DemocratDad

On Carving a Pumpkin and the Democratic Debate

Perhaps you watched the Democratic debate on MSNBC last night, and you heard many of the candidates talk at length about their foreign policy experience, the bills they wrote in Congress, their experience negotiating with dictators (if I hear Richardson talk once more about how he went "head to head" with Saddam I think my own head might explode), in short, all of the stuff they have done.

If you are anything like me, you felt... what's the word... glassy-eyed?

The strange and wonderful thing about democracy is that it is entirely forward-looking. Sure, we want to know the basics of where a person has been, but our vote goes to the person who we think will, from this point going forward, represent our views best.

You can't rest on laurels. Past performance is not relevant. I was watching for who they are now, not who they were or have been.

An experience I had as a dad last night, which happily coincided with the Democratic debate, brought this point to mind.

Just as the debate started, at 6 pm, you could find me outside on our front deck, with Cole and George, a large pumpkin, a sharp knife and a trash bag. As the sun set, I carved a goofy, toothy face into one side of the pumpkin and then scraped out the pumpkin pulp and seeds and transfered them to the trash bag. George was willing to reach in and grab handfuls of "mushy" pumpkin to help; Cole chose to abstain, responding to each of my offers that he reach in the pumpkin with a soft-spoken but definitive "no."

Then I had an idea. I asked George to go get one of his Batman shirts from upstairs. He brought it down. Carefully following the design on his shirt, I carved Batman's bat logo on the opposite side of the pumpkin.

George got so worked up that he was running circles by this point, screaming about how the "ghost Batman" would be coming to our house that night. Understanding but a few words of George's monologue, Cole nevertheless got worked up into a fever pitch himself. As I lit the candle inside the pumpkin, the two of them were spinning around like two Sufi mystics.

Cut to a half hour later. They are both now in pajamas, their teeth brushed, tucked in bed. They begin issuing various demands, each boy using his own variation of "Daaaaadddyy!" in a rising vocal pattern not unlike the rhesus monkeys of the Himalayas.

Cole wanted a "rock hug" on his chair. George wanted another story. Then when Cole was finally down, George started shouting for Daddy to show him the moon. We went out to see the moon. No moon (fog). At which point Cole woke up again... what with the noise... and needed another "rock hug." Then he insisted on making some unintelligible point about his bunny, to which he wanted me to respond appropriately. Then George wanted to read another book. Which request woke up Cole again.

My wife, downstairs, was doing the dishes and oblivious to all of this.

I tried to get stern. I pleaded with George not to wake up his brother again. I pointed at him in a vaguely threatening way, without any idea what the consequences of more noise would be except to plead with him some more. Now both were crying. I went to Cole again. George started shouting something about his night light, which was on as usual.

And that's when the thought came to me: But weren't they happy, these two little sons of mine, a half hour ago? Didn't I deserve some quiet, and a gentle "Goodnight, Daddy," now? Did I or did I not carve a fucking bat logo into the back of the pumpkin?

But I couldn't play that card. I couldn't make the technical point that the day was a good one, and Dad is tired because he's been attending to your needs for two hours straight, and Dad deserves a break.

They're only two and three. They're tired. They feel like fussing. And anyway, that was old news.

Past performance is not relevant. Being a Daddy is always now.

And like an elected office, it requires a permanent campaign, always looking forward to the new day.

Left Brain / Right Brain Illusions and the Spinning Dancer

There's an optical illusion going the rounds on the internet involving the image of a spinning dancer.

According to internet misinformation, if you see the dancer spinning clockwise you are right-brained: creative, visual, etc. If you see her spinning counter-clockwise you are left-brained: organized, logical, etc.

With effort, she will begin turning the opposite direction for you (stare at her feet and blink --- it will happen, trust me). But your initial perception is supposed to be revealing of your deep brain orientation.

This is a dubious claim, scientifically. Some have (righty, I believe) rejected it.

