GENOA, Ill. — Jim Harris expected vandalism, angry calls, maybe even a violent attack.

Outside his old farmhouse, he had erected an upside-down American flag, a military signal of dire distress, and scrawled two big signs deploring President Obama’s re-election: “No Hope” and “Enslaved by the 47 Percent.”

He figured the display would incite some passers-by on his country road here in the cornfields of DeKalb County. This is scarcely a liberal bastion, but the county, which lies some 70 miles northwest of Chicago, cast a majority of votes for the fellow Illinoisan in the White House.

“I seriously feel this country is in dire distress,” said Mr. Harris, 55, an Air Force veteran who earns more than $40 an hour as a nonunion construction worker. “I can no longer trust the American people to do the right thing since they re-elected Obama.”

These are deflated times for many ultraconservatives and Tea Party crusaders who felt certain that America had come to its senses and was going to make a sharp right turn at the polls in November. The sense of despair and anger since the election has been expressed in scattered cases around the country of people turning their American flags upside down.