You can be a raging racist and still participate and express respect for Others' cultures. It's a transitory thing, depends on your mood that day. Perhaps.

Being racist is not an absolute, right? Or is it, Once a racist, always a racist?

For example, I myself have respect and sometimes admiration for Mexicans (for their work ethic, from my personal experience working side-by-side in early life service industry), while also retaining a lifelong negative prejudice against Puerto Ricans (based, again, on personal, early life exposure to some bad apples).

I do not consider myself a racist, but I know I have prejudices and preferences that could offend some of my absolutist fellow citizens. I discriminate in my tolerances, enjoying those (sub)cultures that appeal to me, and turning away from those that rub me the wrong way (subwoofers and bass pounding noisemaking mofos).

But some haters just don't discriminate, and here is the problem facing our world. Someone, some entity, roused these rabble, stirred them up into a lather, turned them into intolerant hate machines.

It isn't racism that fuels their rage now, it is Other-ism. Anything other than the old and familiar is subject to backlash. So, Diwali can engage-the-rage because it reminds of all the other cultural intrusions and pollutions and dilutions and... You Will Not Replace Me! Christmas! Not Kwanzaa!

It is easy to rouse the rabble; difficult to rein in (or reign over) the rage. It is easy to tear stuff down; not so easy to build something better.

I hope our billionaire corporate overlords are learning a lesson from this...

Why did you note the Diwali observance wire photo? I was following your lead.

Trump was sued for running racially segregated housing that excluded black people, and when he lost the lawsuit he dishonestly claimed to have won, and continued to discriminate against black people and didn't comply with the court orders in general. During the case he said to a federal prosecutor "you wouldn't want to live with them either."

Here is a direct quote from Trump published by journalist John O'Donnell, that in 1997 he said was accurate, but then changed his mind and now claims to say he never said it: "I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and at Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys wearing yarmulkes…. Those are the only kind of people I want counting my money. Nobody else… Besides that, I tell you something else. I think that guy’s lazy. And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks."

His dad was arrested as an attendee at a KKK rally, suggesting he was raised in a KKK household, and numerous acquaintances have said his dad would frequently rant about how great Hitler was.

He is now running a terror campaign with masked secret police violently kidnapping anyone that looks Hispanic, even if they have proof of residency or citizenship on their person. He openly courts the support of white supremacists like Nick Fuentes and Charlie Kirk. When members of his own cabinet like Paul Ingrassia have been found to self identify as Nazis, he continues to protect and promote them. When he talks about black people in politics that don't support him, he always tacks on the insult "low IQ" - he does it so consistently, you can tell the race of the people he is talking about by his choice of insults.

If you think lighting a candle as a political stunt proves someone isn't racist, you may want to look more into what racist people are actually like in the real world.