Trump’s Bullying on the Macro Level Gives Permission on the Micro Level

I didn’t realize how deeply I would be affected until I walked into my front yard and noticed that the LGBTQIA inclusive Pride flag I had hung to my garage was missing. I looked across my street to see that my neighbor’s Pride flag was also no longer visible.

Someone had apparently stolen our flags during the first week of June, which our community declared many decades ago as our national Pride Month.

I felt a sinking feeling deep in my stomach as if I had been punched. I crossed the street to ask my neighbor if she was aware of her missing flag, but since no one seemed at home, I crossed back slowly to my house, eyes lowered, holding back tears.

Yes, our Pride flags are only symbols, but what do they symbolize?: our identities, our histories, our stories, our very lives.

I bought and hung another Pride Flag on my garage during the late summer, and soon thereafter, someone stole it once again.

I bought and hung a third flag in November. Yes, I understand that a definition of “insanity” is doing something over and over again and expecting different results. Actually, I don’t expect different results, but I want to send a message to the thieves and also to my neighbors who support the First Amendment and my right to express my freedom of speech that I will not be intimidated.

I live in an economically modest, mostly working-class family neighborhood in a rural area of western Massachusetts. People of all ages from very young to elderly walk on the sidewalks, some using canes, some pushing baby strollers or walking hand-in-hand with young children, many walking dogs of all breeds. A man who rescued a baby squirrel often takes his pet out for a stroll on a leash and allows local children to feed it small nuts.

Our place of residence expresses many aspects of who we are: our financial levels, our style of architecture and design tastes, and even our religious backgrounds and political affiliations.

Many of my neighbors exhibit statues of various sizes depicting the Virgin Mary on a blue half shell, and residents of one house fly a flag in their front yard of Mary holding the baby Jesus. Many display Christmas decorations during November through January.

My neighbors next door placed a reclining garden gnome on a tree stump beside their Virgin Mary statue, while others hang tinkling wind chimes or small windmills that turn gently on breezy days.

“Old Glory” stands proudly on poles or porches on holidays throughout the spring, summer, and fall months. In addition to my Pride Flag, I have also displayed a “Black Lives Matter” banner.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I made a yard sign on which I painted the Ukrainian flag in blue and yellow representing the sky above and fields of grain below. Recently, I purchased gold sequin letters and attached “Hands Off” and “No Kings” to my Ukrainian flag sign in protest of the Trump administration’s actions leading to authoritarian rule.

For the most part, I haven’t received much backlash from my neighbors or from people passing by in their cars or on the sidewalk. Occasionally, someone will honk their horn in solidarity, or I hear an occasional shout of “you faggot” or “where’s your American flag” from a speeding automobile.

The most consistent and harshest resistance I have received, though, was targeted on my handmade “Harris and Walz” yard sign that I crafted with a razor knife from glistening glitter paper on which I placed small sparkling lights to illuminate after dark. Since I didn’t live in one of the seven “toss-up” states, I found it difficult to order a political yard sign other than for candidates in local elections.

On several occasions, I found my sign turned into a horizontal position level with the lawn with telltale small tire tracks on one side. My neighbor across the street informed me that she had seen two boys, which she estimated to be middle school age, ramming into the sign with their bicycles.

Three days before the election, as I was looking out my front window, I watched a young man of approximately 17 or 18-years-old wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt lifting his foot to bend and twist the metal stand of the yard sign into a horizontal position. He then walked quite fast down the sidewalk as I called out that “I saw you! I saw you.”

Maybe my memory is failing, but I don’t remember such vilification and scorn toward those we differ on political and personal issues. Yes, people have probably always destroyed or stolen other people’s yard signs and Pride flags in the past. People have vandalized residences with spray paint or toilet paper to oppose other’s beliefs or simply to be cruel.

But when we attempt to silence other people’s political expressions, we are denying them their First Amendment right to freedom of speech just as when anyone destroys a religious symbol denies them of their First Amendment right to freedom of religion.

If I find the person or persons who stole my Pride flag, I will tell them that I am always open to discuss my political and personal beliefs, or my Jewish religion, or my sexual and gender identities, or anything else they wish to examine.

When taken in context, though, the theft of our Pride flags appears to be the outcome of an administration in Washington, DC that is attempting to erase progressive progress.

In its consistent and inexorable march to erase all traces of history and practice that do not accord with its image of the United States as the patriarchal heteronationalist Christian white supremacist nation they purport it to be, Donald Trump and his administration have banned books and other curricular materials, and they have encouraged the states to follow suit. They have ordered the end of all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives from the federal government.

Trump’s lackey at the helm at the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, issued a memo in which he proposes to scrub several Navy ships of the names that honor civil rights leaders including Harvey Milk, Thurgood Marshall, Lucy Stone, Harriet Tubman, Medgar Evers, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and others.

This action falls within the context of his larger plan to remove all references to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives from the military. Hegseth stated that his goal is to “re-establish the warrior culture” at the Pentagon, and he has subsequently renamed his department to the “Department of War.”

Hegseth and the Trump administration, in their attempts to purge civil rights leaders from the military, have banned 400 books from the Naval Academy library on race relations, gender, and sexuality. The administration also eliminated affinity groups such as the Black Society for Engineers and the Native American Heritage Forum at military academies.

Trump has literally dismantled the entire historic East Wing of the White House, the “Peoples House,” to erect a gaudy $300 million 90 thousand square foot Russian empire style ballroom stuffed with gold plating and ornate crystal chandeliers as he and the Republicans in Congress are attempting to take away nutritional and healthcare benefits from the people most in need.

Is it any wonder, then, the effect their actions have on those who would do damage in our communities? Trump and his sycophants give permission to people to follow their distorted and dangerous examples.

Rather than Hegseth’s goal to “reestablish the warrior culture,” he and Trump have ignited the bullying culture.

Public school teachers are talking about what has come to be known as “the Trump effect” since the 2016 presidential election. According to a Southern Poverty Law Center report:

“It’s producing an alarming level of fear and anxiety among children of color and inflaming racial and ethnic tensions in the classroom. Many students worry about being deported. Other students have been emboldened by the divisive, often juvenile rhetoric in the [Trump] campaign. Teachers have noted an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation of students whose races, religions or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates on the campaign trail.”

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Civility Index measures the level of civility in the workplace based on a survey of U.S. workers’ experiences. The latest SHRM Civility Index score of 45.6 indicates that “incivility continues to be prevalent in the daily lives of U.S. workers.” I know the same is true on the individual interpersonal level outside of the workplace.

So, I purchased yet another Pride flag and hung it proudly. Yes, someone might again steal it, but possibly they need it more than I do.

I am certain, though, that no one will ever rob me of my pride of self and the power of my community. We have come far, and we are not going back!