A Single Flake from Distant Clouds?

I have a neighbor who lives just around the block.  I don’t know him, yet I have judged him…because that’s the world we’re in. I have seen him on occasions working in his well maintained yard with the time retirement provides to do so. I assume he’s married based on the cars in the driveway, although I’ve never seen his wife.

I have also assumed he is an ardent Christian Conservative and expressively Republican.  I do based on his desire to convey his (and perhaps his wife’s) political viewpoints by the signs that show up in his yard and bumper stickers on his cars, usually very early in the election season.

He also has an American flag permanently displayed on a pole affixed to a large tree in the middle of his front yard. It is a sad testimony that people, like me, who have found their political identities aligned with Progressives or Liberals, have too often surrendered the American flag as a symbol of political bias.

Early in the year, as I suspected, his ‘TRUMP 2020 Keep America Great’ sign showed up proudly on his front lawn and soon after there were a similar stickers on each car.  Later and much closer to election time other signs appeared showing support for the Republican candidates running for both the Senate and House seats.

So beyond a wave and a “good morning” I have more than kept my distance. I have categorized him as someone who has lost touch with reality, within this dark comedy we all have lived through for the past four years. Still, for the most part, I am unapologetic.

Then just today, two days after the display we can only jokingly call a Presidential Debate, I walked by his house and the Trump sign was gone, after 8 months at least. Gone!

Is it possible? Add to that the Trump bumper sticker on the one car in the driveway was also gone. Have we reached a tipping point? Maybe not…but maybe. Was that shameful display of adolescent authoritarianism enough to turn on the lights?

 It is one thing to watch or listen to news reports covering disclosures about his reflections on military service, his candid recordings of what he knew about the Corona virus while proclaiming something different, his ability to avoid Federal income tax, and (most disturbingly) his ongoing debt in enormous numbers. Combine that with pundits who oppose Trump and their prognostications of a pending constitutional crisis. It’s another thing to actual experience the impact of those revelations.

It is as if all this news is being presented like a weather report on a pending blizzard about to bury Trump in hard packed snow right up to his nose. Yet you go out and look up at the sky again and again and see only thin clouds.

Then there’s that first single flake that floats down into your vision letting you know the coming storm is real. Perhaps it’s just like that first lawn sign that suddenly disappears.