Please Abandon the Myth of the Center-Right Nation

Over the next few days, if you pay attention to the election post-game show, you will inevitably hear them use the phrase “Center-Right Nation.” They will use it to explain why Obama won. They will use it to explain why Romney lost. They will use it to explain that Obama won in spite of this fact. They will use it to explain that Romney lost in spite of this fact.

But it’s not a fact. It’s not even a lie, per se. It’s just label devoid of context. It’s only a myth in the sense that some Greek deity is a myth, a character who doesn’t really exist interacting within a pantheon that doesn’t really exist. Except that’s being too generous, because there might be a Zeus or an Athena, and they might live on a Mount Olympus somewhere. “Center-Right,” without some context, doesn’t mean anything, anywhere.

So, every time you hear a pundit use the phrase, shout at your television. Scream, “BS!” or “Bollocks!” or “Cockamamie malarkey!” (if you’re Joe Biden).  Flip your TV the bird. Take off a shoe and throw it at the set. Tweet #CallinBullshit and tell people what network is still floating this garbage. But whatever you do, don’t let this slide.

Here’s how you know it’s a lie: Imagine someone was trying to give you driving directions. They told you to go down three blocks, turn left on Monroe St., and find the third house on your left, the one with the red door and the white fence, with the number 7597 on the mailbox. You could get there, right? Now imagine they told you to drive three blocks down to the ocean, then make a right heading south down the coast, and look for a houseboat that isn’t tied to the docks. The boat is adrift in a moving sea, it changes its distance from the shore based on the tide, and it’s generally headed north. It was last seen in your town about five presidencies ago. Do you honestly expect to find it there now, just because they waved vaguely in the direction of the ocean and told you to go to the “Center-Right”? No. Freakin’. Way.

My analogy is actually an oversimplification. If the houseboat is America and it is drifting slowly to the north on a changing political sea, the analogy implies that at least the land is fixed and you have control over your own position on that fixed ground. In fact, there’s an active earthquake fault line in that area and you have a sever inner ear condition. We can only know the position of the boat relative to where the land used to be, and we can only interpret that in relation to which way our ear is causing us to lean that day. Now, can you honestly say the boat will consistently be found in the “Center-Right” of this universe?

I’ve tried to give these pundits the benefit of the doubt. (My wife says that’s a bad habit of mine.) If the statement is meaningful, maybe they are referring to some kind of global political spectrum in which the U.S. is near the middle, but slightly to the right, of the other countries in the world. This just doesn’t add up, though. We’re to the right of many countries, but their politics are in flux. For example, countries in Europe have institutions like national health services which imply they are more left-wing than we are. However, these same countries, when faced with almost identical economic pressures during our most recent housing collapse and the ensuing recession, chose austerity programs that were far more right-wing than anything our citizens would have tolerated. While they slashed government spending, we developed a Tea Party that quickly grew to focus on social issues and which succeeded only in knocking moderate Republicans out of their primaries, thus ensuring the passage of Obamacare and a Democratic majority in the Senate that could make sure it wouldn’t go away even if Mitt Romney won the presidential election. In short, our response has been more left wing, and not because of our President, but because our right-wingers couldn’t capture a majority in a time when a left-wing program was being enacted.  In relation to Europe, America had a left-wing response.

For that matter, why do we measure our political spectrum on a continuum that stretches from the Netherlands on the left to Saudi Arabia on the right? I was under the impression that comparing ourselves to the modern countries of the “Old World,” or to any foreign country, was somehow un-American. 

Still trying to give these pundits the benefit of the doubt, I imagined they were putting modern America in a historical context, somewhere between Mussolini’s Italy on the right and Mao’s People’s Republic on the left. But this historical model doesn’t work, either. Most positions held by modern Americans related to the enfranchisement of voters, the role of government in public life, and the relationship between the state and religion, for example, would all have been considered wildly left-wing at some point in history. Women and minorities voting? Crazy liberal idea. Religious pluralism and tolerance? Nutso liberal. Public libraries and schools? Left-wing extremism. But America didn’t normalize these ideas through a left-wing revolution (well, maybe we normalized the liberal idea of voting rather than obeying a king through a left-wing revolution, and maybe we ended slavery through an incredibly bloody civil war, but most of the mainstreaming of these liberal ideas happened more peacefully and more slowly). Now these ideas aren’t liberal. They are the norm. Not only did the country drift on a slow tide toward a more inclusive, tolerant, and activist political structure, but the culture shifted around these ideas. Furthermore, we are products of that culture, so we moved around in that cultural milieu, such that a woman could run as a vice-presidential candidate and not think of her candidacy as the product of a million liberal victories. From where she was standing, she felt like a conservative (and looked like it to the rest of us). 

American can’t be “Center-Right,” because wherever America is, that’s its center currently. A few years ago, the political center was firmly opposed to gay marriage. Karl Rove was able to use it as a wedge issue to get his base to the polls and put George W. Bush into the White House. But that wasn’t a center-right position. That won. It was the center. As of last night, gay marriage is winning. It is becoming the center. Does that mean we’re a “Center-Left” nation? No. In thirty or forty years, our children will be standing on different ground, looking out at a different sea, leaning whichever way their inner-ear conditions cause them to lean, but I would bet good money that if they are told where the houseboat of America sailed back in 2012, they’d say it was a far-right position wherein only a few states allowed gay marriage, something that will be so normal they won’t even consider it up for public debate. 

In one last, desperate attempt to believe the TV blowhards were using a term that meant something, I considered the possibility that they were speaking about the rate of change Americans generally find tolerable. Maybe they mean we keep moving that center to the left, but we do so slowly because we’ve got some kind of right-wing ideology written into our genetic code. Our history doesn’t bare that idea out, either. Sometimes the boat moves quickly, as it has with gay marriage. Sometimes the boat moves very slowly. Slavery lasted for hundreds of years in North America, and it was followed by Jim Crow. Even with a second term African-American President, we still carry the vestiges of deep seeded racism within our culture. It’s not the law anymore. It’s not a basis for public policy. It’s not even socially acceptable for the majority of Americans. But it’s not gone. On that front, we’ve moved very slowly to the left. Our national xenophobia has refocused on people from different countries of origin as every passing generation tried to burn the bridges behind them by calling the next wave of immigrants an unfair burden on the system. In that way, the ocean stays in place and the land moves. We go back and forth from isolationism to the flexing of military muscle like we’re riding the tides. Religious minorities go from cults to the mainstream in waves. But at every point, whether we’re isolationists who are concerned about Catholic Irish Immigrants or hawks slamming the doors on Mexicans and looking down our noses at Scientologists, that’s not left or right. It’s just the center. 

