More on the Yard Sign Thing

That great majority of Americans who, we are told by researchers, pay no attention at all to political matters until just days before Election Day, like right now, might wonder why someone would get as indignant  as I have over something that they would consider to be as trivial as theft of a political yard sign.

The simplest though a quite real reason is that I’m thinking about my road.   Trump-Pence signs take away from the dignity and perception of a road.   Clinton-Kaine signs, on the other hand, add to the class of a road.  They testify that this road can pride itself on having inhabitants that care about their fellow humans and for the Earth and the other creatures that inhabit it.

A much larger reason for my dismay is that, unlike for those souls who are so oblivious of political concerns, a yard sign is a huge symbol for me.   It is the only way that these days I am able to take part in the political process, except for voting and by writing posts for my blog and actually posting them, as per this one, even though I can’t forget how years ago a pinbrain on the conservative side boastfully gave the impression to one and all that the only pleasure he got out of voting was the mistaken and evil notion that thereby he was canceling out my vote.  I mention this only to show what kind of people the Repubs are.  Meanwhile, even though I make no attempt to make my blog known in any way, something mysterious keeps assuring me that I am not consequently tossing my posts into an oblivion in which they will be lost forever.  It was the writing of them that mattered.

Another reason that yard signs are so important to me is that as each four-year cycle starts coming to a head, a quiet rage starts building up in me when I think of how we so-called “black” people once more have to face obstacles to what should be the simple and harmless act of voting, whether or not those hindrances have been previously experienced, due to the threats that are always made against us by the Republicans, in a great variety of ways.   It angers me that those right wing thugs should always feel the need to jump so nasty, to prevent people my color from performing a civic duty that should be completely innocuous and benign but for us never is, due to their ever-present need to express their bile.  

And so during each cycle  the GOPs present yet another Presidential candidate who is no friend of civil rights, though those birds of the past don’t compare to the present-day horror, Mr. Humpty-Trumpty, who, along with his surrogates, has for some time made a big thing of openly urging his followers to anticipate this upcoming Election Day by engaging in widespread, organized, and updated activities meant to discourage “black” people from exercising their constitutional and human right to vote.

Of course their hostilities are directed at other Democrats as well, but “black” voters are the easiest and most obvious targets to attack, and they serve as examples to others who would also vote the ”wrong” way though not as consistently as do those of us with a generally higher melanin count.

Also I can never forget that there were a very large number of good and decent people, women as well as men, who had more intestinal fortitude and self-control than I had, and they marched, sang, sat in,   suffered, and sometimes died just so that I and millions more could exercise a right that most others in the country took for granted.  Therefore,  no matter what those others might not even bother to do,  I can never not vote, even if I get to be 100 and have to crawl to a polling place.

Unlike most people now alive, once and perhaps for the only time it was possible for anyone to witness, I saw many hundreds of those civil rights heroes all gathered in one place, in the shade of the trees along Constitution Avenue in my hometown of Washington, D.C., as they assembled there for the historic March on Washington, on a very hot day in July 1963.   That was some thrilling stuff.  Although, of course, I could not identify them individually, I knew that I was looking at a very large number of veterans of the struggle, with some of them being “white.”  They were fresh from numerous confrontations and face-offs, mostly in the Deep South but also in places in the North.  That experience told me that it would be a gross betrayal of these courageous people for a decent person of any color not to vote, and that consideration is the one that is ever uppermost in my mind this time of the year every fourth year, and in the mid-term years, too.

I am also incensed at how the dominant group in America, “white” people, would humor the Republicans so much, though I know that there I’m talking about family members, and I know that this time in particular Trump has stirred up a situation that is splitting families much like what happened during the Civil War.

Still, it seems to me blatantly unfair and even un-American if I may say so without inducing sly chuckles, that “white” people never have to worry about things like voter intimidation and fears of being removed from voting rolls wholesale and with no justification, not to mention what is likely to happen whenever Republicans win, whereas for us, voting is a life and death matter.   Regardless of who wins, “white” people will always be alright, simply because they are “white.”   Ease and security through any outcome is guaranteed for them, and everything is geared to benefit mainly them.   For us nothing has ever been guaranteed, except just more aggravation, over and over again, even if you might be an actual millionaire.

Now, of course, if Sir Humpty were somehow to win and then started flinging nuclear bombs around just for the private entertainment of himself and his latest beauty queen sex objects, as I believe he is quite capable of doing, everything would be different.  But that is no comfort whatsoever.