This is my second Substack posting on this subject. The first received thoughtful comments. I need to incorporate them. I wish I had suggestions and not just comments.
Unlike busy parts of Interstate highways country roads speak a soft yet clear language. The forest speaks of slow transformation, and if left to peace, an endless accumulation. Fields tell us about the presence of people, their strivings and their hopefulness. In the photo the tracks of cornstalks in the foreground are a drawing made upon the land.
The barn reflects a concentration of hope and human energy. We could say the same of buildings in a city and it would be equally true, but along country roads the barn and house clusters give a poignant punctuation to our movement. At the house and barn clusters we find ourselves reflected even if we are not farmers, or even gardeners.
The country road scene is peacefully and without any deliberate voice. In an election year the dwellers may speak by putting out yard signs. We live in a time when symbols, sounds, and loud voice come at us from every surface that can be written upon; or placed in a pocket. By comparison the yard signs along country roads are the most gentle of advertising. Yet my friends fear to put them out.
Fear emerges as the final stage of an intellectual and emotional process. We don’t start out fearing, we end up fearing. This process may run to its final stage in less than seconds or over a long period. I am writing here about the latter, fear based in reports and observations of violence in this election period. Fear that comes home in the decision to place a sign or not.
An accumulating sense of fear may stem from many different events. Bothersome, not-quite-violent events contribute background to rising fear. Conversation, or the cessation of conversation, looks exchanged between strangers or even exchanged with those previously regarded as “just neighbors” may contribute.
Then there are the actual violent events. Attempted assassinations don’t help.
One acquaintance living along a country road remembers yard signs that were stolen in previous election years. Imagining this act is imagining an intrusion, someone jumping out of a vehicle, grabbing the sign, stashing it, and fleeing. It is just a lawn sign but the physicality of snatching it contains the threat.
There is a quiet response to confrontational fear. Just give up, but give up what? Not to make something complex into an “either-or” but there is also the noisy response.
Searing angst surrounds the struggle to not give up an attitude of security, an attitude of trusting and being trusted. We may want to step up and shout “This is my right. I will display signs as I want, maybe I will make bigger signs, more signs.” We may briefly convince ourselves that these assertive actions will remind the intimidators that we are as passionate as they, that we share similar emotions, that we are citizens together. We dare to hope for a begrudging sort of empathy.
Then we look around at the violence elsewhere in the world, in our world, and there we are, in a quandary, wanting to live peacefully with the citizens along our country road, but seeing indications they will abandon peace to grasp at something. Is it cultural conformity, maybe coveted property? We don’t know and that only makes it worse. Put out a yard sign? Don’t?
This is a profound meditation. I also was struck by our friend's shying away from a simple declaration of support (for what is a majority!) for a candidate. It's very sad. We draw so much strength from the beauty of the surrounding countryside, but at the same time there are malignant currents at work pulling people into hatred and fear, all for the gain of political and economic power. Thanks for your thoughts.