Life in Trump’s America

Last night, when things were looking a little grim but before it got to the “Oh, hey, 2016, how’ve you been?” stage, The Magpie made a point of firmly shutting the door between the office and the kitchen.

“Why are you blockading the cat from the kitchen?” I asked.

“I’m not. It’s an extra barrier.”

For a few seconds, I thought the ‘extra barrier’ was a defense against whatever has been skittering in the wall the last few days. We have a very porous old house, and there’s a corner in a former laundry room off the kitchen where the pipes come through the floor that’s big enough for small animal passage. It’s mostly blocked. Mostly. I was going to tell her not to worry, that there’s been no sign of anything getting into the kitchen, and we actually hadn’t heard anything in the wall since a day or two ago, until I realized what she was talking about. The kitchen has an exterior door. When I was finally heading to bed at near 2am, I considered whether I should bring a baseball bat or claw hammer with me, and wondered if I should leave something within easy reach of the kitchen door in case I had any unwelcome visitors pounding on my door in the middle of the night.

Earlier in the day, The Magpie had seen a car stopped at the end of our property, down the corner which is actually a couple of hundred feet from the house itself. Nothing unusual about that, there’s a stop sign on the corner, so it’s a good thing the car stopped. It can be a dangerous corner. But this car was sitting there for a few minutes, and, according to The Magpie, it looked like they were taking pictures. They could have been taking pictures of the fire hydrant, but I don’t think so. They could have been taking pictures of some of the gone-to-seed wildflowers we let grow on that end of the property. But I don’t think so. In all likelihood, they were taking pictures of the three yard signs that had grown up among the flowers over the last two months. One of the signs was placed by my neighbor, with my blessing. The other two were rogues. I don’t know who placed them, but, like the goldenrod and asters and whatnot, I let them stay because they weren’t hurting anyone, and they weren’t overly unsightly. The sanctioned sign read “Harris/Walz.” The others were variations on a theme: “Yell ‘HELL NO to Donnie Chump.” The third expressed a similar sentiment. Just me (and my neighbor) expressing my right to freedom of speech, to promote the presidential candidate of my choice. No big deal. But this is Donald Trump’s America.

I was first to my polling place on Election Day, to my surprise, and to the surprise of the poll workers. I got there a few minutes before they opened, stood at the door while they finished taping up signs and making sure everything was ready (everything was not; I did not get an “I Voted” sticker, but I did vote). Shortly after I arrived, another person showed up, a vaguely familiar face, but not someone I know, and then a few more. When they called me in and I was signing in and waiting for my ballot, I glanced over at the line, which had grown to five or six people. And I wondered, would any of them be showing up at my kitchen door to “thank” me if Harris won, as I expected? (foolishly, as it turned out. My actual expectation was that she would clean the floor with him in the popular vote, win the electoral by a smaller margin, and then have to survive court fights and shenanigans).

This would not be a question you would ever expect to ask in America, but we live in Trump’s America. Last month, an extreme MAGAt on our Town Board had expressed his view on a non-official Facebook post that his fellow MAGAts should write down the addresses of all the places that had Harris signs on them. That way, they could “thank them when we loose our country.” (and here let me say that it drives me batshit crazy the way people use ‘loose’ for ‘lose’; spell check your spellcheck, for God’s sake!) This kerfuffle apparently made at least statewide news. At the next Town Board meeting, a number of residents demanded his resignation. He did not. He did not respond to their comments during public comment at all, but when asked about it by a local newspaper, he made a point of burnishing his “2A credentials” while suggesting anyone who sees a threat in his words needs therapy. This is Trump’s America.

I went to work this morning and left the signs in place. Despite all the news of last night and this morning, I held on to some slim hope that there might still be enough votes out there needing counting. When I came home, I took them down. There was no point in leaving them up, because Harris had lost, and they already know where I live.