I try and avoid propaganda. But I love this. I’ve seen a wide range of posts over the past 24 hours. And I feel like even my rightest of right friends have acknowledged this point — we fought a war over this 70+ years ago. We became “America” on the heels of the sides we chose and the fights we fought and the enemy we squashed. (I’m happy to dig into all the nuance of WW2, mind you — I don’t view it romantically nor do I believe it played out romantically, but I certainly celebrate it as such). What I found most heartening today was the voices of people with whom I usually disagree on all things politically, stepping forward and saying … if The Daily Stormer is what invited you to Charlottesville, you had every right to be there … and we have every right to tell you to STFU, because you don’t represent anything American. Anything.
#iamgrateful and #iamthankful that I have seen all this up close. Sitting across from me and next to me at lunch while in high school. The fact that I was invited into friends houses where Nazi paraphernalia was on display, flags hung on ceilings … taught me that this isn’t what most and many of these people mean to believe. It’s people in search of belief and meaning. This whole weekend took me back 25 years. Humbled me. We don’t take steps forward. If you look at our footprints, we salsa dance forward and backward. Progressive spirals. The net sum of the past 25 years is progress. But if we were to look at any individual point in time over the course of that 25 years, you’d think twice about betting on what you were going to see — what part of the salsa dance you were going to snapshot. In the end, I hugged my kids like hell this weekend. Like hell. And I know that for all our progress, the same statement applies to my son and daughter … don’t give anyone a chance to question your value, your contribution, or your fortitude. You again? Yes. And again and again and again. Sorry for the ramble folks. I’m twisted. I’ve always wondered what I’d do if I had the chance to go back to high school and start over. This weekend, I made it back to high school. Just not the way I had hoped. Love you all. And I hope every person on this planet finds meaning that doesn’t require zero summing someone else’s value in return. Life ain’t linear. But it can be progressive. Make your commitment to be incremental. In the best way. Be incremental.
Suneet Bhatt 