I walk my dogs around my town twice a day. I’ve always known it was a 96% white and 99% liberal town. It’s the kind of California town with yoga studios and health food stores. The rules are very strict. My brother, who is building a house here, had to go to court three times to fight for a gas stove in his new house. It’s the kind of place that has those lawn signs, you know:
I’ve lived here for about a year. I am ordinarily a city girl, but there are reasons for me to be here right now. It’s been strange getting used to the slower way of life. I don’t exactly fit in.
But I know the vibe because I grew up in California. This is the hybrid-driving, green juice-drinking, MSNBC-watching utopia. It’s the kind of place where there is no crime to speak of, no abused pets tied up in the yard. It hardly ever rains. There are birds everywhere. You’d almost think you were in a David Lynch movie.
I don’t mind it too much. It’s beautiful and clean, and I don’t have to worry about my car being stolen. No sirens are blaring, and no helicopters are flying over.
I often see the same people out walking their dogs. Most of them are very friendly. Every so often, there is an angry person. As much as they want to project a loving and tolerant attitude, if you break the rules, they will come for you.
I’ve been chatting with a woman who walks her dog around town. She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. After I broke my arm, she advised me on how to exercise it back to health. She is a Pilates teacher. We always say hello and have been doing so for a while.
Today, our conversation went a little deeper than usual. It was something about getting old and how fast time goes by the older you get. And it’s true. It does. I said to her, “I can’t believe it’s Friday already.”
Then she said, “Things are getting so scary. November is coming.” I pretended not to know what she was talking about. I didn’t add to the conversation or pretend to agree. I just said, “And it’s so hot.”
“We do seem to have just gotten some hope,” she said. I imagine that to her, hope means Kamala Harris now has the nomination. Again, I said nothing. What could I say? “It was looking dire for a while there,” and that I took to mean Biden, she believed, could not beat Trump.
I didn’t say, “Can you believe Donald Trump was shot just 13 days ago?” I couldn’t say that. I could not ding her hope, what little she had. I quickly pivoted again, “I can’t believe Summer is almost over! It’s July!”
We’d reached a door we could not open, a conversation we could not have. I realized it was expected that I was in her tribe. I fit the demographic. I live in this town. It would never occur to her that someone like me might not agree with her that a Kamala Harris presidency represents hope. Quite the opposite.
I smiled, and we tried to continue our conversation, but I left shortly after that, leaving the odd conversation hanging in the air. She would no doubt think about it and wonder why I didn’t go further. Did she not understand what I meant, she might wonder. Would that thought take her further?
She might google me and find out pretty quickly why I said nothing. Then what? Would she still say hello to me? Would she still invite to come and do yoga with her and a group of women once a week? I’d like to think so, but I don’t know.
It just made me think how strange our lives are now, how we are on such opposite sides, and how our votes could instantly end a potential friendship. I could hear her explaining it later to her boyfriend, “Then I found out she was a Trump supporter.”
If I could be honest with her, I would try to tell her that there is nothing to fear with Trump, that it’s a media narrative that got out of hand and inadvertently caused a mass hysteria event that we’re still not all the way through. I’ve tried to have that conversation with so many people over the years, but it has never gone well.
My dog Jack is funny. When I see he’s scared, I always say, “It’s okay, Jack.” But somehow, telling him that always makes him more anxious. To him, his fear is something he won’t give up, certainly not if I try to tell him that he has nothing to fear.
The same would be true if I tried to tell this woman that the truth awaits on the other side of the delusion. She would do what my dog does: Glance back at me before trying to get away as fast as she could.
And so went my Friday morning.
In the other America, Trump is headed back to Butler, PA. What a great thing to do.
Have a wonderful weekend, dear readers.
Sasha, you described my life in NYC. I don’t have a dog. But striking up conversations with peers, colleagues, people I’ve known for years, there is the implicit expectation that you are on their team, because the alternative is beneath contempt. There is no room for discussion. Their minds are hermetically sealed against any disagreement. Critical thought and self reflection are entirely alien. It feels like a Twilight Zone world filled with human-like robots that lack a mind.
Living in Berkeley since 1968, and a republican since the Kavanaugh hearings—you’ve pretty much described my daily life, though I was never so tactful or adept at changing the subject. And so the friends I thought I had have drained away. But really, without a baseline tolerance for the differences between people, or with the kind of tolerance that only goes in one direction, what is friendship?