We're in the middle of a long, hot summer.

From sea to shining sea, America is seething.

The political system is rigged. Hillary is crooked and should be in jail. Trump is a racist, woman-hating monster.

There's nothing like a heated presidential campaign to bring our most toxic tendencies to the surface.

In the past, there has always been some good-natured ribbing between candidates and their supporters. But something feels different this summer. Hotter. Angrier.

It started with the "Dump Trump" contingent raising a ruckus at the Republican convention. There was lots of jeering and shouting when they didn't get to vote on how delegates pick the nominee.

Then at the Democratic convention, upset Bernie Sanders supporters booed when he took the stage to support Clinton.

Police shootings of black men and the ensuing retaliation against officers have only inflamed the situation.

It's pretty clear that beyond the bright lights and pageantry at both conventions is a nation stewing in its own stink of racism, sexism and economic inequalities.

Vincent Hutchings, a political science professor at the University of Michigan who studies race and elections, said Trump has raised the stakes this election.

"Donald Trump, perhaps unlike any candidate since George Wallace, (has) been overt and unmistakable in his appeal to white voters and his demonization of non-white voters," he said. "Usually, there's been kind of a wink and nod adopted in the political cycles wherein the Republicans make implicit overtures in terms of those constituencies, but they don't overtly come out and demonize ... in quite the same way that Trump has been doing."

Slogans

The toxicity was bound to spill out into our own neighborhoods here in Michigan. It reached the headlines last week when a Flushing Township man found himself embroiled in controversy for putting a sign on his yard that said, "Make the Township White Again."

Flushing Township, I will note, is already 96 percent white.

The Flushing Township man said he put the Make the Township White Again sign up after people stole his Trump signs. On Wednesday he told MLive he filed a police report about the stolen signs. The township is also looking into whether the signs violate any ordinances.

The man is not being named because he is afraid for his life.

He told MLive that the subsequent threats he received made him feel persecuted and that it's unfair because people who support Hillary Clinton or the Black Lives Matter movement aren't harassed if they put out yard signs.

Of course, the sign is a riff on Trump's slogan, "Make America Great Again."

When I first saw the story about the sign, I thought it was a joke by a snarky liberal who was using Trump's own slogan against him. But it wasn't. The man put out the sign as a joke or "an experiment" to see what the reaction was.

That's some highly irresponsible citizenship right there.

But this is the type of mentality many Trump followers celebrate, a say-what-you-want, do-what-you-want slash and burn attitude.

And let's be honest, Trump's slogan seems that the need to make America great again insinuates it is no longer great, but that it was in some far-off past.

It's a reassuring myth that might allow some people to sleep better at night, but it isn't real. The stereotype is that the Beaver Cleaver, Eisenhower era was the peak of American life.

But what the sitcom lens leaves out is that life was pretty miserable for a lot of people in "the good old days" Trump promises to bring back. Women and minorities were treated as second-class citizens. And if you've never been a second-class citizen, you don't know what it's like to be treated like one.

Black Lives Matter

We've heard the same argument from bitter white people for years: Black people can say anything they want about white people without it being racist, but if I say anything about black people, I'm a racist.

They are same people who respond to the Black Lives Matter movement with "All Lives Matter."

Of course no one person's life matters any more or less in a broad, humanistic way. But the "Black Lives Matter" was borne out of the social, political and cultural climate of 21st Century America where black people are still not being treated equally.

With that said, it's not illegal to be racist. It's not illegal to be sexist, either. It's also not illegal to be mean, nasty or greedy. And as long as you aren't threatening a specific person based on their race, gender or ethnicity, the First Amendment allows you to say what you want.

But beyond what is legally allowed in our society is something arguably more powerful: the social acceptance of such behavior by our friends, neighbors and even enemies.

Which is why I was encouraged to see the neighbors' concern about the sign in Flushing.

Wayne Bradley, director of African American engagement for the GOP in Michigan and Trump supporter, also didn't find the Flushing Township man's "joke" very funny.

"That was not a joke, at this time, that I think is appropriate for what people are trying to do in terms of building American," he said. "Maybe have the discussion instead of making a joke about it."

This is not political correctness run amok, as the right will argue. This is about wanting to live in a safe, civil society, not an environment where people can say or do whatever they want without consequences.

The reaction of the neighbors gave me a little hope in what will likely be a long, hot summer where there's bound to be more signs like the one in Flushing.

This is an opinion column.

Hear the full conversations with Hutchings and Bradley: