One Piece of the Jigsaw

Berrien County, Michigan, in the Semiquincentennial Summer

If you are among the hundreds of thousands of people who have read Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s new book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, or the millions more who have heard about the devastating and infallible portrait it presents, then an account of life in a corner of southwest Michigan may seem too remote from the center to be truly relevant. The fact is that most Americans’ lives are far removed from events in and around the White House. But they do have to deal with the consequences and the aftermath.

*****************************

Flag Day is a documentary about what the people of Three Oaks, a town in southwest Michigan’s Berrien County, call the “largest Flag Day celebration in the world.” A Wall Street Journal review of the film said it is a “literally . . . flag-waving” tribute to the “immensely pleasing nature of small-town pride.”

As it happens, I saw Flag Day in a screening at the Vickers Theatre in Three Oaks, a few miles from where my family gathers for vacation on Lake Michigan. Coming from Washington, D.C., I had to reconcile the spirit on display with Donald Trump’s expropriation of June 14 as his birthday and red-white-and-blue banners adorning a bloody UFC cage fight on the White House lawn.

Oh well.

The documentary captures the array of locals: farmers on tractors, bearded veterans and bikers, baton twirlers and bagpipers, Miss Three Oaks, the gay shopkeeper who emigrated from Peru, the all-Black “Soul Stompers” from nearby Michigan City, and the onlookers of all ages and sizes in well-worn beach chairs waving small flags of their own.

The continuity of the celebration was reassuring. But reflecting on it later, I was thinking of something else. Berrien County is actually a composite of multiple strands of America’s fabric, communities of ethnic, racial, and income disparity with varying political preferences. There are families who settled on farms in the mid-1800s and those known locally as FIPs (F*&^0$% Illinois People), who have bought up the multi-million-dollar architecturally designed homes along the lake.

My wife’s family, originally from Chicago, has come here for a century and now numbers about one hundred across four generations, most of whom arrive in early August for “Peak Week.” (I was admitted more than fifty years ago and have managed to hang on.)

Much about Berrien County is enduring. Lake Michigan is forever spectacular, with water rising and falling a bit each year, as it has for millennia. The public beach in New Buffalo and the adjoining marina have been recognized as one of the country’s best inland resort destinations. The lines around Oink’s, the main ice cream parlor in “New Buff,” never seem to diminish the excitement of choosing from dozens of flavors.

Camp Sokol on the lake is one of the last remaining collection of cabins and shared facilities that draw families with Slavic and Baltic ancestry who came to Chicago long ago but still recognize their originating identities.

On the whole, the economic, political, and social spectrum of Berrien County reflects American norms. The median family income of about $65,000 is in line with the national number, spanning from hardscrabble farming and urban stresses in the small city of Benton Harbor to the waterfront wealth. On the Zillow real estate site, the top price for a home on the water is $9.975 million.

In 2024, Donald Trump won 53 percent of the vote in Berrien County, but my guess is that many of the FIP voters might have reduced that margin. This is an election year in Michigan, with the contests for governor, senator, the House, and state legislators mostly close enough to be of national interest. Primaries are August 4.

The additions in recent years of cannabis outlets, breweries, wineries, and the Pokagon tribe’s Four Winds Casino have doubtless added to county revenues and recreational choices. As elsewhere, there are local disputes over the impact of short-term rentals and the looming possibility of AI data centers, which have so far been held off.

As in most parts of the country, there are those in the county with less than they need, and that is where the impact of what is happening in Washington probably matters most.

Benton Harbor is a small majority-Black city in Berrien County that has an ingrained history of troubles that continue to defy improvement. Here is what I wrote about the school system, where virtual teachers are replacing the ones in classrooms. In less than a year, the latest superintendent has resigned, after clashes with the school board and students, adding to the sense of disarray.

Benton Harbor has a poverty rate of 40 percent, more than triple the national average, which means that deep funding cuts and tightened eligibility for SNAP, Medicaid, and other benefits will be especially felt there as they are take effect.

On the outskirts of Benton Harbor is La Perla, a grocery/restaurant hub for the local Hispanic community, which is about 5 percent of the county population. Virtually every product for sale comes from Mexico or Central America. You probably won’t get more authentic Mexican food anywhere else this side of the border. The walls are adorned with schedules for buses to destinations across Mexico. The only flags on display are Mexican.

A June report in the local Harbor Country News said that more than sixty people had been picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this year after being held in the county jail under an agreement with the Sheriff’s Department.

At a town hall meeting about ICE, an attendee said (speaking through a translator), “Friends are scared to go to work, to go to restaurants to be out in public,” adding, “We just want to work.”

So, while the celebrations of “small town pride” in Berrien County resonate in this 250th year of the United States of America, for those who for one reason or another are aware of the depredations prevalent at the center of American power, the mood carries some shadows.