Larissa Phillips is a writer who, after 15 years in Brooklyn, moved to a red county in upstate New York. After many years living as a Democrat “in Trump Country,” she came to understand certain things about her neighbors. She writes about her education in this lovely piece.

Here’s a key paragraph:

Nothing is constant, even political feelings. By the time Biden announced his candidacy, I’d been living upstate for 10 years. A decade of farming had made me less aloof, because farming entails emergencies, and so often my neighbors were there to help. It’s hard to care where someone stands on politics when they race to your house to save a dying lamb. When their wife helps search for your runaway dogs. When they deliver and stack 50 hay bales within hours of your asking for it, and afterward make pleasant chitchat. This is the gift of living in a rural area: I keep finding reasons to see my political adversaries as human.

On the other hand, today I also came across this story about a friendly little squirrel, an internet “star” who was killed by New York officials after they raided the property of its owner. Sadly, throughout the state, there are many government officials who enjoy throwing their weight around and enforcing their needless rules, including when it means seizing and killing animals.

In Phillips’s rural community, people are eager to help others and their animals. In America, most people manage to live harmoniously, despite their differences. They don’t want bossy officials running roughshod over their lives.