Tranquil Squirrel

A few months before the 2024 election, a ven

dor at my local farmers market leaned in and
whispered, “So who are you going to vote for?”
I see her every week. It’s a classic NorCal
farmers market: organic and artisanal, lined

with electric bikes and teeming with designer dogs, despite the “No Dogs Allowed”
signs. She’s a tall, boisterous presence with
a booming voice and a cackling laugh that
echoes down the aisles. Her stand is always
dressed for the next holiday: shamrocks for St.
Patrick’s Day, hearts for Valentine’s, skeletons
for Halloween. She sells a few specialty items
and always draws a steady stream of regulars.
She holds court like a sitcom character: warm,
brash, always on.
Before politics came up, we talked about her
life in her rural town, farming, and her love
of basketball: she’s a self-made expert on
the NBA. I can hold my own in a basketball

conversation, but I also tried to probe deeper.

I nudged the conversation toward the con

tradictions in pro sports: millionaire athletes

glorified while public schools crumble, tax

payer-funded stadiums even as houselessness
skyrockets, the Air Force flyovers, the toxic fan

culture. She waved it off. But I liked challeng

ing her assumptions. And I liked her.
She was quick to laugh and generous in quiet,
unexpected ways. She gave me discounts on
her products without making a fuss. Once,
when I mentioned I was struggling to cook
certain meals, she showed up the next week
with a sleek, high-end smart crockpot. “It’s an

old gift someone gave me. It was just collect

ing dust in my closet,” she said. “I’m glad it’s
going to good use.”
She treated me with a consideration that
many others withheld. I still wear a COVID

mask in crowded places like this farmers mar

ket, and scoffs or eye rolls are standard. Once,
a man confronted me outside the market and
threatened to fight me… for wearing a mask.
Yes, this still happens. But this vendor never
questioned it or made me feel unwelcome.
That alone felt like a genuine act of tolerance
and kindness. And despite her open criticism
of welfare and “people taking advantage of
the system,” she never seemed to judge me
for paying with SNAP (formerly food stamps),
the EBT currency accepted at the market.
By the time she asked about the election,
we’d built a rapport. I didn’t launch into my
usual critique: that electoral politics props up

coercive authority, drains energy from grass

roots struggle, and legitimizes systems built
to dominate. I’d already made the reluctant
decision to vote.
So I swallowed my spit and said, “Jill Stein.”
“Who?!” she shouted, bursting into laughter.
“Never even heard of her!”
She was thrilled. Not because she liked Jill
Stein (she assumed Stein was some RFK-type)
but because I wasn’t voting Democrat. That
was enough for her. She was MAGA, but
apparently even an anarchist masquerading

as a disillusioned RFK supporter could be
accepted into the fold. I had, accidentally,
gone undercover.
It was surreal. I loathe Trump and everything
MAGA represents. But here I was, bonding
over our mutual distrust of the Democratic
Party. She had no idea how deep my rejection
went. I wasn’t just frustrated by inaction or
centrist compromise. I saw the Democrats
as a party that props up capitalism, defangs

movements, and uses the language of pro

gress to maintain empire. But if that made
me sound like I was on her side, she was
happy to have me.
We were an unlikely match. Not only were
our politics polar opposites, but we lived in
entirely different worlds. I was unemployed
and struggling to make ends meet. She was a
hard worker, proud of the wealth and security
she’d built. Over time, I learned about the
properties she owned: some inherited, others
shrewdly purchased.
She shared her investment strategies in
passing; how she planned to stretch her Social
Security benefits, the timing of her property
purchases. She showed me photos from her latest cruise to Mexico. Meanwhile, I was
fighting an eviction. My student loans had
come back to life: interest piling up again
after the pandemic pause, payments now
required on a balance that felt impossible.
My job prospects were vanishing thanks to
AI, and I was still recovering from knee
surgery after being hit by an Uber Eats driver
while biking.
I was curious. Could I push against my new
friend’s worldview without triggering the
reflexes Fox News had drilled into her? I asked
about her life as a working-class woman,
about solidarity, about state power. Her
answers were often shallow, peppered with
right-wing talking points. But she engaged.
She told me about her nearly 100-year-old
mother living on Social Security and Medicare.
Her son worked as a prison guard. We even
talked, seriously, about the prison-industrial
complex and state violence.

I challenged her assumptions about consum

erism and capitalist culture, with examples
all around us. At this market, there’s a “free
stand” where people donate and take items
without any exchange of money. It’s the
liveliest, happiest stall at the market. “They

do what?!” she laughed. “I haven’t even gone
over there.”

Then came her stories: deeply personal, deep

ly painful. Her ex-husband, addicted to meth,
had stalked and terrorized her. The police
did nothing. The courts bled her dry. Her
sons were traumatized. And there was more
that I won’t even mention. Listening to her, I
couldn’t help but feel compassion. I saw the
emotional scaffolding behind her politics.