As of yesterday, America picked a guy who some portion of the population consider a socialist. Does that make us a “Center-Left” nation? Oh, and as of last night, he was still African American.  Does electing a black guy still qualify as a left-wing idea? We didn’t elect the Mormon guy. Does that make us right-wing evangelicals?  And we’re still about as polarized as we were going into the Civil War. Does that mean the Union and the Confederacy met in the middle and were all centrists? 

Labeling our whole country as “Center-Right,” is meaningless, and worse, it’s creates a false picture that whatever is right-wing today hold some kind of sway over the national psyche. If anything, our country is Progressive, but it’s making progress in fits and starts toward some far off goal that we haven’t defined and which won’t fall neatly into our current definitions of right and left. 

Elections tell us where we are. Pundits who try to tell us that we are, at our core, somewhere to the right or left of that position are invariably wrong. You aren’t to the left or right of where you sit reading this right now. America isn’t to the left or right of itself, either.

Bobby's 5 Point Plan

Yesterday, shortly after the debate, I received this wonderful bit of satire from the mother of one of my students. With her permission (and a name change), I want to share it. Just try to convince me this isn't a spot-on description of Romney's campaign promises:

"Mr. Gorman,
"After watching the 3 debates, Bobby has developed his own 5 point plan for your writing class.  He feels he doesn't need to know what the points are, just that he has one.  He also thinks you should accept that his paper is done without seeing it.  He says it will be posted on his website.  Bobby wants to tell you that all the scores were passing scores, so don't worry if the math doesn't add up.  Finally, Mr. Gorman, Bobby wants me to use the Romney philosophy of parenting which is to trust that he has a plan but doesn't need to share it." 

Why Does the Right Hate Obama So Much?: Part 3

I'm still waiting for someone to give a satisfactory explanation for why the Right seems to hate Obama so much. So far, the answers seem to be: A) He's black or in some other way different and that's scary, B) He's not an ultra-nationalist who preaches that America is and has always been perfect, or C) He's a harbinger of a demographic shift that will leave the Republican Party in permanent minority status, and they are pooping their pants with fear and obstructing everything he tries to do in order to stave off the inevitable. Without anyone making a particularly persuasive argument for any of these, I tend to think it's C. Mostly, this is because I'm a sucker and I like to think the best of people. C allows me to think that Republicans are not racists, nor are they so blinded by ideology that they are willfully ignorant of our country's history. Instead, they are smart people who can accurately read the political tea leaves. Maybe I'm wrong to give them the benefit of the doubt in this way.  But seriously, you should read the explanations some people have tried to give me (here and here). One would think, in almost four years in office, Obama would have done some far more substantive things to pick on, but the arguments are just pathetic.

Here's a great example I came across today. I'm a liberal and an Obama supporter, and I'm also a gun owner (as I've explained here). Even though I'm not a member of the NRA, nor do I support half of what they do, I somehow got on their email list. The NRA has been going all-out against Obama. The level of vitriol is nuts. But, just as I've requested it here, I've been examining their posts to try to figure out why they hate him so much. They seem to have three big pieces of evidence against him. One is an offhand comment he made during the his election campaign about clinging to God and guns. It was a stupid way of putting it, but it's actually not an anti-gun or anti-God comment. He was talking about people who vote against their economic self interest, trying to explain why they would do that, and said that they have lost hope of any true political change and thus hold on to what is important to them. Saying that guns are important to people shouldn't be interpreted as anti-gun rights, but that's how it was spun and that's what the NRA heard.

Second, they're freaked out about the U.N. International Small Arms Treaty. I don't buy this critique, either. Is it a bureaucratic boondoggle? Probably. Will it be as toothless as most international agreements? Probably. Will it effectively keep guns out of the hands of warlords? Probably not. But is it part of some global plot to limit the rights of American gun owners, some nefarious first step in a worldwide gun registration and confiscation scheme? Absolutely not. At its best it will keep a few guns out of the hands of warlords who kill children and terrorists who shoot at our soldiers, but it probably won't do anything at all. If this is the case against Obama, it says more about NRA paranoia than it does about him.

Then there's the third piece of evidence, the mess that was Operation Fast and Furious. And guess who just reported to all its members that the blame for the mess lies with some ATF agents and the Pheonix District Attorney's Office? The NRA! Check it out if you don't believe me: "Draft Report Blames Many for Fast and Furious" Guess who the draft report does NOT blame: President Obama. Now, someone who really wants to believe that Obama is responsible could say this is part of a massive conspiracy to cover up his close, personal involvement with a local ATF operation, but I am not willing to live in that ideologically-driven fantasy land. To me, the NRA has just made a persuasive argument that one reason they hate Obama has no merit.


Here's Obama's track record on guns (well summarized by Steve Chapman for reason.com):

"[H]e has proposed nothing in the way of new federal restrictions on firearms. Even the "assault weapons" ban signed by President Clinton—and allowed to expire in 2004—has no visible place on his agenda.

"Not only that, he's approved changes that should gladden the hearts of gun-rights supporters, a group that includes me. He signed a law permitting guns to be taken into national parks. He signed another allowing guns as checked baggage on Amtrak. He acted to preserve an existing law limiting the use of government information on firearms it has traced."

As Chapman also points out, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence flunked President Obama on all seven of the items on its priority list.

Oh yeah, and Obama made his position on gun rights crystal clear. He said, "I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in people's lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won't take your handgun away. … There are some common-sense gun safety laws that I believe in. But I am not going to take your guns away."

I think the NRA's antipathy towards the President is symbolic of the Right's feelings as well. They hate Obama. They can even give you reasons why they hate him. They just can't come up with any good ones. That leaves everyone else in America wondering where that deep well of hatred comes from, and it opens the Right up to some pretty damning speculation.

Another Short Story Published!

Another of my short stories has been published at #amwriting.org. Yea! You can find it here:
http://amwriting.org/archives/13658

I hope people enjoy it. I also hope it only offends those who think Christianity and Ayn Rand's Objectivism are compatible. Personally, I can't count myself in either camp, but I'm a big fan of Jesus, and I don't like mediocre writing, narcissism masquerading as virtue, or fools who can't tell the difference between selfishness and selflessness. I think the story captures at least some of that.

Mitt Romney, Even Less Worthy of Consideration with Ryan on the Ticket

In my last post, I explained why Mitt Romney shouldn't even be given serious consideration for the job of President of The United States. Now he's even less worthy. That's a pretty amazing accomplishment. Not a Presidential accomplishment. More like a Stephan Feck high dive accomplishment.

Romney's pick of Ryan does answer some questions about which Romney was being intentionally vague. It may not tell us how little Romney pays in taxes while proposing to lower them and raise ours, but it does tell us that he's endorsing Ryan's plans, at least enough that he's willing to put Ryan's name under his own on a million bumper stickers.

