Umar Haque has something to feel good about

Umar Haque has been for years one of the most perceptive commentators I know. That means that so many of his contributions have been downers. Reality is a downer, he sees it and he calls it out. Well, the developments in American politics in the last week or so have given him reason to be a little bit -- a little bit -- optomistic. See (Why) You Should Feel This Proud of a Democracy Every Single Day, or, What a Democracy Really Is

The following passage really struck me: I went to Canada to go to grad school, motivated by the excellent program and the cheap tuition which applied, then, even to foreigners. I had no grand expectations of life in Canada. My situation was different from Umar Haque's. I wasn't a "desperate, depressed 'brown' kid in America, I was a blond white invisible immigrant with a barely detectable American accent. But I think I know why his experience speaks to me. Eventually I came to feel that Canada represented a superior idea of civilization. You may call me an idiot but I actually said that to a student, and I meant it.

Life in America feels bad most of the time. Depressing, stressful, hostile. That is because America has been ceasing to be a democracy for many years now, and I don’t mean that in the sense of voting, but in the truer one, a place where the values of peace, justice, equality, and truth are paramount, enacted, expressed, embodied, in even the humblest everyday interactions. Contrast that ugly feeling with the euphoria of that moment. This, my friends, is what a normal society feels like. Let me quickly tell you a little story. At 16, I went to Canada, for university. I’d never been before, and I didn’t know what to expect. And the feeling of being in Canada was so different to America, I couldn’t understand it. Couldn’t understand it. I was a desperate, depressed “brown” kid in America, bullied, beaten, abused, hated just for existing. Life was torture. I didn’t know much else, apart from the other collapsed societies I’d grown up in. But in Canada, I felt these new emotions. And I didn’t understand them. I couldn’t put words to them. I could just…exist…here? And nobody would…attack me? Beat me? Insult me? Hate me? I could…walk down the street? Have friends? I could date girls and just sit at the cafe or the bar…and everyone beside me would be chatting and smiling and laughing? Not angry, upset, or looking at me with hostility, that would soon explode? It took me a long time to understand it all. But this was happiness. The happiness of a kind of existential level. Just existing, in a happy way. In peace. As an equal. With justice. In the truth of the fragility and mortality of each of us. This is what a normal society feels like.

Go, Umar!