Regardless of the conclusions you draw about this optical illusion of the spinning dancer, the larger issue that this left brain / right brain test brings up is the danger of applying crude psychological and cognitive categories to ourselves and our children. Every parent is familiar with the short-hand conversations we have with other parents:

While we're nearly tipping over a glass of wine, keeping one child from running down a set of stairs, and making a plate of beans for our other child, another parent at a party makes a comment about one of our kids. Soon we hear ourselves saying that our child is either:

extroverted / introverted
tough / sensitive
left-brained / right-brained
logical / creative
athletic / intellectual
cautious / risk-taking
happy / sad
an auditory learner / a visual learner
verbal / musical
a jokester / serious

Of course all of these oppositions are clumsy at best, damaging at worst. But they're so damn tempting! It's fun to tell other parents about the differences between my kids. It's downright fascinating to speculate about what their personalities will be like as adults. I know that I have to constantly remind myself: they can be both or all of these qualities or personality traits. They are never-before-seen combinations. They will figure out for themselves what they are; I don't have to do it for them.

We can't shy away from making observations. That's not what I'm saying. Our language is our language, crude and clumsy as it is. So we'll always overstate the case at times in the attempt to gain insight or test a hypothesis. Like astrological signs, or Tarot cards, or Freudian psychoanalytic terms (ego, superego, id), or even religious concepts (blessed, heavenly, angel, devil), our casual conversational categories can serve the purpose of enabling thought -- even when they have no basis in anything but language. They group behaviors and experience into understandable, digestable bundles. Sometimes they are useful for making choices about a child's learning environment. They are indeed a short-hand for messy experience.

But I hope never to forget that these categories are only flimsy boxes, made from cheap materials, useful for transportation (taking with us to parties) and sorting (discussing between parents), and that packaging materials should be thrown away. Haven't you read the warnings? Keep Away from Children. Danger of Suffocation.

Weirdness and Politics

One of the interesting things about politics is the way that, despite the constant, fervent effort of politicians to make sure it does not, life, in all of its weirdness, finds a way to rear its head.

Just think of Jefferson's Sally Hemmings scandal, JFK's tryst with Marlene Dietrich (now there's a creepy story), Nixon's White House tapes which revealed his pathological hatred of Jews, Nancy Reagan's astrological readings, Clinton's unusual use for a cigar, and most recently, Larry Craig's tap routine. Although they try to keep their bosses air-brushed, consultants and handlers can't keep the odd sexual proclivities and other rough-edges of personality down. You can't squelch life.

I had a dream once, during the height of the Clinton presidency (before the Lewinsky impeachment proceedings in his second term), in which I got to have a casual talk with the man himself. We were walking across a street somewhere, on a nondescript, sunny day, and I asked him if he ever experienced moments when he just wanted to throw his hands in the air and say, "Oh well, whatever!"

Considering the enormous responsibilities of the office, it seemed to me a natural human reaction to have -- one which you would then overcome and get back to work.

Well, in my dream Clinton just fixed me with a cold, steady look. He stopped walking, so as to make his point all the more forcefully. I felt a rush and stopped in my tracks to face him.

"No, I don't have that urge, Tom. Never. I always take my responsibilities seriously."

In the dream, I knew right away that we had hit against the limits of our communication as two very different people. He was a politician to his bones. It was impossible for him to admit human foibles, irrational moments, the possibility of the absurd. It would violate his deepest picture of himself as a public servant. Whereas I valued more than he did staying alert to the weirdness of our experiences -- and trying to understand that weirdness as best we can. My outlook emphasized inquiry; his, continuity.

Both outlooks are important. But it is interesting, I think, to reflect on which we value more, which we prioritize, for our children. Do we want our child to make outlandish gestures towards free inquiry? Or would we rather that our child gains the respect of his or her peers and authority figures for the ability to fit into social groups and, if challenging their norms, doing so in the accepted languages of those groups?

This distinction will be more obvious when my children are teenagers... Do I really want him to post that hilarious but obscene video he made with his friends on YouTube? But everything we do as parents even in these early years teaches which outlook we favor in our home.

