I do also subscribe to the idea that you should show respect for the person you are having the discussion with. I always look at it as, I am trying to learn something. If I am taking the time to have the talk, I want it to be a fruitful conversation. I was friends with this woman when we were young. She was, at least then, a very nice person. Life can change us all though, I am aware of that. I do recall her mother was more than a bit of a nut. Perhaps some of that was passed on in the hereditary sense. 

I won't be alone with her, there will be two or three other guys with me plus whomever she is with. We'll be meeting in a restaurant/bar that is part of a hotel. So, in public. One of the guys has had many conversations with her over the years. They worked out of the same office building and regularly had lunch together and went for coffee. Until he made a sort of smartass remark about Trump and she began avoiding him. 

She is a bright educated woman that has/had her own business. I don't know if she ever got married, she has a nice house and lives alone. I do not think she speaks to her sister any longer due to her beliefs and she appears, according to comments she made, to have rather lousy luck with guys. It seems when she springs what she believes on them, perhaps with a bit too much intensity, they walk away. I don't know anything about her present-day life outside of what people have told me or what she reveals on facebook. She made comments about dating and no real men being left in the world. She looks great, was a redhead when we were kids and is a blonde now. I kind of laughed when I saw her in recent photos because she is the prototype of a female FOX News anchor. Which just seems the perfect look for a person distributing this sort of information. 

She's not a shut-in as other old classmates post photos with her at different events. The funny part is only a couple old classmates respond to her twisted facebook posts and appear to be as nutty as she is. All the others appear to avoid asking her about what she posts. Probably a wise choice. 

One of the guys that will be at this meeting wants to attempt to date her. More than one person has told him that is a bad idea. He's divorced and she is single so fair game to him. He's lusted after her since high school so, I think he can't help himself. 

I had heard of the flat earth thing but never paid much attention to it. I sort of thought it was a gag until I saw it making news because there were some well-known people that believed it. 

Beliefs are funny things and mostly we always live with the fact that people believe different things than we do. Thinking the earth is flat seems a harmless if goofy belief. The fictions that get pushed at right leaning voters seem much more intentionally harmful. They appear designed to isolate them and push them not to trust anything or anyone. They also seem designed to generate anger in these people and to give them people for them to direct their anger at.

These things seem much more harmful than thinking the Earth is flat. 

Part of me just wants to understand why she believes the weird things she does. Some are easy to understand. Like Donald Trump won the election by a landslide and was screwed out of his victory. She obviously believes that because Trump keeps repeating it and so do a bunch of other right wing stooges. So, that is just a lie repeated enough times that it has become a truth for some people. 

JFK Jr. being alive...can't fathom how that fits. Obama and Biden hiding mafia people in Ukraine? No idea. Fauci setting up secret bioweapon labs in Ukraine...easy, she is anti-vax so Fauci has to be the devil.

Some theories bolster others. Putin has to be a good guy, for example, because she was sold the idea he was pro-Christian, anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and a buddy of Trump. So, he has to be doing something good by attacking Ukraine. It can't be Trump is a liar, Putin is a bad guy, and her views on them are upside down. 

Plus Trump worked to undermine NATO, tried and failed to blackmail Ukraine, and hates Zelensky because he would not lie about Biden for him. Hence, Putin must be telling the truth when he calls Zelensky a drug addicted Nazi. Look how wonderfully that all fits.

I don't expect to get through to this woman. If she has dumped family members over this nonsense, I figure I would be easily dismissed. So, I will listen, be respectful, and try to walk away with some sort of understanding and perhaps an interesting story to tell.