire and has that reaction is telling. And it’s why I was so relieved at the pool.

I want people to show their affiliations with pride (pun somewhat intended). I want people to not be afraid to show who they are. But currently every emblem we choose to wear or display becomes weaponized.

How do we stop it? It’s a complicated road to bring a fractured nation together, but I think my time at the pool shows it can be done and is worth doing. We start by insisting our elected officials act with decorum. Starting with the individual in the Oval Office. The President’s words have power, and that power can be used to begin to heal us or to continue the fracture. But we put that person in that office. We need to choose better.