As food for thought, I'll end by giving you two poems by politicians. Both poems were written before the politicians' careers took off. Both poems were written when they were still open to weirdness, as expressed in the personal imagery of their poems, the use of rhythm, meter and juxtaposition to open windows into aspects of life (regret, sadness, fury, disorientation) which as politicians they learned to edit out.

The first is from Lincoln, written in 1844:

My childhood's home I see again,
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
There's pleasure in it too.

O Memory! thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise,

And, freed from all that's earthly vile,
Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle
All bathed in liquid light.

As dusky mountains please the eye
When twilight chases day;
As bugle-notes that, passing by,
In distance die away;

As leaving some grand waterfall,
We, lingering, list its roar--
So memory will hallow all
We've known, but know no more.

Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
And playmate loved so well.

Where many were, but few remain
Of old familiar things;
But seeing them, to mind again
The lost and absent brings.

The friends I left that parting day,
How changed, as time has sped!
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray,
And half of all are dead.

I hear the loved survivors tell
How nought from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I'm living in the tombs.

The second is from Barack Obama, from 1981:

Underground

Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water,
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.

--

Weird, eh? Wonderful too.

Thomas the Tank Engine, Anti-Semitism, and the Sex Pistols

A friend told me a few months ago that she won't let her son read Thomas the Tank Engine stories -- or watch the TV series -- because of the anti-semitism contained within them.

That caught my attention.

I had been watching Thomas and Friends on TV for over a year (maybe once every two weeks or so) with George first, and now Cole too. I had found the episodes mildly entertaining. They mostly functioned as an opportunity for me to get up and do the dishes while the boys stayed on the couch.

Sure, I had noticed that irritating catch-phrase, "You are a really useful engine!"

And come to think of it, certain values -- industriousness, respect for authority, devotion to duty -- seemed to underlie the stories.

And, well, now that you mention it, Sir Topham Hatt, the bald, black-top-hat-wearing Chairman of the Railway, has a kind of obsessive, ruddy-faced concern for the status quo...

But what of it?

For a few months I scoffed at the idea that the series is "anti-semitic." My friend's comment seemed in line with the regrettable tendency for political pundits, when cornered, to compare their adversaries to Hitler. But her comment continued to nag at me.

So I started thinking about the show in its particulars.

Written by an Anglican minister, the Reverand W. V. Awdry, beginning in 1943, for his son Christopher, these stories have a modest, typically English concern for the trivial concerns of everyday life. (Orwell wrote marvelously about how the English character, molded by the familiar details of small town life, resists the dangerous lure of abstraction, in his essay, England Your England.)

But everyday life in the world of Thomas the Tank Engine comes with a difference. It is hyperclean, without regrets, unreal. Watching the episodes of the TV series "Thomas and Friends" you will notice immediately a kind of utopian dream in the clouds and greenery that introduce the Island of Sodor. We enter an idealized place, where everything can and will be resolved within the span of a single episode.

Bridges may need repairing, helicopters may threaten the trains' self-image, Cranky the Crane may dump a crate of fish on a newly-washed train (usually James). But everything is manageable. It's all good for a laugh.

There's certainly something clean-as-a-whistle and safely conformist about this island and its inhabitants.

Then too: the lines of authority on Sodor are unmistakable. Sir Topham Hatt's word is supreme. The trains are encouraged to run on time, avoid risks, help others, and most of all, obey.

Vanity proves wasteful. Paranoia proves unfounded (rest assured, that red hot-air balloon will not take business from the trains after all; it will merely provide another attraction on the island!).

Kafka would have a lot to say here. The Kafka of Sodor would grapple with all those sticky, ugly little concerns which are otherwise pushed under the oncoming trains. But Sodor has no Kafka. It has no subversive current running through it at all.

You start to realize that if only these primary-colored engines (Thomas, Percy, James... the whole gang) could just repress any vestige of unique personality, they would show themselves to be, at last, once and for all, "really useful engines."

