You don’t have to agree with all of the state’s politics to love Vermont, the dream of American politics, the civility and sense of common purpose, survives there, perhaps because the state is riddled with smaller communities where people don’t only know one another from Facebook and Twitter.
While our presidential political system is polluted with hatred and insult and ugliness, I saw voters all over Vermont today standing together supporting different candidates from different parties. Before the beautiful old town hall, on a tree-lined Main Street, they chatted, shared coffee and muffins, it was a scene from Mark Twain’s America, not ours really, not for some time.
Was it real? Can we ever return to it? Is it too narrow and white and scrubbed an image to reflect the new America, in an ugly transition from one country to another. I don’t know, but it was nice to see. Politics can be uplifting, and problem-solving and hopeful. It seemed in Vermont that people still listen to one another and cling to a sense of commonality. There is a middle, not just a left-and-a-right.
Nowhere did I see any sense of cruelty or bitterness or conspiracy, although it must exist, out of sight on Election Day.
But it is a special place.
It is, of course, one narrow slice of America, not even the one I might prefer to live in – I love the grit and reality of my town.
But it was touching to see it – I stopped to take photos at the voting places we passed on our way home from Vermont – and I was uplifted by it. This is the America that Norman Rockwell painted, it was never the whole story or the true America, but it reflects a past where people spoke to one another rather than shouted over one another’s heads. This scene touched me, I saw it repeated all over the state.