Headed back to Oregon today. I’m feeling like this is the very last time I’ll be in Knoxville after having lived here since the early 1990’s except for the past two years. It has been a surreal visit. I’ve had a great time visiting with friends and friends I consider family.

This visit ends with sadness. I recently described trying to engage someone I know with critical thinking (see Inch by Inch post). It has not worked. I’ve come to the conclusion that he’ll NEVER admit any errors in thinking, nor will he actually think. Every time we’ve had discussions about a number of topics, he’ll agree with me, or at least come close to agreement – especially when I show him data – but then, he’ll go back to parroting MAGA talking points.

Regarding voter ID (SAVE Act), he showed me something from the internet that said Iowans can attest to another person’s identity, thus letting the other person register to vote without ID. Not the entire truth. I showed him the Iowa Secretary of State website that clearly states a bunch of stipulations that makes it near impossible for an ineligible person to register. Plus there is a >$10,000 fine for attestor if they lie. And Iowa doesn’t count the vote until they verify the identity and residency. This all comes after we had discussed the vanishingly small number of voter fraud cases brought in this country since 1982. The Heritage Foundation’s data says it is less than 2,000 cases over 44 years over the entire country.

The saddest thing was when he said he voted for Trump in 2024 as the “lesser of two evils.” He didn’t like that Harris would continue Biden’s agenda and didn’t have her own ideas, not withstanding she had about five minutes to come up with new ideas??? That’s what was more “evil” than Trump’s 34 felony counts of felony convictions??? We got in a huge argument about whether the timing of the rape allegations against Trump and Epstein. He couldn’t imagine a single case with millions of pages of evidence; must have been made up. To which I explained it was millions of pages of evidence gathered over multiple decades from multiple victims to multiple jurisdictions. Not just one case. He had no answer to my question of how a teenage victim reporting to the police in the 1970’s could be so forward thinking to now.

The final breaking point was when he said Trump’s social media must have been hacked because he wouldn’t/couldn’t have posted the screenshot below. Sit with that for a second. Trump’s social media being hackable isn’t a frightening thought? What kind of non-security does the President have? I guess he’s not seen the 100’s of examples of lies/weird shit Trump posts each and every day. That’s when I left the room. And made arrangements to spend my last night here in a motel rather than spend more time with him. I’m done.