Speaking up after General Mattis

I belong to a high school WhatsApp group with roughly one hundred and thirty members from a graduating class of one hundred and sixty.

It has its usual quota of really smart, really average, and really dumb people.

Sliced differently, it has its usual quota of people who fall on the left liberal side of the political spectrum and those who fall on the right conservative side of the political spectrum.

So far, so good?

Except, yesterday, last night around midnight Indian Standard Time to be more exact, someone — let us call him SD because we are not going to doxx someone — was asked to become one of the admins of said WhatsApp group.

SD is a nice guy.

He shares cute, endearing videos of him singing along with his two boys and wife. He is a third generation owner-manager of a large shoe company. He is a foodie plus he loves cooking.

He is known to randomly call up people and talk to them about their jobs and careers, asking insightful questions about whatever is being discussed.

He has made a home in a city culturally very distinct and different from the small town we all grew up in.

If you have never been to India, I cannot exaggerate how different each state and even districts within each state are from each other. In fact, one of the newest states in the Indian union was created by breaking up the state of Andhra Pradesh into two. These states share a…