I am so close to agreeing with you. And I want to say how much I appreciate this conversation. I wish more conversations could be as respectful between two sides that don’t quite agree.

Where you lose me is the strategic diversification of a message. I work in the marketing industry and intimately understand how expanding the intended range of a message with tangentially related variables can have more unpredictable results than expected ones. Right now the message people are being moved by is a very simple Good versus Evil scenario. A tyrant is attacking a fledging democracy of courageous people who are fighting to protect their freedom. In terms of how personal buy in to an idea is shaped, the audience that this message can speak to is huge! It can inspire authentic motivation to join the cause. I have witnessed that first hand just this week.

But the minute that same message becomes correlated with a tangentially related concept, it begins to lose its strength. And if that related concept is controversial or worse, directly associated with guilt, you begin to risk excluding individuals. The bubble of enthusiasm pops.

The road to expelling racism is long and perilous, and no doubt a significantly bigger problem than what is taking place in Ukraine. I expect that realistically, it is a generational kind of change that will occur slowly.

Anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox and leave you be. I appreciate the opportunity to work through these thoughts and type it all out. Thanks for hearing me out. Cheers!