Dear Clara

Dear Guardian, On Saturday, November 14th throngs of pro-Trump protesters filled the streets of downtown Washington, D.C. Convinced of massive voter fraud and emboldened by now-dismissed lawsuits brought by the president’s legal team, the crowds descending on the U.S. capital included a large presence of the hate group “The Proud Boys”. Footage of one proud boy initiation in a D.C. park shows a group of white men pummelling an initiate who shouts popular cereal brands in response. An initiator prompts him to declare, “ I am a western chauvinist and I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world ,”. I wish that I could say I was surprised by this myopic ideology so proudly and publicly expressed. As a Washington D.C. resident, I was alarmed. As a music educator and consumer of classical music journalism, however, this unabashed declaration was all too familiar. While incidents of this kind appear extreme and spark outrage in liberal media such as The Guardian, they are connected wi