It also tells us that Romney is running scared. It seemed the Republican plan was to run a guy so milquetoast that we wouldn't think about him at all so that the entire election could be referendum on Obama. That's an entirely understandable miscalculation. Our country is now so polarized that people on both sides of the fence now live in hermetically sealed bubbles. While liberals can't imagine why anyone would be angry at Obama for being too liberal (we see him as being far too centrist), many conservatives can't believe that anyone would like him. Newsflash, conservatives: Despite the fact that all your Facebook friends are posting Obama-bashing clips from Fox News on their pages, most people like the President. His job approval numbers fluctuate with the economy, but his personal likability numbers have been consistently positive, and he edges Romney in likability 60% to 30%. Sure, likability isn't everything. People generally liked Gerald Ford, and he was a one-termer. But if the whole strategy is to run a blank slate and count on antipathy to the sitting President, that's a really bad strategy when the President is personally popular. Really bad. Like Feck's dive bad.

The Ryan pick (which, according to the AP, should happen today), shows that the Romney campaign is realizing just where they are in that fateful dive, legs apart and back nearly parallel to the water. If he'd chosen someone boring, he'd be staying the course, staying bland, staying nondescript. Choosing Ryan shows that he knows being the other guy isn't going to be enough.

Here's why Ryan is a terrible move; Romney has now gone from being the other, less popular guy, to being the very specific guy who still won't answer your interview questions but goes out of his way to insult you at the job interview. As Ezra Klein points out, "Ryan has told the Congressional Budget Office that his budget will bring all federal spending outside Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to 3.75 percent of GDP by 2050. That means defense, infrastructure, education, food safety, basic research, and food stamps — to name just a few — will be less than four percent of GDP in 2050. To get a sense for how unrealistic that is, Congress has never permitted defense spending to fall below three percent of GDP, and Romney has pledged that he’ll never let defense spending fall beneath four percent of GDP." Klein is pretty generous about this discrepancy, commenting only that, "It will be interesting to hear him explain away the difference." Yeah, Mr. Klein, just like it has been interesting to read Romney's last ten years worth of tax returns. Romney will never explain that difference. If he were asked point blank, I would bet my dressage horse he would dance around well enough to score higher than Rafalca Romney did at the Olympics. So now Romney has refused to answer some vital interview questions, and will continue to run on the platform that Americans are too stupid to know that 3.75 is a number lower than something-higher-than-four.

The other thing this tells us about Romney is that he bends to the political winds even more than we thought he did before. He was willing to be a pro-choice, pro-government healthcare governor when he needed to be in Massachusetts. He was willing to be a pro-life, anti-Romneycare primary candidate. It was reasonable to wonder if he wouldn't tack back to the middle once the general got under way, and many dyed-in-the-wool conservatives were rightly cautious about him. Too many of them, in fact. Because now he's shown that, in an effort to appease them, he's willing to tack even further to the right. Progressives like me should be concerned that he will go even further to keep the Tea Party happy if he has to once he's in office, but conservatives should now see that he would be a gun-rights-limiting, pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage, pro-flag burning, French speaking (Oh, wait!), Harvard and Stanford educated (Hey, wait a minute!) LIBERAL if it meant getting his agenda passed. Those conservatives should wonder what exactly that agenda is beyond becoming President. From what I can tell, beyond his 40+ years effort to get into the White House, the only thing Romney has consistently favored is lowering his own taxes. Those of us not in Romney's tax bracket (which includes 99% of all conservatives, too) should all worry what he would sell out to accomplish that goal.

Now, it's possible that Romney is performing a great head-fake, and won't actually choose Ryan. I doubt that's even on the table now, though, since it would infuriate his base even further. It's also possible that the Ryan pick is a precurser to a campaign filled with tax returns, very specific policy proposals, and transparency about what a Romney/Ryan nation would look like after drastic cuts to the military, Medicare, and Social Security. It's also possible that I have a pet unicorn you just can't see.

But I don't.

Until Romney's campaign becomes that unlikely unicorn, he's still refusing to tell us, his job interviewers, what we need to know in order to even consider him for the job he wants, and he's made it worse by pretending to be bold while demonstrating his weakness. I might consider casting a ballot for someone other than Barack Obama, if someone like Jim Wallis or Alan Grayson were viable alternatives, but Mitt Romney isn't even a serious contender.

Why Mitt Romney Shouldn't Even Be Taken Seriously

Fact: Mitt Romney has refused to release more than two year's tax returns.

Conjecture: What is concealed within them is more embarrassing than the steady drum beat of Republicans calling on him to make them public.

Fact: Mitt Romney began his primary campaign with an advertisement showing Obama quoting his previous rival, John McCain. Though the ad didn't make this clear, the Romney campaign defended this deception when it came out, claiming that they were trying to point out that Obama was now doing what he'd criticized McCain for doing last time around.

Conjecture: The ad made no attempt to show that Obama was doing something he'd previously criticized. Consequently, the ad is deceptive, and the campaign followed it up with another lie.

Fact: Romney has recently been using a similarly out-of-context quote to beat up on the President. Ironically, the speech Obama actually gave, pointing out that business people don't build their fortunes completely on their own, is almost a mirror image of a speech Romney gave to Olympic athletes, telling them they didn't make their way to the Olympics on their own.

Conjecture: As that Lewis Black clip points out, both candidates distort the facts and edit in ways that benefit them politically. But I can't help but think Black is making the mistake we too often make here in our polarized country, thinking that the only way to be honest is to be balanced. Even this article in Slate slamming the Republicans for their  war on facts stumbles at the gate with this bit of unsupported "balance": "Someday political scientists will try to date the decline of reasoned discourse in America to the moment when the left and the right began to invent their own facts." It then goes on to make the case that "The real end of civic discourse can be traced to the new conservative argument that facts themselves are dangerous." [Italics are theirs, bold is mine.] Romney's deception is an order of magnitude more severe and out-of-bounds than anything I've seen from the Obama campaign so far.

Fact: In 1994, Howard Stern ran for Governor in the state of New York. Though he ran on the libertarian ticket and and many questioned whether he was even serious, he did catch the public's attention and many political pundits took his candidacy seriously. Then he dropped out of the race because he didn't want to disclose his personal finances as required by law. "I spend 25 hours a week telling you all the most intimate details of my life," Stern said. "One fact I've never revealed is how much I make and how much money I have . . . it's none of your business."

Conjecture: I don't think Stern was ever serious. He's too smart a man not to have known that state law required him to divulge his finances in order to be considered, so this was an easy out for a publicity stunt, or perhaps a face-saving gesture when it became clear his candidacy wasn't viable.


