Rage, fear, and the 2020 election

To the Editor,

The first one was in my neighbor’s yard across the street — the Biden-Harris sign looking like someone had taken a bat to it. As I drove through Swarthmore, following Yale Avenue to Swarthmore Avenue, I saw dozens of Biden-Harris signs all showing evidence of — what? I imagined a carload (or caravan?) of angry, ignorant white men, their misplaced rage simmering, waiting for word from their inspiration leader, Donald Trump. They are “standing by.” 

It reminded me of an incident at Wawa a few weeks ago when another customer freaked out seeing that I, a white-haired white woman, was wearing a Black Lives Matter facemask.

Then there’s the house on Crum Creek Road in Upper Providence, a short-cut to Lawrence Park, where the road turns right and the farmhouse on the left has full-size cow sculptures grazing on the front lawn. Across the street, a rather ramshackle property sports four 4-foot by 8-foot plywood panels on which are written in paint 10 right-wing conspiracy theories, from “Dems kill babies” to some vague reference to Jews. When I stopped to take a picture, a man came out of the house, shouting something at me, something metallic in his right hand. I avoided eye contact and slowly moved on. Was it a gun? Was he part of one of Pennsylvania’s estimated 23-plus militia groups, one of which, before the virus, held one of their meetings at the Sproul Bowling Lanes in Marple?  

Our lives and our futures are at stake with the increased presence of armed militia men acknowledged by authorities to be the biggest terrorist threat to America. Their plans to kidnap and kill the woman governor of Michigan, plus the range of irrational threats from right-wing groups, and the misinformation and lies spread by propagandist media, ignoring the facts of science and reality, are harming so much that was and could still be America. Apathy is not acceptable.

I started to write a poem about Trump’s policies (or lack thereof) being responsible for not preventing a thousand (or more) unnecessary deaths. I considered for the title, “Typhoid Trump: Mass Murderer in Chief.” His actions suggest depraved indifference to human life, enough for a warrant for manslaughter in many states.  

Thinking about the violence behind the Biden-Harris sign bashing, I knew that the poem would exist only in my head.

I am afraid, very afraid.

Judith Trustone
Swarthmore