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Housesitting for A Trumper

What I Learned Being Inside the “Enemy Camp”

Diane Aoki
6 min readJul 18, 2024
Photo by Aleksandr Ledogorov on Unsplash

How It Happened

When I agreed to housesit and cat-sit for the father of a friend of mine, I didn’t consider what the possibilities were that we weren’t in political alignment. I had a feeling after I made the commitment that I should have said no because he came across as a male version of a Debbie Downer. Complain, complain, complain. “Everything is so hard for me.” And so on. But I have this ethic of keeping my word unless it’s absolutely necessary to not, so I honored my commitment.

Some Red Flags

The first big hint that I was in the enemy camp unawares was when he was giving me instructions for the television system. It defaults to Fox News. This clash of our opposing sides played out after dinner, and some glasses of wine. We were watching news and the story was on the assassination attempt on his preferred presidential candidate. Wine helps to loosen the tongue because normally I wouldn’t have engaged.

“That man’s a hero.”

“What did he do that was heroic?” I asked.

“He took a bullet for the country,” he replied.

“I know but did he actually do something that would be called heroic?”

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Diane Aoki
Diane Aoki

Written by Diane Aoki

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

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