Howard Stern's stunt candidacy might seem like a non sequitur, but it's not. When considering which political candidate I'll vote for, the decision-making model I like to use is that of a job interview.  This reminds me of the fact that candidates are trying to get a job, helping me separate the cult-of-personality emotional component from their reasoned arguments about their ability to perform that job's functions. It also reinforces the idea that We The People are really in charge of this country; we make the hiring decisions. Our interview panel is very large, and that complicates things, just as it does in the private sector. Sitting on a large interview panel, if I like a particular applicant but know that no one else does, I have to compromise and recognize that we may have only a few viable candidates. That's why I haven't voted for third party candidates, but I would do that rather than refusing to vote. I want to be a participant at the table. That's a professional responsibility in the hiring of an employee, and a civic responsibility in the context of an election. I may have some significant areas of disagreement with our President, but unless someone better qualified comes along, I'll do my civic duty at the ballot box.

So, has someone better come along? At this point, I'd argue no one has come along. In Mitt Romney we have a candidate who started out his campaign lying to us, then lied about lying, and is continuing to lie. It seems the media's best defense of this kind of behavior (in their continued effort to be balanced rather than honest) is to say, "Well, Obama has been somewhat deceptive in his advertisements as well." To me, that's pretty weak tea. First of all, Romney opened the gate on this kind of behavior. Second, he's been more disingenuous. To my mind, significantly more, not just picking out statistics that are true but without some qualification, but intentionally clipping soundbites to deceive the viewers of his advertisements. Third, he's applying to take someone's job. He has to show he'd be better. This doesn't mean he has to always take the high road, or that he's prohibited from criticizing his opponent, but it does mean that he can't afford to be the bigger liar when he's trying to get an interview, because the other employee has already demonstrated that he can do the job.

But this is the reason Romney really isn't an option: He refuses to fill out the whole application. When Howard Stern decided that his finances weren't going to be made public, he had the decency to drop out (or he decided he wanted to drop out and therefore didn't reveal his finances). Mitt Romney has essentially picked up a job application from our establishment, written, "It's none of your business," in a number of the fields, and then brought in the application, expecting to get an interview. I've sat on a number of interview panels, in college, in the business sector, and now in the public schools, and I can't imagine a single one overlooking an answer like that and giving the person a chance to make their case that they should have the job.

Now, I understand that there are lots of people in this country who dispute the notion that Obama has been doing his job satisfactorily. For them, the whole point of this interview process is to find someone to replace him. For some of them, anyone would be better, even an applicant who outright lies to them, then refuses to answer their interview questions. Let's not forget that the Romney campaign has been intentionally vague about specific policy proposals as well. For example, they want to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, but won't describe what they want to replace it with. There will always be some distance between what politicians promise and what they can deliver, but this kind of intentional vagueness is a recipe for disaster. I can't imagine a situation in which an applicant for a position would actually do a better job, even than a bad employee, after refusing to say what he'd do better, fully explaining why he's qualified, or demonstrating that he's trustworthy. No matter how badly you think our current President has botched the job, why would you take it on faith that someone like that would do better?

Romney may reveal his tax returns. I would presuppose that they'll show nothing illegal, but plenty of things that are sketchy and even more that distances him from the common voter (those of us who have to work for money, rather than letting money work for us). At the very least, they'll put a firm number on the percentage of his income he paid in taxes, and since he's proposing to lower taxes on the wealthy, that's a legitimate interview question. But if he's not going to reveal them, calculating they are going to do more harm than good, then we all have a responsibility to remind everyone else on the interview panel that he's not even a real candidate for the job. We can listen to what he has to say for only so long, then remind him that we have a busy schedule, politely shake his hand, and see him out. As soon as the door is closed, we have to say to one another, "Remember everybody, his application is incomplete, and he won't answer our questions, so he's not even under consideration."

A Liberal’s Defense of Gun Ownership

In the wake of the shooting in Colorado, my mom voiced a question I expect many people are asking right now.

 "Can someone please tell me why the NRA would defend anyone's ‘Constitutional Right’ to own two 40-caliber Glock handguns, a Remington 870 single-barrel pump shotgun, and a Smith and Wesson AR-15 assault-style rifle? Benjamin Gorman, I just don't get it!"

I owe my mother an explanation, partly because I'm her son and she asked, partly because I'm a gun owner who was raised to fear and detest guns (especially handguns), but mostly because, when I got my concealed-and-carry permit and they asked me for the name of reference, I wrote down my mom's name. I think she deserves a reply.

Mom's question is actually three questions. Why should anyone have these guns? Should this be a right? And, if it is a right, why should the NRA defend that right?

First off, let's address those guns specifically. I don't own a Glock because there are specific things I don't like about them, but I have a Ruger 9mm semi-automatic handgun. I don't have an AR-15, but I have a carbine which some people would call an "assault-style" gun. I own a .22 and a youth 410 (that will be my son's when he's old enough). I don't own a pump action shotgun, but that's the next thing on my gun buying list. There are myriad reason for owning firearms, and I can't speak for all of them. Personally, I had multiple reasons. First and foremost, I started researching guns because I write novels (nothing published) and I wanted to be able to write as knowledgeably as the story demanded. The more I learned, the more I realized there's a whole world of knowledge I was unaware of. Could I have done all my learning simply by reading about guns? Certainly. A decent writer could also write believably about bicycles without ever riding one, and a moral writer should be able to write about murder without committing one, so if I felt that gun ownership was wrong, then my writing would be no excuse. But I'd also come to believe that gun ownership is not immoral. Few question a hunter's right to own a gun. Even fewer question a police officer's right to carry one, even in an urban setting. We allow these people to carry guns because we believe that most of them will be responsible. They will use these firearms to feed their families and to protect themselves, and us, from those who would do us harm. Implicit in this permission is an acknowledgement that there are those who would use guns to dangerous ends. Not only are there hunters who misuse guns (and police officers, too) but there are those who would use guns to do us all harm. Consequently, as I see it, we have three choices: We could try to create a society without any firearms. We could allow people to have guns and hope they will be responsible citizens. Or we could have some mixture in which guns are regulated but those who prove themselves responsible (mind you, prove themselves to some government official) are permitted to have guns.

