Family dinner political discussions. Step 1 in my book: stop demonizing each other. It's a pipe dream, but if we can't even stop demonizing our own families, we'll never get anywhere.

Just got back from a tour in France with my 82 yr old father. He always loved those trips, and with mom gone hadn't done one in years. So I sucked it up and took a trip with a tour group of people on average 15-20 years older than I. A lot of old white folks from all over the country. As you can imagine, we had our Trumpies, including one guy who'd spent his career in coal, was an ardent man-made climate change denier, economic nationalist, and Trump supporter extremist. A few couples on the "feminist" side as you put it. Both those extremes basically focused on the personality cult. It exists on both sides of Trump. One will never criticize anything, and the other will never give him credit, no matter what.

A lot of political discussions. I had some great ones with coal totin' Trumpie, who was a very pleasant man. For me, the sights we saw and little lectures we got on WW I and WW II, and how for the French they were really one big catastrophe, the dangers of nationalism underscored averything. Coalie (whose name, ironically enough, actually was "Dick") and I had one of our good conversations about that.

The discourse never got heated, and we all largely agreed about the need for that. Civility. Our republic is designed for a country shared by people with widely varying world views. We bitch and moan about the inefficiency of our govt but we're the problem, and Congress is our reflection. We have to learn to talk with each other and not past each other.

All over again in the social media age.