Meditations on Why New Hampshirites Don't Use the Turn Signal

I have a theory. New Hampshire has traditionally been a Republican state. Heck, it voted for Nixon...twice. But New Hampshire Republicans have tended to be old-line Republicans, who believed strongly in fiscal conservatism. As far as social issues were concerned, they applied the old Yankee beliefs about a man and his castle, which meant essentially that if something didn't happen in a blatantly public place (i.e., the town square, post office, etc.) then it was nobody's damned business. However, in recent years New Hampshire's political landscape has undergone some radical shifts with many Massachusetts lower middle class folks (read: "Democrats") flooding the southern part of the state, while other political groups like the supposedly Libertarian Free Staters (who behave more like anarchists) moving from all over the U.S. to Keene, New Hampshire to try to hijack the state and transform it into their version of an ideological paradise. This, compounded by the country-at-large's recent slide into ugly partisan mudslinging, has left many New Hampshirites feeling somewhat uneasy and imbalanced. Now, every four years when a presidential election is underway, New Hampshire gets overrun by baby-kissing, hand-shaking, perpetually-smiling liars who never wander more than twenty feet from a camera, and we're used to that. It's kind of like the cold you get every winter; you put in a few miserable days, but it eventually goes away and you just shake it off. However, this new political imbalance in New Hampshire is here to stay and they all want to change the state, re-shaping it into their own respective ideological image.

This is why, I suspect, New Hampshirites don't use turn signals while driving. I think it's because they are so politically shell-shocked that they are terrified that any directional indication towards the left or right will be mistaken for a political preference, and they'll immediately be pounced upon with placards, slogans and petitions.

Ok, it may need some work, but it's a theory. Work in progress.