I used to argue for a society without guns. When my in-laws first heard I'd never fired a handgun, their jaws dropped to the floor like something out of a cartoon. But even after firing some of my brother-in-law's guns, I would argue for strict handgun bans by saying I would give up that enjoyable experience to bring back just one innocent child killed by a handgun someone irresponsibly left sitting on their coffee table. That was a pretty effective (emotionally manipulative) argument, but it rang more and more hollow in my own ears as I grew older. Taking guns away from people responsible enough to follow the law doesn’t bring back the dead, and it might not prevent future tragedies. Certainly every accidental death caused by firearms is a tragedy, but would I give up my right to own a gun if it meant I couldn't protect my own son's life? And do I have the right to make that choice for anyone else? Even a world with no guns at all wouldn't entirely alleviate this concern. Sure, I'm no ninja super-hero myself, but do I get to tell a five-foot tall, 100 lb. mom that she has to defend her children from a much larger armed assailant without a gun? (My wife is one of these five-foot tall, 100 lb. moms. I wouldn't dare tell her what she couldn't do in defense of our son.) Plus, can we please admit that the notion of an America without guns is painfully naive? As a liberal, I'm horrified by the notion some hold that we should round up 15 million illegal immigrants and deport them on cattle cars. To me, the idea of police breaking into and searching every house in America in search of guns that haven't been voluntarily turned over is equally repellent, and even more impractical. There will be guns. And let’s remember that a word without guns wouldn't necessarily be a safer one. This guy in Colorado may have killed a dozen innocent people with his guns, but Timothy McVeigh did a lot worse with a van and garbage cans full of fertilizer. The terrorists who killed all those people in the Tokyo subway system lived in a country that's a model for handgun control. And the 9/11 terrorists used box cutters.

(Now, if I’m being totally honest about my motivations, I should also confess that, despite my ridicule of the paranoia of the right, I also harbor concerns some would dismiss as paranoia. Though I maintain my commitment to a kind of open-minded skepticism, I find supernatural apocalyptic scenarios exceedingly unlikely. I’m not concerned with the Rapture, the return of Quetzalcoatl, or the misreading of a Mayan calendar, but I do worry that our civilization is more tenuous than we like to admit. Possible man-made causes, like Peak Oil, a series of severe natural disasters precipitated by global warming, or even massive currency devaluation caused by a shaky international monetary system could potentially lead to circumstances that would make government overreach look like the better alternative. In that chaos, I’d like to know how to use a gun safely and effectively to protect my family. To me, this seems just as sensible as having a fire extinguisher or a first aid kit, but I know that even speculating about the fall of our civilization would cause some people to dismiss me as a kook. Oh, and then there’s always the potential Zombie Apocalypse…)

So, if we acknowledge the reality that we can't get rid of all the guns we already have, we could adopt a complete laissez faire attitude toward guns. I think that might be the position of the NRA, or at least of many of its members, but it's not mine. If the rationale for gun ownership is based on this free-for-all attitude, and is inspired by the Founders' idea that people need guns to defend themselves from their own government, then people should be able to have any weapon accessible to the military. That's madness. I may be comfortable with my neighbors owning guns, but I don't trust any of them with nuclear weapons, least of all the kind of neighbor paranoid enough to get into an arms race with his own government.

Since we can't get rid of guns and shouldn't take away a person's ability to defend him or herself in a world with guns, but also can't allow anyone to have any weapon they want, we need to find a balanced approach that preserves ownership rights for those we find to be most likely to handle the responsibility, while keeping guns out of the hands of people likely to misuse them. We also need to be reasonable about what guns we allow people to purchase legally. This tragedy in Colorado doesn't shed much light in the latter question. The guns he had were not only legal, but should be legal within such a balanced framework. Glocks are self-defense weapons, the most popular choice of police departments. The AR-15 is certainly a military grade weapon, but semi-automatics are practical for home defense, too; you wouldn't want to have to rack a round between each shot if you were being attacked. Lastly, the pump action shotgun, in my opinion, is the best weapon for home defense because it has the added feature of producing a universally recognizable sound that can ward off an intruder before a single shot is fired. As someone who hopes to never fire a gun in the direction of another human being, I find that very attractive, and I would expect that those favoring gun regulation would, too. Unfortunately, this particular act could have been carried out if the man had carried in a coat and belt full of loaded six-shot revolvers from the late 1800s. Though this instance doesn't tell us much about what guns to outlaw, it certainly tells us that we need to beef up our mental health services. I don't know anything about this assailant yet, but I can perform a layman's diagnosis and assert that he was ill. Now, I have heard concerns from more ardent gun-rights supporters who are even leery of limiting the rights of the mentally ill. Their rationale is that a corrupt government could use the pretext of mental illness to systematically take away gun owner's rights. I find this unpersuasive. Any government that had the ability to systematically separate massive numbers of people from their guns without the consent of the majority wouldn't need any pretext at all. Conversely, a government still beholden to its people couldn't successfully convince them that all gun owners were diagnosably mentally ill without broadening the definition of severe mental illness so much that it would be meaningless. Consequently, I have no problem limiting the right to bear arms to prevent the severely mentally ill from purchasing guns, much as we prevent felons from doing so. I know our purchasing systems are porous, and unlike some on the more extreme fringe, I don't have a problem with background checks, waiting periods, and other measures that keep guns out of the hands of criminals or (potentially) the ill.

But even that relies on a certain trust in the government's commitment to the right to own guns. I think gun-rights advocates undermine their own case when they go too far, always presupposing the worst form of tyranny. If the right to bear arms is to be protected, it's most easily done by working within the system, with the government, to show the people that gun rights are designed to help law abiding citizens. All the "from my cold, dead hands" rhetoric presumes a government that wouldn't be cowed by a constitution anyway. As long as gun owners want to maintain a legally protected right, rather than having it obviated by an anti-gun majority, we should seek to promote, enforce, and maintain the kinds of regulations that keep guns out of the hands of the kinds of people who would turn the majority against gun ownership.

But that's political tactics and policy, not the underlying principle. Most fundamentally, we do have the right to bear arms (just ask President Obama, the first democratic president and former constitutional law scholar to assert that he interprets the second amendment to guarantee an individual's right) and furthermore, we should have that right. Beyond hunting and self-defense, a well-armed populace is a check on the government. Our government has been beholden enough to its white, male, land owning citizens, that it's easy enough for some of us to forget some of its excesses and injustices. But think of all the Americans who haven't been afforded the most basic rights. We have to acknowledge that those rights could be removed again. After all, Japanese Americans had their rights suspended during the internment. So, since we know it's possible, we should also acknowledge that the government is far less likely to do something like that again knowing so many of its citizens are armed. It's a raw check on government overreach, I'll admit. It has none of the beauty of crisp, fresh, free newsprint , none of the biting wit of satire, none of the nobility of an independent judiciary, none of the simplicity of the ballot box. It's not my favorite check on government power. It's not even the most efficient. But it is the last check.

If it's a right worth having, it's a right that needs defending. In just the last few years, we've seen what happens when people won't stand up for the right to habeas corpus; extraordinary renditions, parallel courts, torture. You might not like gun owners any more than you like people accused of being in Al Qaeda, but just as those people deserve to have their rights protected, gun owners deserve to have theirs protected, too. And for the same reason: Just as you could someday be falsely accused of a crime and be protected by those brave enough to stand up even for accused terrorists, you could someday find yourself in a position that causes you to second-guess your decision not to own a gun, and those supposed villains who defended the rights of this crazy guy in Colorado would instantly become the heroes who defended your rights, too.

