Don’t let politics monopolize your life

Our communities are built out of a multitude of shared experiences and values, respect and mutual need. Politics today threatens to silence all those other ways by which we define ourselves, to break those links that bind us together.

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Columnists

October 29, 2020 - 8:18 AM

Photo by Kansas News Service/Chris Neal/KCUR.ORG

“Republicans shouldn’t thresh with Democrats.”

My father was imparting wisdom upon me, something he’d heard from his father, learned on their farm in Kansas. Wisdom that maybe we could use today.

I’d probably better translate. Back then farmers banded together to buy a threshing machine to be shared among neighboring farms during wheat harvest. This great communal tradition is laden with nostalgic memories of neighbor helping neighbor. The threshing picnic at the end of harvest is a rich icon of idyllic rural life. Friendship shown all around, we imagine.

Not so, my father was telling me. Peace among farmers meant politics shouldn’t rear its ugly head. Republicans should harvest with Republicans. Democrats with Democrats. Worked better that way. Even then politics was bad medicine on farms in Liberty and Freedom townships in Republic County.

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