I’m sure we’ve all heard about campaign signs, both Democratic and Republican, being torn up, stamped on, or otherwise destroyed in people’s yards and along roadsides this fall. I know I’ve seen my share of pulverized signs. Driving home from school the other day, I saw both Bush/Cheney and Kerry/Edwards signs that had been damaged, and not by the wind. As immature and brainless as these little turf wars are, I heard a story yesterday that helped reassure me that most people just want to get along civilly, despite their political differences.
My friend’s mom was volunteering at the Bush headquarters in Bellevue earlier this week. It was a rather cold afternoon, so when the door abruptly swung open with a blustery winter chill, everybody looked up at the visitor. A lady, literally covered in Kerry paraphernalia (bottoms, pins, ribbons, etc.), walked in. Knowing she must’ve looked at least a little bit out of place, she explained that she and her neighbor had both placed huge signs (the gargantuan kind) in their respective yards, her friend being a Bush fan. It was all in good fun, she said. Then suddenly, in the middle of the night, someone had come along and smashed her friend’s Bush sign, knocking it to the ground.
The lady was there to buy (and, according to my friend’s mom, they aren’t cheap) a replacement sign for her neighbor, in a show of neighborly congeniality. Now isn’t that something? The lady and her neighbor were still friends, were still fellow citizens, and yet still disagreed. They did so equitably, however, without malice or spite, and when one’s sign was demolished, the other replaced it with another. That’s a nice story, and a true one, and I think it’s also quintessentially American.
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