Now, as for the NRA, I can't speak for them specifically. As much as I respect those who stand up for all our rights, I can't stomach the NRA’s complete submission to the Republican Party. I also don't understand their irrational antipathy towards President Obama. He's actually been very good to gun owners, not only asserting the individual right to bear arms, but opening up federal lands to hunters under their individual state laws. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure he opened up more previously restricted land to guns than any president ever. So why are they so devoted to getting rid of him? Partly it's the paranoid style of the American right which always assumes that, despite any evidence, the other shoe is about to drop and the communist plot will be revealed. Also, they hate this new UN restriction on the illegal international firearms trade, despite the fact that it explicitly allows for the import of any guns that meet the laws of the receiving country. Personally, I think that’s pretty weak, since some of the receiving countries would turn those guns over to terrorists immediately, but then we don’t look to the U.N. because of its track record of strong enforcement. There’s some concern among gun owners that the ban will create bottlenecks in the legal supply chain, but this presupposes that some of that chain depends on the illegal import and export of firearms, something that should be curtailed anyway. Beyond these fears, the ban plays into paranoia about some evil UN led “One World Government,” the kind of conspiracy theory I find ridiculous because politicians and bureaucrats, in my experience, just aren't smart enough or well organized enough to pull something like that off.

Despite my disdain for the NRA, I am a card carrying member of the Liberal Gun Club, and I'm glad there are people on both sides of the aisle protecting our right to bear arms. Tragedies like the one in Colorado, much like the events of 9/11, incline us to make reactionary decisions based on our horror and our fear of our own inability to explain the circumstances. Those who want to prevent violence would do well to take a deep breath and remember that such snap judgments all too often lead to even greater horrors. After all, we responded to thousands of deaths on 9/11 by killing or displacing a million people in Iraq. Since murder rates in this country have been consistently declining for decades, we can’t allow our outrage at this anomalous event in Colorado to motivate us to do anything, especially curtailing our most fundamental rights, without carefully weighing all the potential consequences. 

Addendum: Apparently my fellow liberals aren't the only ones who are inclined to be reactionary when it comes to guns. Here's a great take-down of one of Bill O'Reilly's uninformed rants: "Bill, You Ignorant Slut" by Robert Farago. 


Addendum II: And I'm not completely opposed to this proposal, either, though I don't think it would have had any bearing on the events in Colorado. "Regulate Guns Like Cars"


 

Solid Modern Parenting

Today, while playing Words with Friends, I was startled when my son, Noah (age 7), hopped up and took off down the hall. While in transit, he groaned, "I'm about to have some massive butt issues!"

I immediately exited out of Words with Friends.

He shouted from the bathroom, "You're not putting that on Twitter, are you?"

 
"Of course I am," I yelled back.

"But Dad! It's about my butt!" 

 
"And it was funny. You say funny stuff about your butt, it's going to end up on Twitter!"

 
"Fine! Then I'm not going to talk about my butt anymore!" 

 
That, my friends, is solid parenting.

Dennis Richardson, Skip the Next Apology and Resign in Disgrace

Here in Oregon, we have a state representative named Dennis Richardson who has been causing quite a stir by sending out spam emails. His first offense involved sending out heavily slanted emails to all state employees using the state's email lists. The use of those email addresses was wildly inappropriate, verging on the illegal, since what he was sending was, in essence, a push poll. We're not allowed to use the state's email system for political purposes, and a push-poll is political rhetoric masquerading as open and genuine inquiry. The most famous and insidious example of a push poll came from none other than Karl Rove, who had a bunch of people make phone calls during the primaries in 2000 when George W. Bush was running against John McCain. The callers asked questions like, "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" Of course, the callers didn't mention that John McCain and his wife adopted a Bengali little girl, but the question itself swayed voters' opinions. Personally, I think this is one of the dirtiest tricks a politician can pull. It's also legal. But it's political, so if someone were doing it using state email addresses in which they were prohibited from politicking, that would be illegal. Dennis Richardson certainly crossed the line, and barely apologized after thousands of state workers replied in anger. This isn't the first time Richardson has embarrassed himself and our state, either. He once compared the Virginia Tech Shootings to the passage of legislation protecting the rights of gays and lesbians.  In that case, he did not apologize. Richardson is an embarrassment to his district and to the state of Oregon.

The nature of Richardson's first push poll was to ask state workers for ideas to make the state government leaner and more efficient, like a private business. The implications were that: a) the state was inefficient, and b) the state should be run like a business. But, like Rove's poll, there's no way within the poll to argue against those loaded assumptions.

I immediately sent Richardson an email reply. I wrote:

Rep. Richardson,
If the state wanted to follow the lead of the private sector, it would behave like a business and try to simultaneously cut costs and increase profits. That would mean tax increases to raise revenue. Now, you might not want to increase taxes during a recession, but if that's the case, don't pretend you are trying to emulate a business. Or, if that's how you think businesses should operate (all cost cutting and no increased revenue) then Heaven help the businesses in your district. I look forward to your reply.

To his credit, he did reply. Sort of. He wrote back:

Ben – I was focused more on how private businesses find ways to operate more efficiently, not suggesting the state raise taxes. 

Despite the curtness of his reply, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I wrote a thank you letter back, saying:

Representative Richardson,
Thank you for your reply. My concern is precisely the emphasis on efficiency with private business as a metaphor. Government cannot and should not function as a business. Although it should be concerned with spending taxpayer dollars wisely and efficiently, this talking point is overused to a dangerous degree in times of tight budgets because it sounds better than cost cutting or reductions in services. I understand that phrases like those are politically unpopular, but the danger is that the public will actually come to expect the government to function like a business; to put profit before the public good, the short-term bottom line before the long term health of the state. Perhaps I am reading more into your request for input than you intended, but I got the sense that all the emphasis was on cost cutting. If that's the case, level with us, and acknowledge that shortfalls will not be managed by efficiencies alone. We need reductions in services or tax increases (probably both), and we need to have a grown-up conversation about that. Inexact metaphors only muddy the waters, putting off that conversation and making it more painful when the time comes. Personally, I think a healthy balance would involve maintenance of education spending (the long term health of the state), the elimination or reform of the kicker (something any economist would tell you is ridiculous) and an increase in the corporate minimum tax (corporations will not leave the state as long as we show them we place a high priority on providing them with highly educated employees who demand lower wages than people with commensurate education who live in places with much higher costs of living). I'm interested to know how you would strike that balance.

Again, thank you for your time and your reply.