On the surface all of this is harmless. And I don't worry about any damage I may have inflicted on George and Cole's psyches.

But it got me thinking: "Wouldn't it be great if just once a rainbow-colored, feather-bedecked engine came whistling down the track?" "Wouldn't it be great if this engine didn't have to justify itself by proving its usefulness?"

Which brings me back to the anti-semitic charge my friend made.

No, I'm not saying that Jewish people have a proclivity towards rainbows and feathers (though a visit to the open-air stalls on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley on any given Saturday may suggest this surprising connection). But let's revist the arguments in 1930s Germany directed against the Jewish population of Europe.

Anti-semitism has always used the language of "usefulness." Relegated to minority status, and in most cases restricted from owning property, Jews throughout Europe developed roles outside of the traditional agrarian ones. They charged interest (gasp!) for money-lending, and their religion's reliance on the word of the Talmud led many Jews to find work in journalism, academic pursuits, literature and the arts.

Degenerative Art. "The Non-productive few." Pseudo-scientific concerns about hygiene (in the amazing documentary on the Holocaust, Shoah, the Nazis who are interviewed reveal their disgust for the dirt and disease of those in the ghettos -- which they mistake for a cause, instead of an effect, of their actions). It would all seem perfectly natural in the world of Sir Topham Hatt.

I don't mean to say that Sir Topham Hatt is a closet Nazi. I don't mean even to say that the Thomas the Tank Engine series is overtly anti-semitic. Or that W. V. Awdry was a Nazi sympathizer while writing children's stories for his son during the aerial bombardment of his country by the Nazis.

But the parallels are there. The conformist outlook in the series does match that of regimes (throughout history) which favor social control and work to restrict, or even criminalize, individualism.

What kind of values do I want my children to internalize? I would prefer individualism, thank you.

In the end, we kept our Thomas books around. I still read them to the boys some nights. But my dishwashing innocence is gone. I am now more aware of the need to balance out the conventional values of the Thomas books with the downright weirdness of my bedtime stories.

Less trains meeting their schedules.

More pirate ships which sprout orange trees from the mast...
only to be eaten in one gulp by a giant squid...
which then spits the orange seeds out, along with the rum-drunk pirates...
until they land, in a heap, orange seeds, eye-patches and all, on the shore... making an orange-flavored pirate rum cake.
Something like that anyway.

Let weirdness prevail in all of your bedtime stories.

For a taste of Thomas the Tank Engine (fittingly, an episode called "Escape"), see below.

For a taste of the subversive current running through England ("God Save the Queen / the Fascist Regime / That made you a Moron / Potential H-Bomb..." etc.), see here.

Obama's Example for Parents: It's Better to Hedge than to Lie

Telling the truth can be problematic. We all know that.

I propose that we take a personal example and a political example in turn, and see what they show us about the importance of having respect for the truth -- in life and in politics.

First the personal example:

My two-year-old, Cole, looks up at me, his face smeared with chocolate. His eyes fierce.

"'Nother cookie!"

I know what he wants. He wants another chocolate chip cookie, and dammit he shouldn't have had even the first one, because it is bedtime. And he's tired.

And now he is shouting for "'nother one," jumping up and down, pointing to the cupboard where he knows that, earlier in the day, we hid the tupperware containing the cookies meant for tomorrow's party.

Have you been there? Is this familiar? If so, then you may know what happens next.

I blurt out: "Cookies all gone!" It just comes out before I can check myself: "All gone!"

Cole glares at me silently for a moment. Then even louder than before: "'Nother cookie!"

"Cookies all gone!" I insist.

I meet his gaze, my eyes widening in that give-away, "Who me?" expression I always get when I'm bluffing. His eyes narrow into a suspicious squint.

And he gives up. He sinks to the floor, muttering about cookies. I scoop him up and head upstairs for pajamas, storytime, and bed.

But it sits wrong with me later. I lied to my child. I lied to Cole. He knew it. And he knew I knew it. It can never be made good, not ever... something is broken, lost.... (okay, I'm tired -- I get dramatic when I'm tired). I go to bed.

