Having Civil-ish Conversations

Hope that we can talk across the divide

Diane Aoki
4 min readAug 2, 2024
Photo by Steve Leisher on Unsplash

The Why and How of this Lesson

Last week, I wrote about my experience house/catsitting for a Fox News consumed Trumper. I drove him and his wife to the airport for their long-awaited vacation. The two weeks I lived in their lovely home were peaceful and convenient. When they returned, we had a couple of political conversations initiated by him. Like before, they were markedly civil, but telling. I am writing this to flesh out the evident misogyny among supporters of the orange guy, to imagine what I wish I had said, and to write dialogue in preparation for another opportunity, if it should come my way.

The Hot Topic — Harris for President

The first thing of course, was about Kamala now running for President.

He remarked about how the Dems need to “rebrand” her from someone who didn’t even get one vote when she was running for president in 2020. My response: “ Well it was a different time.” He agreed. (My thought was that she wasn’t running to make sure an insurrectionist and convicted felon doesn’t get elected by deranged election deniers enabling a narcissist who doesn’t know how to lose gracefully.)

Apparent Misogyny

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Diane Aoki

Playwright, essayist, teacher, artist, songwriter, poet. Creativity Activist.