What I didn't realize was that, by replying, I was now on Richardson's email list. Even when the state forced him to purge the emails he'd obtained improperly, I was still on there. So I was blessed with an even more infuriating email from Richardson the next month. This time he was railing against the teacher union in his own district, which was going on strike. Richardson wrote, "The union, on the other hand, is working for its members and not the students. This is what unions do. One official involved with the negotiations recalled that when an issue came up that would have cost $100,000, the District said there was no money to pay for it. The union representative’s response was the District could just lay off a teacher. Once again union representatives take the position, if you have to lay off teachers and cut school days to get the public to raise taxes and spend more money on education, then that is what you should do."

Furious, I responded immediately.

This is shameful. You are free to weigh in and bash teachers if you feel like it, but please don't think that people will be fooled when you assert that unions work against students. Teachers unions, from top to bottom, are composed of members. Members are teachers. Do you really believe teachers, people who have committed their lives to serving students, work against students? You may not understand that forcing a district to lay off a teacher rather than cut salaries is ultimately better for students, but it is; if districts keep cutting salaries, eventually they can't attract talented teachers and that hurts kids. When they fire teachers, as much as that is painful (it hurts other teachers as much as students, since it both increases every other teacher's workload and takes away one of their beloved colleagues) it creates a short term problem districts are motivated to fix, rather than a long term problem that can hurt kids for years. Unions (made of teachers) make these hard choices and always have kids in mind, even if the general public doesn't understand. Once upon a time, people trusted that teachers had their kids' interests in mind. That trust made our schools safer, more orderly places, and ultimately strengthened our communities. Now we have politicians actively disrespecting teachers in mass emails, then wondering why our schools can't command the same respect of parents that they once did. 

As I said, you are entitled to your views, and if you think teachers are villains out to hurt kids, that's your prerogative. But please don't believe you can hide behind the false distinction between teachers and the unions made up entirely of teachers. We're one and the same. If you want to maintain the respect of the teachers who are your constituents, you owe everyone on your mass email list an apology for your generalizations about all unions. 

Ben Gorman
Proud Public High School Teacher
Proud Union Member

This time I did not get a reply. However, thanks to the group Our Oregon, we now know what an apology letter from Dennis Richardson would look like. This is how he replied to someone who shared my concerns:

Do you realize that you are not in my district and cannot vote for me.  If my motives were political, I would not waste my time contacting those who cannot vote in my district.  For just a moment stop and consider that I may be sending this information to you for the benefit of informing Oregonians about what is taking place in our state.

Your email address will be deleted, and it will be your loss not mine.  Too bad your skepticism overpowers your ability to accept information from one who offers it for free and expecting nothing in return.

Best wishes and good bye, Dennis R.

I have taken a moment to stop and consider Richardson's attempts to benefit us all. He has given me information about what is going on in my state. Unfortunately, what is going on is embarrassing, and he's the cause. Now, if Dennis Richardson wants to continue to benefit the people of his district and the people of Oregon, he should skip the next apology and just resign.

 

Help edit "Parallel and Perpendicular"

I received a great deal of high-quality help the last time I posted a short story and asked for edits, so I thought I'd try it again. I owe a short story to amwriting.org soon. Any suggestions about how to make this one better before publication would be greatly appreciated. 

Parallel and Perpendicular

                Gary couldn’t sleep.

                Whenever his wife and son got into one of their arguments, it stressed him out. The fights were exhausting for all the parties involved, but their son, Neil, would eventually storm off to his room and decompress with loud music. Gary’s wife, Sofia, would sit down at her computer and read the posts of her most distant acquaintances of Facebook. Occasionally she’d sigh and tell Gary about one that particularly bothered her, but mostly she’d retreat into the digital space, at once a public place and her most private space in the house. Their daughter, Stephanie, who was three years older than Neil, could now drive. When the fights began, she would ask Gary for the keys. They would share a moment of eye rolling, and then she would take off. She had a sixth sense about when it was safe to return. Gary’s sixth sense told him he would be in big trouble with his wife if he tried to escape during the fight, but even bigger trouble if he tried to intervene, so he would quickly find a book, sit down in his recliner, and only weigh in when Sofia asked for his opinion.

                Tonight’s fight started the way they generally did. They were all watching The Daily Show, a show the whole family could enjoy together. They got to a commercial break, and while Gary skipped through the commercials, Sofia looked over at her son. “Neil, will you quit doing that?”

                “Doing what?”

                “You’re doing it again.” Her voice was calm, but there was a dangerous undercurrent, like a riptide.

                “What?” Neil’s voice carried the sneer he’d almost perfected at only 13. Gary marveled at that sound. To the best of his recollection, he’d only mastered that kind of disdain by 16.

                “You’re digging in your ear again. You know that grosses me out. Get a cue tip and do that in the bathroom if you have to.”

                Neil pulled his pinky out of his ear. “I was not.”

                “Neil, I just saw you,” Sofia said.

                Gary tried to steer to safety. He smiled at Neil and said, “You were, buddy.”

                “No I wasn’t. It’s not a big deal.”

                “Well, which is it?” Sofia asked.

                “What?”

                “Either you weren’t doing it, or you were and you don’t think it’s a big deal.”

                “Or I wasn’t but I still don’t think it would have been a big deal if I had been.”

                Stephanie held out her hand. Gary shook his head and continued to aim the remote. If he could just get through the commercial break in time, he thought. He skipped ahead, but it was too far. He tried to go back.

                “Neil, I wish you would just admit that you were doing it, say you’re sorry, and quit it. Then it won’t be a big deal,” Sophia said.

                “I wish you’d admit I wasn’t doing it, say you’re sorry, and leave me alone,” Neil said.

                Gary hit pause and handed Stephanie the car keys. Then he got up.

                “Where are you going?” Sofia asked.

                “I’m just going to grab my novel.”

                “I’m sorry, honey. It’s not a big deal.” She looked back at Neil. “I just don’t like being lied to.”

                “And I don’t like being falsely accused,” Neil said.

                Gary headed off for his book.

                When he came back down the stairs, their voices hadn’t risen too much, and they were still on the original topic. Gary wasn’t sure what kind of omen that was.

                “Maybe I touched my earlobe or something, but I wasn’t ‘digging in my ear,’” Neil said.

                “Well, this is progress. Now you admit you were touching your ear. Neil, your pinky finger was halfway to your brain. I think you don’t even realize you’re doing it.”

                “Then why did you call me a liar?”

                “I didn’t call you a liar.”

                “Yes you did!” Now Neil’s voice didn’t just rise in volume, it cracked in a way that might have made Gary laugh under different circumstances. “You called me a liar!” he tried again, this time without cracking.

                “I didn’t call you a liar,” Sofia explained in a voice straining for patience. “I said I didn’t like being lied to.”

                “That’s calling me a liar!”