But in between the vulnerability came poi

son. “Don’t you think we just need to deport
all of them and start fresh?”
I pushed back. I asked about borders and
nation-states, about whether immigration
enforcement is just another form of state
violence rooted in racism and capitalist
exploitation. I didn’t use those exact words,
but I tried to frame it in a way that might land:
Aren’t borders just tools of division? Don’t
immigrants deserve rights and protection? As
a working-class vendor, couldn’t she see how
deportations weaken labor solidarity and
fracture communities?
Many of the other vendors at the market are
Latinx immigrants: some of the kindest and

smartest people I know and who I consider
friends. I told her that. She didn’t budge.
“Sometimes you just have to start with a clean
slate,” she said.
It hit like a punch to the chest. But I didn’t
walk away. I pointed out the obvious flaws in
her logic.
And the hard part is… I think I got through to
her. Sometimes.
A little while back, it was her birthday. I gave
her a small card and drew a little illustration
on the front. She loved it. One of the other
regulars, an elderly woman, was there. The
vendor, thrilled, showed her the card: “Isn’t
that a fun drawing?!”
The elderly woman turned to me and asked,
“Did your son do that?”
I was proud of the drawing but just sighed.
“Yeah, my son did that,” I said. (I’m childless,
for the record.)
The vendor showed me photos from her
recent birthday party: a cake made out of
chicken for her dogs, complete with vanilla
icing and candles. “Vanilla?” I asked. “On a

chicken cake?” “They loved it,” she grinned. I
didn’t ask.
More birthday photos: a shot of her floating

alone in a pool. Then her dinner at a desert

ed Mexican restaurant. A different cake this
time (one for her, not the dogs), but it looked
eerily similar. Then a tall tropical cocktail.
Then a shot of her in a sombrero, straddling a
wooden bull in that same deserted restaurant.
It was all just so… sad.
What struck me wasn’t just the loneliness, but
the disconnect. She was quick to scapegoat
Latinx immigrants in conversation, yet here
she was happily consuming their food, their
hospitality, their culture. The contradiction
didn’t even register.
The next time I saw her, she immediately
asked, “So what did you think of the bombing
of Iran?”

“I’m very unhappy about it,” I said. An under

statement, if anything.
“Why? We’ve needed to go after those people
for a long time.”
I tried: “Those people? What do you mean?
These are human beings. Did you know the U.S. overthrew a democratically elected gov

ernment in Iran? That played a big part in how
we ended up with the regime we’re bombing.”
“When?”
“1953. Which likely led to the 1979 revolution.”
She cackled. “Who cares? They’re evil. Bullies.
They needed to be stopped. One and done.”
I wanted to scream. I was exhausted. I’d had
enough.
The next week, with Pride celebrations in full
swing, her stall was decked out in red, white,

and blue pinwheels. She wore a stars-and-
stripes T-shirt. Someone nearby muttered,

“It’s Pride and she’s celebrating the Fourth of
July?” They were annoyed. And so was I.
What started as small talk over farm-fresh
goods had spiraled into something different.
It had become something I was never meant

to sustain. I’d tolerated far too much of her ig

norant, hateful, and racist comments that she
dropped like an afterthought. I didn’t mean to
enable her. I wasn’t writing a profile or trying
to play some kind of moral anthropologist. I

just wanted to buy food. And maybe, possi

bly, talk some sense into someone who had

redeeming qualities but dangerous views. It
all just… happened.
So I finally did what, maybe, I should’ve done
from the beginning: I stopped buying her
products and stopped visiting her stand. Not
in a loud or public way. I didn’t try to cancel
her or demand others do the same. I didn’t
confront her. I just made a quiet decision, like
so many of us do when we hit our limit.
It felt like a cop-out. A consumer-choice
version of politics: boycotting. But I didn’t
know what else to do. Another debate
masquerading as a conversation was more
than I could take. Maybe someone else could
succeed where I failed, but I was out. And
now I wonder how many other farmers at that
market, whose food I still buy, quietly believe
the same MAGA garbage she proudly says
out loud.
We haven’t spoken in a while. I see her from
a distance now and, in spite of myself, I feel a
kind of loss. The good parts of her were real.
Her warmth wasn’t fake. But the toxic parts,
the corrosive parts, slowly eroded all of that.
The dissonance grew too sharp to reconcile.

Holding both sides began to feel like too great
a weight, too deep a betrayal of my values.
I still hear her laughter sometimes, drifting
down the row of stalls. But it lands differently
now. The market feels dimmer.

In hindsight, boycotting her from the begin

ning would’ve been easier. Cleaner. I could’ve
walked away the moment she said something
cruel, racist, or irredeemably stupid. I could’ve
told myself I was drawing a principled line.
And maybe I should have.
But I chose to keep showing up. Not to
condone her politics or simply condemn
them, but because I couldn’t look away from

the contradiction. Because she is the contra

diction. A woman shaped by working-class
struggle: brutalized by patriarchy, neglected
by the state, surviving a broken system.
Is she even working class anymore? Maybe

not. All the cruises, the property, the retire

ment accounts. But she identifies as working
class. She grew up working class. The story
she tells herself… It’s still working class. She’s

not unique. She’s not an outlier. She’s a prod

uct of a system that delivers pain, then sells a
story of strength through cruelty.

Talking with her didn’t change my politics. If
anything, it deepened them. It reminded me

that systems create people like her… and peo

ple like me. We are all conditioned, socialized,
manipulated, misinformed. But some of us
are still trying to unlearn. Others aren’t. And
the gap between us can feel like a canyon.
I don’t know if my attempts to reason with her
made any difference. But I do know this: if we
abandon everyone shaped by propaganda,
every neighbor poisoned by nationalism; if
we stop reaching out to those who scare or
frustrate us, then we’re leaving the future in
the hands of Fox News or any other outlet just
as dangerous.
I believe in planting seeds. And some seeds
take a long, long time to grow. So maybe my
attempts at persuading a MAGA farmer’s
market vendor weren’t a failure.
Maybe they were compost.