Campain Signs

With the election now behind us, and the next 2-4 years in place, I wonder if it isn’t time for us to take down the flags and the signs from this last election and start working on pulling our community together. Hard to trust you neighbor when they tell you what to do with a person you supported in a crude way.

Like it or not there is no mandate here. Barely half the country voted for Mr. Trump and almost half the country voted for Ms. Harris. That is not a mandate. The House was decided by just a handful of seats, and the Senate the same. No mandates there either. The only thing looking like a mandate was the Electoral College, which was mostly created to protect slavery. Not patriotic to claim a mandate based on protecting slave owners.

My point is that whatever our personal political views, there is someone else in town who feels differently. So maybe it is time to look for what we hold in common, here in Wahkiakum County, rather than what divides us. This is no time for bragging rights. It is time to come together. And it is hard to do that when you disagree with, or even fear, neighbors with flags and signs still waving and standing.

And I wonder…if I flew flags and posted signs showing I am in a different place politically, signs with the same crudity aimed a different direction, what would be the tolerance for that? Don’t know and won’t know because I believe the voters have spoken – even if I disagree – and as a veteran and patriot I support the peaceful transfer of power.

Time will tell whether barely a majority made a wise decision or dug us into a deep ditch of corruption – replacing the alligators in the swamp with crocodiles – but let us move on in hope and trust in our system of governance.

Maybe, just maybe, our neighbors are just as important as our political biases. Time to heal. Time to tend to our neighbors.

James P. Monroe

Cathlamet, Washington