Of Political Signs

Living in New Hampshire, we are inundated with politics.  The "first in the nation primary" state has advantages and disadvantages.  I took my son and daughter to see President Obama speak at a town hall where he took questions from the audience back in 2008 and my son shook the hand of the man who is now his Commander in Chief.  One of my daughters had the privilege to attend a future leaders of America summit in Washington where she met (then Senator) Hillary Clinton.  Fast forward two years later and she met Mrs. Clinton again during her 2008 Presidential Campaign and she actually remembered meeting my daughter and specific things about her.

That's the up side to it.  There are plenty of down-sides.  One of them is the plethora of political signs that pop up for about two years straight.

I don't mind the signs and I don't really object to them.  I just see them as wasteful with no real purpose.  There's so many of them!  Sometimes it seems like it's a contest, and he (or she) who has the most signs wins.  I don't know of anyone who said "I saw more signs for *this candidate* so I'll vote for that one."

They are all over the place.  It's not just pride on people's lawns.  They are up and down highways. They are in shopping plazas.  You can't throw a rock in New Hampshire and not hit a political sign during Primary and Election Season.

It's illegal to remove or damage these signs as well.  Someone I know posted a picture of a foolish woman posing with a bunch of Trump signs she had apparently stolen.  I say apparently, because do we really know what happened in that picture?  She could have been a Trump supporter posing with signs she was giving out a flipping the bird to Clinton supporters, but hey this made a better caption.  We just don't know.

The friend claimed her reason for posting wasn't political.  It was about getting this woman's face out there for what she did.  Funny, of the hundreds of incidents I've heard about Hillary Clinton signs being defaced or stolen, she never felt the need to publicize those.  Another friend (not acquanited with the first) posted a picture the next day of their Hillary Clinton signs being run over on their lawn by someone with a 4x4 (thereby damaging the lawn) and leaving behind a Trump sign.

It's stupid and childish, both on the part of the people who do this, no matter what the party.  It's like a bunch of high-schoolers trying to one-up each other.  One great post was from someone who kept having his Trump signs stolen, so he rigged them to the ground on a string of some kind and coated them with vaseline, then filmed someone trying to steal them.  That was a great YouTube moment.

But what does all this accomplish in terms of the problems we face as a country?  Nothing.  It just creates another wedge.

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