After four years in the U.S. Navy and, in the decades since, a steady consumption of modern American media — books, movies, television, the internet — I assumed that I was effectively inoculated — with boosters! — from any shock that a chance encounter with the F-word might produce.
Nevertheless, I recently executed a neck-wrenching double take as I drove through a nearby neighborhood and spied a 4 x 7-foot yard sign declaring, in letters a foot high, “F--- Biden.”
The unashamed display of this crude message wasn’t a one-off at a white supremacist rally or an insurrection. The neighborhood is upper middle class, the grounds are well manicured and the house is a large, well-maintained domicile on an extensive lot. The incongruity was striking, but should it be alarming?