                “No, it’s not quite the same thing-”

                “That’s a lie, because if I said I didn’t like you lying to me, you’d say I was calling you a liar.”

                “I am not lying, Neil. I’m trying to explain to you that-”

                “I didn’t say you were a liar, Mom.”

                “Okay, you did, but please don’t interrupt me Neil, because-”

                “I did not! I said you wouldn’t like me to call you a-”

                “You just did, Neil!” Now Sofia was shouting. “You said, ‘That’s a lie!’”

                “Did not! This is just like the whole ear thing!”

                “Yes, it is. You say you didn’t do that, either!”

                “See? You are calling me a liar, but you also said I don’t even know I’m doing it.”

                “But you can know you’re doing it when I catch you doing it, so just admit it and quit it.”

                “But I’m not doing it!”

                Gary tried to focus on his book. The words made a gray smudge on the page but refused to separate into distinct shapes.

                Sophia leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what you aren’t doing. You aren’t doing all your homework. You aren’t doing the dishes when it’s your turn. You aren’t practicing the piano even though we keep paying for lessons.” She was counting things off on her fingers, and hesitated on the third, her mouth slightly open to let Neil know she wasn’t finished. Then the fourth came to her. “And you aren’t putting your clothes in the hamper.”

                Well, Gary thought, they got past the ear thing. Now we’re up to DEFCON 2.

                Neil leaned forward. “So that’s what this is really about? How I do everything wrong?”

                “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. I didn’t say you do everything wrong. It’s just that, when I come home from work, and I’m tired, and I’m stressed, if you haven’t done something, and I ask you if you did it, just admit it and do it. Don’t tell me you did it when you didn’t.”

                “Mom, did you ever stop to think that maybe I’m stressed and tired, too, and that’s why I can’t do all the things you want me to do?”

                “Neil, I said I understood that sometimes you won’t have done all the things you’re supposed to do. That’s not the point. The point is that you need to just admit it and do them when I ask.”

                “No, that’s not the point, Mom.”

                Sofia fell back heavily into the couch. “Fine. What is the point?”

                “The point was that you were accusing me of digging in my ear. All this other stuff is just a distraction you just brought up.”

                That is a pretty good point, Gary thought. Wisely, he said nothing.

                “There can be two points, Neil. These aren’t unrelated. You say you didn’t do something I was watching you do. Sometimes you say you did things you didn’t do. I think there’s a connection there.”

                That was also a good point, Gary noted.

                Neil fell back against the back of the loveseat. “Fine. Fine. I will try to do everything you want me to do.” He started counting on his fingers. “I’ll try to remember to do all my homework. I’ll try to make sure I do the dishes when it’s my turn. I’ll try to remember to practice the piano.” He hesistated on the third, his mouth open. “Oh, and I’ll put my clothes in the hamper.” Then he exaggerated the fifth, waggling his thumb. “And I will try to stop doing the things I don’t even know I’m doing, okay?” He stood up. “But you don’t have to be such a…” He pressed his lips together.

                Sophia’s eyes got very wide, then very wet.

                Gary sat up quickly, looked at his wife’s eyes, then turned toward his son.

                Neil knew he’d stepped in it. “…mean. You don’t have to be so mean.”

                “Neil,” Gary said softly. “Go up to your room. Right. Now.”

                Neil opened his mouth.

                Gary pointed toward the stairs. He pointed hard. Neil went.

                Gary looked at Sofia. She carefully dried her eyes with one finger, trying not to smudge her eyeliner too much, rose slowly from the couch, and went to sit in front of her computer. The sound of muffled punk music sloshed down the stairs in little rhythmic waves, just loud enough to be sullen, but not loud enough to confront.

                Gary went into the kitchen, but he could still see Sofia over the bar. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

                “Do we have anything stronger?”

                Gary turned toward the cabinet above the fridge. “Um, we might.”

                “I’m kidding. A glass of wine would be nice. Maybe some of the red from when the McCabes were over.”

                He poured it and brought her the glass. She mumbled a thank you, then disappeared into Facebook again. Gary went back to his book. The words resolved themselves, but the story eluded him.

                “What punishment should we give him?” Sofia asked.

                “For sticking his finger in his ear and lying about it?”

                “No. For… Oh, God, do you think I was being a bitch too?”

                “No, of course not.”

                “I was. I was. It wasn’t a big deal and I made it into this big thing.”

                He could hear in her voice that she was crying, and he rose to hug her, but she handed him her glass. “No, I’m fine. I’ll apologize to him tomorrow.”

                “I don’t think you need to apologize.”

                “No, I do. It was… I do.”

                Gary tried to think of something to say while he took the glass back to the sink, but when he turned around she was already heading up the stairs. Soon after, the music stopped, and he thought maybe she’d gone into Neil’s room. He listened, but the only sound he heard was the car pulling back into the driveway.

                “Are they done?” Jennifer asked when she came in.

                “Yeah.”

                “Was it bad?”

                “It’ll be fine.” Gary watched Jennifer roll her eyes, then head for the stairs. He called after her in a barked whisper. “Hey!” She returned. “Hey, why didn’t we ever have big arguments with you like that when you were 13?”

                “Because I’m more like you, Dad.”

                “But you didn’t argue with your mother, either.”

                “Nope. Neither do you.”

                “True.”

                “Love you, Dad.”

                “Love you too, honey.”

                Gary read his book for a while, but when he was sure everyone was asleep, he made his way up the stairs. As he passed Neil’s door, he remembered checking on his son a decade earlier. He felt an overwhelming urge to do so again. Carefully, he turned the nob and poked his head in. Neil was turned toward him, his face serene and years younger. The blankets were pulled up to his neck, but one leg stuck out, almost perpendicular to his body, his foot hanging off the edge of the bed. Disturbed just enough by his father’s presence, Neil swallowed and then made a soft clicking sound in his throat twice, then fell back into a deep sleep.

                Gary continued down the hall, past his daughter’s room, and slipped into his own. Sofia had fallen asleep with her book open on her chest and her end-table light on. Gary slipped around to her side of the bed, gently picked up the book, placed the bookmark in it, and set it down as quietly as he could. Sofia heard this slight sound and swallowed once, then made a soft clicking sound in her throat twice. Gary remembered, at one point when Neil was five or six, he went through a phase of climbing into their bed after bad dreams, and because he made the exact same sleeping sounds as his mother, Gary hadn’t been able to tell if he was there or not sometimes.

                Before Gary could turn off Sofia’s light, she rolled over and pulled the covers up to her neck. Then she pushed one leg out from under them and dangled her foot over the side of the bed.

                Gary went into the bathroom. While sitting on the toilet, he contemplated the ways his wife and son were so similar. Did that explain the tension between them? It must, he decided.

                He was entirely unaware that his pinky finger was buried deep in his ear.