by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

I wasn’t exactly sure what I hoped for in bringing two folks from seemingly opposite political points of view together last week for an early morning coffee at Corky’s. Maybe a little hope?

Yes, hope, that increasingly elusive substance that has been so difficult to muster since Trump V2 blustered into office and proceeded to do exactly what he told us he would do. It’s been one outrage after another this time around, and no one should be the least bit surprised; every single bad and cruel idea was right there in the pages of the Trump V2 owner’s manual, Project 2025.

As we speak, Trump’s masked, unidentified Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection goons are snatching brown people off the street, from courtrooms, hospitals, and their places of work, just as advertised. It’s happening right down the street in Pomona, over in Upland, and in Ontario, and it’s only a matter of time before they start kidnapping people in Claremont based on the color of their skin.

It was in this dark place — my newsfeed clogged with villains, and more news of cuts for folks on the margins and gifts for the ones who need them least — that the naive thought occurred to me to just try and manufacture a little good cheer. After all, the holidays were coming in hot. If not now, when?

So last week I sat down for coffee with a couple guys I like and respect who on paper are unlikely friends: former Claremont Mayor Opanyi Nasiali and City of Trees native Alex Pilz.

The meeting came about after Nasiali and Pilz, both frequent letter to the editor writers, began sparring amicably on the pages of the Courier. Nasiali emailed me, asking for Pilz’s contact info, intent on sitting down to hash out their differences face-to-face. A long lunch later, they were friends.

“We sat down and we talked,” Nasiali said. “And I would like to do more of that. I wish we could do more of that with more people.”

Pilz agreed. “We had a good conversation,” he said. “I walked away thinking, that was pretty cool, I want to do it again.”

As the coffee and conversation flowed at Corky’s, I began to see this relationship as a throwback to a time when America’s two-party hegemony wasn’t a literal blood sport. The optimist in me (he’s in there somewhere) thought this measured discussion might be a prototype for how bridges between ever-increasingly polarized camps might be built.

“Sadly, the country is that way,” Nasiali said. “We have two universes we’re living in. But Alex and I have found out there are some things we have in common.”

Pilz, 65, describes himself as an independent conservative, but “not a red hat MAGA Republican.”

“I do have some friends that are left-leaning Democrats,” Pilz said. “Not many, but I’m still friends with them. With Trump in office it’s come to the point where we don’t even approach the subject anymore because … it gets to be too polarizing and then people get angry and blood pressure goes up. So we leave it alone.”

Nasiali, 80, grew up in Kenya and emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s. After becoming a U.S. citizen 35 years ago, “I came out of the LA Convention Center after the swearing in, and walked straight to the Republican Party booth to register as a Republican.”

That arrangement held until Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“And now, I’m no longer a Republican. I’m like Alex, I’m an independent,” Nasiali said. “I began to see the Republican Party drifting away from what it used to be, when the moral majority-types invited themselves into the party and they began to drift away from limited government in terms of fiscal responsibility and really government staying out of people’s lives.

“Why do I have to care about if someone has an abortion or not? If someone wants to have an abortion, that’s their choice. I don’t believe in abortion, but who am I to tell someone else not to? We know we have gay people in our society. They don’t fall from Mars. They come from us. Who am I to tell them they can’t love who they’re in love with?

“We have a saying in Swahili: ‘Pilipili usiyokula yakuwasha namunagani?’ which is, ‘How can the hot peppers you don’t eat burn you?’ So, I’m not gay. What do I care what gay people who love each other do?”

I was eager to hear these two guys talk about immigration, what with Nasiali a first generation American from Africa, and Pilz’s parents emigrating from Germany in 1958, making him second gen.

“The way I look at it is it is sad when some of these people who are swept up … are legal citizens, or here legally … and I do feel compassion,” Pilz said. “However, during the Biden administration, they say the number is 12 million illegal aliens came over the border. Twelve million here illegally. And so I would say, why were those gates left wide open?”

Though tempted to fact check Pilz’s argument (and I later did), I decided the spirit of his message was that people should immigrate legally, through proper channels. And Nasiali agreed.

“Being first generation immigrant, when I came here I went through the same [legal] procedure,” Nasiali said. “Trump has done a good job, but it’s not being done properly, compassionately.”

This exchange was indicative of how the hourlong discussion went. Nobody raised their voice. No tables were overturned. They disagreed, but both gave grace, and sometimes came to see the other’s position as reasonable.

I walked away encouraged. I’m not saying I wasn’t still seething with anger — I don’t see that changing as long as Trump’s in office — but spending an hour listening to two guys disagree on most things without resorting to insults was refreshing. It wasn’t hope, but it was glimmer of something like that, and that’s a welcome something to be cherished in today’s gruesome political hothouse.