You have to admire the chutzpah of the Washington County Republicans who brought a float to the Warren Fourth of July parade last week.
What was even more admirable is how that float and its participants were greeted. These folks, with a banner calling for “Keeping Government Off Our Backs,” followed U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders by quite a few floats and also followed Prickly Mountain’s annual extravaganza and a few other parade entries that leaned somewhat to the left in their political messaging.
It does not take a great deal of political analysis to determine that this annual, highly irreverent Fourth of July parade is about as MAGA-opposite as anything could be. Nonetheless, the float of Vermont Republicans was greeted with a handful of cheers, a handful of “Boos” and a lot of silence.
That silence spoke volumes.
What was said without words was, “We don’t agree with the direction of your party nationally and its leaders, and in fact, we vehemently disagree. We may not agree with your party’s policies in our state, but we do respect you and your right to express your opinion.”
That silence meant it’s fairly likely that we know you and fairly likely that we have shared community values and concerns here in Vermont that we allow to transcend our national political differences. And even if we don’t know you or share a select board or high school with you, we respect your right to join us in our celebration and we welcome you.
We need more of this. Our nation has never been as partisan as it is right now. The divide is frighteningly deep. On a national level, we need to re-learn how to disagree with each other again, without the whole thing going nuclear.
This is what counselors and therapists call ‘going global’ and it’s a sure-fire way to escalate a small disagreement into an enormous conflagration that includes all of history and every past grievance.
So, here’s to those folks from the Washington County Republicans and those who respected their participation. That’s how we do it.