But in the cold light of day, I think it over. Outright lying is always wrong -- even trivial lies like that one.

It would be better, if I can handle it emotionally, to suffer the outburst, the tantrum, whatever the consequences. Pick him up and take him away from the kitchen. Do what I need to do. But don't lie.

Why do I say this? Because I believe that the most important thing that I can do as a parent, other than love my children, is to establish unquestioned honesty in my communication with them. Without this, I would quickly lose a sense of how to adjust to my children's changing needs. They would stop telling me what's on their minds, and our communication would be broken.

If I allowed the little lies, the little distortions, to build up into a kind of static in our communication, my children would gradually develop a more cavalier attitude towards my word. They would begin to assume that behind what I said is really only my authority and, worse, my concern for expediency.

Even if lying about the cookies worked in the short-term with Cole, it was the wrong way to go. I should have picked him up, kicking and screaming, and carried him upstairs.

*

So now I want to turn to a political example to show how we can get by without lies. It's hard to do, and we may as well turn to someone who has the motivation to lie all day long but the good heart that keeps him from doing it.

Barack Obama has many problems which trigger this same truth/expediency dilemma. Here's one of them:

Obama personally opposes discrimination of all kinds against gays and lesbians. Yet many people in the country have a prejudice against homosexuals, and they feel threatened at the prospect of gay marriage...

Obama knows that if he speaks out for full legal rights for gays and lesbians, which of course would include access to the institution of marriage with not only its privileges but also its symbolic value, he would instantly lose many potential voters. This is true in the Democratic primaries, but even more so in the general election.

So what does Obama do? He hedges.

How do I know this? I saw him do it.

On February 19 this year I went to hear Obama speak at a fundraising event in San Francisco. There were about 80 to 100 people there. He was asked about gay marriage (or "marriage equality" as I recall the questioner phrased it).

In that small setting, without ever saying so outright, Obama made it very clear that his decision not to support gay marriage was based on political expediency. In an attempt to get us to understand his predicament, he drew an analogy.

He mentioned that under the miscegenation laws which existed in the 1960s (before Loving v. Virginia in '67) his own mother and father could not have married in many states. And so he understood personally the importance of "marriage equality".

But then he drew the audience's attention to the work of Martin Luther King Jr. in the early 1960s -- those same years leading up to Loving v. Virginia -- on issues such as voting rights, employment discrimination and education. He told us that he had asked himself many times, if he had been in King's position in 1963, would he have "leaned" on the issue of miscegenation -- or would he have postponed it?

His answer of course was that he would have put it off -- even if it meant that his own parents' marriage would have remained illegal in many states.

This pragmatic argument -- coupled with a rueful mention of the mixing of the term "marriage" with religious traditions in many people's minds -- was the best he could offer. In effect he was saying, I can't do this now -- I can't even say anything more... We have to wait.

Strangely, his tone was so personal and thoughtful that, from what I saw, he won the crowd to his side -- at least in the moment.

It helped that he finished his answer with a direct look at the questioner and then a scan of the audience as a whole, saying very clearly, "I will continue to listen to my gay and lesbian friends on this." It almost felt as if he was winking at us in some solemn way (I can't say it, but I am with you!).

What impressed me about Obama's answer at the time was that he did not lie to us. Admittedly, he did not say outright what he hinted: that he personally opposed discrimination of all kinds, including marriage. But he didn't say that he was opposed to gay marriage either. He did a dance in which he managed to avoid lying while avoiding the truth.

As I said, he hedged.

*

This, I think, is the way to go as a parent (when you can't just tell the truth -- which remains the first and best option). It feels dodgy of course. When your kid looks you in the eye and demands "'nother cookie!" it is hard to worry about finessing the point. But finesse is exactly what you need.

If you say, "We're not going to have any more cookies!" in the melancholic tone of "All gone cookies!" for example, you have avoided lying.

