Harger: Kids danced at Seattle Center’s Diwali festival. 2 men showed up with racist signs

Saturday afternoon at the Seattle Center Armory, kids were dancing on stage at Diwali: Lights of India. It’s a free festival. Baby calves to pet. A free vegetarian meal. Lessons in making roti, the warm flatbread that shows up at nearly every meal in India.

Then two men walked in carrying American flags. One sign used a slur for Indian people and said to deport them all. The other read, “Stop Hindu Replacement of Christians.”

A day earlier, President Trump lit a diya in the Oval Office to mark Diwali.

The men were Jake Lang and Thomas Allen. Lang was pardoned for his role in the January 6 Capitol attack. He once threatened to burn a Quran in Dearborn, Michigan. Festivalgoers confronted the pair, and they were escorted out. Lang later posted that he’d been assaulted.

Two grown men walked into a room full of children to tell their parents to get out of the country. Doing that to any community would be disgusting. Doing it in front of kids makes them reprehensible.

Now flip it. It’s Christmas Eve at a church in Renton. Kids in bathrobes and cardboard halos are on stage. Two men walk in with signs reading “Deport All Christians.” Every parent in that church would know exactly what to call them. The families at the Armory deserve the same.

Lang and Allen speak only for themselves, and that’s a small, ugly club.

Pramila Jayapal, Brandi Kruse, and Jason Rantz agreed on something

People who agree on almost nothing agreed on this. U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal called it “vile and racist.” Brandi Kruse and Jason Rantz, who don’t agree with Jayapal on much, came down on it hard. Peak Seattle, a right-leaning account with a big local following, wrote, “The GOP and conservatives need to kick these two halfwits to the curb.” Hindu and Muslim groups stood together.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. So why does it still feel like we’re losing ground?

From Donald Trump’s 2015 run to Charlie Kirk, the slide toward slurs

A lot of it starts at the top. Donald Trump’s first run in 2015 reset the limits on what a candidate could say and still win. Podcast bros took it from there and turned up the volume.

Just last month, the president used an anti-transgender slur on Truth Social to mock a Senate candidate in South Carolina. She isn’t even transgender. And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised a military with “no fatties,” then that same slur, then “no beardos, no weirdos.”

The left has its own version. When Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, people posted that they wished the gunman hadn’t missed. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated, a South Carolina teacher posted that “America became greater today.” Others went from opposing Israel’s war in Gaza to blaming every Jewish person on earth for it.

I’m tired of it. This coarseness isn’t who we are. You can disagree hard without stripping somebody of their humanity. And when somebody wraps himself in a cause you care about and crosses the line, be the first to say so.

Seattle Center hosts more than 20 cultural festivals a year. Go to one.

The people talking with hate are the ones getting heard. Decent people far outnumber them, and we can do something about it.

Seattle Center hosts more than 20 cultural festivals a year. Go to one. And next fall, go to Diwali. Pack the Armory.

At home, know the difference between a joke about what somebody does and a slur about who they are. When a buddy crosses that line, say, “Come on, man.” It costs you five seconds of awkwardness.

History’s going to remember this era. You get to decide whether it remembers you as decent and kind, or the way it’ll surely remember Jake Lang and Thomas Allen.

Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here. 

Follow @https://twitter.com/kirocharlie