It was the first time he had voted for a Republican presidential candidate since casting a ballot for Bob Dole in 1996. “I voted for Trump even though I don’t like him,” he said with a sigh. Almost everyone else, it seemed, had a Trump sign or flag on their property. He had no political signage in his yard, which made me think he might be a Biden supporter. My next stop was with a neighbor a few doors down. Probably, I’d say that’s got a lot to do with it.” I don’t call him my father I call him my sperm donator. “It could be the way I grew up,” he offered. They can still have a few secrets you know nothing about. You can know someone all your life, and you still don’t know them. Say, for instance, your wife: you think you know her but in reality, you don’t. He also liked that Trump wasn’t a career politician, whereas he thought Joe Biden has been in Washington for too long.ĭid he generally trust people, I wondered? He liked how Trump talked about taking on China and getting jobs back to America. But you always got to build something.ĭid his construction background help him trust Trump? I’m sure there’s shady deals-real estate is shady anyway…. Even before he became president, he accomplished a lot of goals himself. Just for what he stands for and what he believes and does. A retired construction worker and ironworker, he said he trusted Trump. “Trump was the first presidential candidate I ever voted for,” he said about his 2016 vote. My first stop was at the front porch of another neighbor with a Trump sign in his yard. Later that day, I took my four-year-old son in a stroller to talk with other neighbors about how they were feeling about the 2020 election.

These are divisions that have stoked a massive crisis of trust and led us to the brink of a national divorce in the American family. Celebrities and citizens alike openly wonder how they can remain in America if their presidential candidate loses in 2020.īut the political polarization we experience in 2020 is a symptom of other divisions-especially the racial, the class, and marriage divides. A new poll commissioned by Braver Angels, a citizen’s organization to depolarize America that I cofounded, shows that 56% of Americans worry the election will result in more violence. My neighbor isn’t alone in worrying about impending violence after the election. When I asked what he meant by a civil war breaking out, he pointed to the recent kidnapping plot by as many as 14 men against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a plot he condemned. He then quizzed me on whether I had a 2-month stockpile of food and warned that I had better be prepared-the way we weren’t prepared for the coronavirus, he pointed out. My neighbor’s property is bedecked in Trump regalia, a common occurrence in our small white, working-class town in southwest Ohio: a “Trump Rambo” banner of the president brandishing a machine gun, a Trump 2020 sign hanging from the decorative windmill in the yard, a Trump flag flying on the front porch, and a Trump 2020 sign planted in the front yard. “Put some gallons of milk in your freezer.” That’s when he brought up the civil war question.

The “Trump boxes,” which contained a letter signed by President Trump, were the result of a coronavirus bailout to farmers, my neighbor told me. He said the church had hundreds of boxes, and that he’d personally be distributing about 20 to elderly neighbors and his tenants, some of whom had kids that were going hungry. He had just finished telling me to be sure to stop at the church up the hill to get my family a free “Trump box” of fresh farm items: milk, cheese, onions, apples, and other goods. My neighbor, a retired man in his sixties, brought up the subject out of the blue, after stopping my 2-year-old son and me on our walk to the corner store. “You ready for the civil war?” my neighbor asked me recently with all seriousness.

Politics two farm stands divides