Yard signs and binary thinking
The "All or Nothing" binary thinking is poisonous, and both sides are guilty of it.
It is deeply disturbing to see people with a yard sign for Julie Thomas, Penny Githens or Lee Jones. The county commissioners had considered putting the county jail less than a half mile from an elementary school and a public playground, as well as very close to a residential neighborhood. Do people with these signs realize that they are making their neighbors feel unsafe? Do the people with these signs realize they are telling their neighbors that the safety of our children does not matter?
I do not actually believe the first paragraph of this post. I do not believe that people who support any of the three commissioners are displaying contempt for their neighbors or disregard for the safety of children. I wanted to use a local example to point people to this excellent post by Eric Rasmusen.
The panic over a Donald Trump yard sign is overblown by local government's partisan makeup. The Bloomington City Council has had a 9-0 Democratic monopoly since 2012. Bloomington has had a Democratic mayor since before I was born. (I am 50 years old.) The Democrats have a 3-0 monopoly on the county commissioners and a 6-1 super majority on the county council. Every single county elected official is a Democrat: Auditor, Treasurer, Surveyor, Sheriff, Prosecutor, Clerk, Assessor and Recorder. The last time Republicans held any of those offices was when Jim Fielder was the last remaining Republican countywide elected official when he died in 2014. The idea that anyone is made "unsafe" by the fact that there are Republicans who support Donald Trump is absurd.
We are too often guilty of binary thinking, and an "all or nothing" mentality. If you support a candidate, you must support every single thing that candidate does or says. Not only that, but you must dislike (or even hate) people who support the opposing candidate, or you want to make people feel unsafe. This is not new, and did not start with Donald Trump. The same mentality existed with George W. Bush. I remember being told that voting for Bush, who supported amending the Constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, meant that I supported jailing or even executing homosexuals.
The "All or Nothing" binary thinking is poisonous, and both sides are guilty of it. Far too many people on both sides have become "fans" of celebrity politicians or even behave like followers of a cult leader. We see this in the absurdity of "conservatives" insisting that Kamala Harris is actually a "moderate" who will listen to conservatives. Do these "conservatives" realize that it is actually possible to believe Donald Trump is a "uniquely dangerous" politician and even vote for Harris to stop him without becoming a total simp for Harris? Do they really need to delude themselves into slobbering praise for Harris just because "Orange Man Bad?"
On the other side, do you have to defend all of Donald Trump's worst rhetorical excesses and abandonment of conservative principles just because Kamala Harris wants to "codify" Roe v. Wade into federal law and will implement an economically disastrous tax on unearned capital gains? Does it really need to be "all or nothing," with no dissent allowed?
Here is the reality: Once the election is decided, we will still need to live, work and shop next to people who hold different political opinions. We might even have people with differing political opinions shovel our driveway without asking. Do you really think you are less safe because 20,000 and 22,000 people voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, respectively? Were you less safe because George W. Bush won Monroe County in the 2000 general election?
But, see, some people do not want to live next to people who disagree with them about politics. They want their neighborhoods to be pure, and they want "heretics" to know they are not welcome in the neighborhood. These people will never see, and are emotionally incapable of seeing, that it is they, not Trump supporters, who are fully intolerant of anyone with a dissenting (or heretical) opinion. History shows us that people who are 100% convinced of their own "righteousness" are capable of the most horrific crimes imaginable. What we need in our electoral politics is a lot less certainty, and a lot more humility.