Support candidates who don't promote partisanship

The largest fear facing us is not poverty, or health care, crime or government overreach, or even climate change. The largest fear facing us is taking sides.

I have felt safe here for 25 years. Then my neighborhood was robbed. Then the sheriff came out and and we started a Neighborhood Watch. The thief was arrested, the stolen goods returned.

Guns appeared at the kids' march for Black Lives Matter. But, I listened to the police chief, and to a gun-owning friend. Even though we still need police reform, I feel safer.

We are not at a point where the only way to feel safe is to support government (or anybody!) using illegal coercive force or threatening it, something Americans feared even before the country was founded, and especially when it is used against people exercising free speech. This fear unites us.

How will we protect ourselves from COVID? What about fires? The local economy? Will our values of personal responsibility go down the tubes? Can we trust the vote? Taking sides will only make these fears worse.

It's hard work to talk to strangers and to listen to them, too. But that's what we have to do.

Think local. Vote for candidates who do not promote partisanship, who value all of us. Who don't take sides, but compromise.


NANCY GERTH

Sagle