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Along with corny fair merch and anime ponchos, every, and I mean every T-shirt stall was draped with Trump flags: “I’m voting for the felon,” “F— Biden” and the relatively anodyne, “I’m With Trump.” While browsing the pet supply shop across from the local Republican Party’s stall, I saw GOP staff greeted with cheers and raised fists — echoing Donald Trump’s triumphant pose after the assassination attempt on him — by numerous fairgoers wearing red caps and “Ultra MAGA” shirts. “Boo, Kambala!” yelled a woman, laughing.

In packed queues for roasted corn, I squeezed past parents balancing their children’s plastic lemonade cups in their arms with “Trump/Vance 2024” lawn signs tucked under their armpits. “Nice sign!” one blonde, elementary school-age girl shouted above the din, with her thumbs up at a woman holding one of them.

One of my cousins saw clusters of young men walking the grounds in floral Hawaiian shirts, which have recently become an unfortunate sartorial symbol of the far-right “boogaloo” movement, a militant group that aims to incite a second Civil War. I asked my cousin if he was sure about this because the idea seemed completely absurd. Maybe it’s just a bunch of dorky kids, I thought. But my cousin grew up there and probably went to school with their parents — he was sure.

I was just trying to have a chill time looking at show rabbits. But I was bombarded by right-wing politics.