My sojourn in Knoxville has been interesting. I am staying with my best friend. Her partner has voted for Trump three times. 3 times!!! We’re also in primary season in Tennessee, so the attack ads are relentless. I have been trying to maintain my composure; though not altogether successfully. I called out a lie in a restaurant the other day – to a woman, stranger to me, at another table. The lie: “no other country has birthright citizenship” which a quick search will tell you there about 35 countries who offer it – about 18%. Not a huge number, but not zero.

The friend group has stopped talking politics with the partner. My friend prefers a peaceful home, so she doesn’t either. I’m more vocal. Two years ago in the spring of 2024, partner and I had multiple discussions and disagreements, but we were able to discuss without name calling. So far, we’ve only had one instance when I had to leave the room in order to maintain my cool. I’ve also had to rein in my sarcastic remarks. That has been difficult, but surprisingly effective. I can’t remain silent – if I do, I’m complicit when he espouses an opinion.

So, my method has been to wait for him to spout something he’s read/seen and then to gently correct him with facts. I try to use more conservative sources for the rebuttals since he is more likely to believe the rebuttal that way. An example – SAVE Act/voter fraud. I searched and selected the Heritage Foundation as the source of my facts. They’ve got a database of voter fraud cases back to 1982. Guess the total number of cases nationwide in the past 44 years. Go ahead, I’ll wait……slightly more than 1,600. To be sure, that is the number of cases, not the number of fraudulent votes. But still, over 44 years, it is highly unlikely that a great number of elections have been thrown due to voter fraud. Election fraud is a different case – supression efforts are definitely ramping up. On the local/state front, just talking about the voting records of the candidates in their current offices has been enough to turn him off the more extreme candidates. Marsha Blackburn has done a great job of killing her chances with him by her recent advertisement. Oh, I also looked up the stats on how many acres are owned by Chinese interests in Tennessee….a vanishingly small number of acres. Not an issue. He is now agreeing with me at least 40% of the time. Hopefully that will stick in his mind when he votes in a couple of weeks in the primary, and then again in November.