The wider world’s bitter controversies and politics are creeping closer to our village, as was inevitable. My town is not Paradise; it is a very American community.

We all know one another here; we need our neighbors and friends; we often differ about issues but tolerate each other’s differences. Whatever you do on your own property is your business.

I’ve always found my town a lot more tolerant than New York City or the New Jersey town I lived in for years.

I am very happy living here and have never felt safer or more accepted.

This afternoon, a big Trump rally was held for two hours, and I am sad to hear people say they are afraid and are urging their kids to stay inside.

I imagine those big trucks parading through town with those big flags hanging off of the truck bed. I know these rallies on both sides have been the source of much tension, even violence.

I thought of taking our Black Lives Matter flag down, and we did take it down for a few days. I didn’t wish to provoke anyone. But then we decided to put it up again.

In the America I love, we were always free to speak our minds. It’s not so simple anymore.

After I saw George Floyd’s arrest and death video, supporting Black Lives Matter was a no-brainer for Maria and me and many other people, black and white.

In the weeks after Floyd’s death, millions of people marched for BLM and joined and cheered them on; the group became the largest social movement in America’s history.

Maria made a Black Lives Matter flag of sorts, and we hung it in the back yard. In our small and traditionally conservative town, more than 100 people turned to support BLM protests, two different times.

The town police chief was one of them.

But then some cities experienced violent protests, looting arson,  looting and brazen, even murderous,  assaults on the police and innocent businesses.

The BLM initially demanded the defunding of police departments, insisting that police brutality was so embedded in modern America policing than the only solution was to eliminate the police in their existing form.

How unfortunate BLM suggested “defunding.” They should have known that will never happen in America, not in my lifetime.

Donald Trump saw this is a chance to politicize race and the police.

He saw BLM’s sometimes strident activism as a gift to his re-election campaign, something to use to frighten white voters who were watching these jarring images from Seattle and Portland and Chicago and New York City with growing concern.

BLM would defund the police, Trump said, they would attack and ruin cities and suburbs, create mayhem and chaos.

No one would be safe. Only he could stop it. Look at Portland. Look at Seattle. If the “Democrats” didn’t stop it, he promised he would. For his followers, this was sweet music.

Trump singled out BLM as promoting danger and violence; they were, he said, ” thugs” who were taking over streets, destroying businesses,  burning down police precincts.

BLM lost a lot of its white support. It became another issue in the endless left-right struggle.

In small towns and villages like mine, the police are a cherished part of the community, like volunteer fire companies.

Everybody knows the chief well, and no one can remember when the police shot anyone.

There is very little crime or controversy, and no one I know here can imagine defunding the department. And there are very few Black people.

Defunding a police department seems ludicrous up here.

If you are white, as most people are, it seemed a bizarre and dangerous idea. More than anything, it frightened people about Black Lives Matter and distracted from the moral momentum they had seized.

It was also true that many of the protesters painted all police as potentially murderous racists. That also played into Donald Trump’s blatantly racist narrative.

I support Black Lives Matter. We have our flag, and I have a BLM bracelet I’m happy to wear. To me,  BLM is about police brutality and police reform, not defunding.

Nobody is going to defund the police in almost all of our country.

Black Lives Matter is important because many Blacks need to say that and believe it. It doesn’t really matter what white people say, they don’t need to like it. As long as Blacks need to hear it, I need to say it.

Of course, all lives matter. Isn’t that the point?

If we’ve learned nothing else this year, we need to rethink and support our police. They are in an awful spot.

Police officers need to be paid more, trained more, supported more, and not just with armored cars and assault rifles. Send the military hardware back to Washington and give local police departments the money for those de-escalation units that are working so well.

It will take a lot of work to repair the damage done by the George Floyd shooting; the police need help and support in learning how to deal with some confrontations in a new and different way.

Watching those awful videos, I don’t need any more convincing that something is wrong. Black Lives Matter is necessary and in the most urgent way.

I see reform as helping the police with many new and creative tools, providing the training and resources to help them deal

with complex social situations more safely and humanly than shooting mentally disturbed people who can’t control themselves.

I was a police reporter for more than a decade. I had a lot of police friends, two or three killed while on duty. They were good friends, good people, loving fathers, and mothers. I have never believed that all police officers get up in the morning looking to shoot black men or anybody else.

But something is wrong. We are putting them in the awful position of tackling horrendous social problems – mental illness, homelessness, gun violence – that no one else seems able to tackle. Many blacks are terrified of the police and fear for the safety of their children.

That is awful for Black Americans and awful for the police. There must be a leader out there who wants to help make this issue.

The police were never meant or trained to deal with schizophrenia and homeless people and our social crises, so many Americans afflicted by drugs or other mental illness forms.

There is racism for sure, but there is also the sense of the police being sent into the middle of some awful messes that our society has allowed to fester and grow.  And then abandoned.

We need the police.

When there is trouble, there is no one else to call.

Still, those videos of police officers shooting black men tore a hole right through our national soul. Addressing this is the social justice challenge our time. Trump is not the person to do it.

So we’re keeping our Black Lives Matter flag on the clothesline. I don’t believe this problem should be brushed aside again or suffocated by election politics and white resistance.

I need to speak out via my flag. Black Lives Matter is not a threat to our lives and homes. It speaks to destiny and justice.

I live and write my politics; I don’t shout them at people who disagree with me.

I was moved by those weeks when we united in acknowledging the suffering and killing of black people and the legacy of slavery, which infects our society for so long and so many ways.

It seemed we were all on the same side. That seems like a long time ago.

I’m sorry that the issue became a political football, and another us-versus-them issue,  another way to divide us and turn us against each other. Blacks deserve better. So does everyone else.

I’m hopeful that a break in those dark clouds is coming; I sense a real change in their air. I believe people are sick of his endless rancor and argument.  Many of us are coming to see just how deep and cancerous racism in the United States is.

It is not an easy thing to accept.

I think people of good heart want us to try to come together.

So we’re keeping our flag up, hoping that people can and will remember why it was there in the first place.