Flying into Indianapolis: A post-Thanksgiving reflection

We flew into Indianapolis last month for my father-in-law's funeral. It's a trip I'd made many times when I was courting my wife long-distance back in the late-90s.

My wife, as you know, is temporarily disabled. She needed a wheelchair at the airport to get to baggage claim. As we debarked the plane, a young Somali woman greeted us with the chair.

As we made our way through the airport—which for my money is one of the most aesthetically pleasing airports in the country—there were regular announcements on the PA system. And these announcements were in both English and Spanish. I don't remember Spanish being one of the languages on my trips in the past.

We arrived at baggage claim, and the crowd assembled around the conveyor wouldn't have looked out of place at LAX or JFK. All colors, multiple ethnicities.

The people who support Donald Trump chafe and look at horror upon what I just described. They want to turn that back, to a time when airport announcements were made only in English, when a young Somali woman wouldn't be pushing you through the airport, where Los Angeles's and New York City's diversity stayed firmly in those cities and didn't "infect" the heartland.

It's too late. They've lost, they just haven't surrendered. The country is too far along the path of diversity and inclusiveness. The suburbs and cities in the heartland are being filled with the same type of people you find in the suburbs and cities on the coasts. They're not beholden to a bygone time which never really existed, and if it did was nothing about which to be proud.

They've lost, and will go down in defeat trying to wreck everything. They'll do damage, but we will repair it. America is stronger than they are. America is kinder than they are. America is not Weimar Germany, or post-Cold War Russia. We are down for the moment, but far from out. We had a momentary lapse of madness, as we've had before. But we will rebuild.

They've lost Indianapolis. They've lost the war.