You child may get confused. But he doesn't glare at you, knowing that you intentionally used words to express something untrue.

There is a difference, and the difference is a matter of respect.

That's why I am determined to avoid outright lying to my children on any point, however small.

I know that in the teenage years it's going to get a lot more difficult to trick my children with tone. The art of hedging will have to become increasingly advanced.

Perhaps I'll just have to face more temper tantrums...

But come to think of it, with a relationship based on telling the truth, perhaps, even when the truth hurts we will still be able to look each other in the eyes and resolve to disagree. We will have learned to have that kind of mutual respect.

(I'll have to get back to you on that one in about 10 years -- I can hear those of you with teenage children saying softly, "Good luck.")

Down in LA

I spent the weekend and the early part of this week in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. I was down in LA attending a filmmaker's convention on Saturday and Sunday. And then I met my family (who drove down in the our minivan, which George calls the "supermobile" because it is red) in Santa Barbara on Monday.

So I apologize fo the lack of entries on Tuesday or Wednesday. But we're back! Please write comments to any or all posts. I would love to begin to generate a conversation with other parents as well as those interested in the politcs.

Best to everybody,
Tom

Parents' Love for Their Children and Elastic Time

Love makes time elastic.

We may know it from the experience of love we have with for our parents, our siblings, our friends, and sometimes, if we're lucky, in our romantic relationships.

When we think back, there may have been a moment... an hour? a night? a week?... which seemed to stretch to infinity, as if we had slipped somehow between two strokes of the second hand and lived there, forever, in that heavenly suspended state.

We all know such times.

But when we have children, this elastic nature of time takes over. The clock melts.

And though for a year or two after we have our first child we may think it will pull itself together, click back, resume its old hard clock-like form, it never does.

Parents have to adjust to living in elastic time, all the time.

For a couple of years after becoming a parent, when people who don't have kids asked me what it's like, I used to play this change down, out of concern for their feelings.

But then I realized that I need to share my experience as truthfully as I can. So now here's what I say to my single friends when they ask me what it's like, this whole being-a-parent thing:

ME: "Do you know how you feel when you've just had a truly great date with someone? When a fantasy of True Love has you in its grip, and your brain has released the appropriate neurotransmitters and hormones to support this feeling, and you can hardly sleep for thinking about that person?

FRIEND: "Uh... yeah. Yeah, sure. I know that feeling."

ME: "And then it's the next day, and the doorbell rings, and you walk down the hall to open the door, the blood rushing in your ears, your heart beating faster, and you open the door, and a crisp triangle of sunshine hits your feet, and cool air sweeps into the room, and you look up to see that person's face, and you realize that he or she really does exist in all his or her particularity? And you feel like you're in heaven."

FRIEND: "Yeah...?"

ME: "Well that's about how you feel when you have children. Only constantly."

I mean, yes, we get irritated. And yes we read the newspaper instead of building another "really weird" vehicle with that Tinker-Toy set, despite their protests. And yes you have to tell them that you won't go back in the house one more time to get the yellow rainboots when they are already wearing the red ladybug ones which will do perfectly fine.

But underneath it all, there is that constant rush of love which melts time.

Virginia Woolf describes this strange effect of love on time well in her novel Orlando:

"But Time... though it makes animals and vegetables bloom and fade with amazing punctuality, has no such simple effect upon the mind of man. The mind of man, moreover, works with equal strangeness upon the body of time. An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented on the timepiece of the mind by one second. This extraordinary discrepancy between time on the clock and time in the mind is less known than it should be and deserves fuller investigation..."

She goes on to say that when her protagonist, Orlando, thinks of love, "his whole past, which seemed to him of extreme length and variety, rushed into the falling second, swelled it a dozen times its natural size, coloured it a thousand tints, and filled it with all the odds and ends in the universe."

For those parents reading this, isn't this an accurate description of the feeling that comes over you when you think of your child?

It's a disorienting experience. Its infinite nature dwarfs the minutia of everyday. And yet we still have to deal with the minutia. There are still calls to answer, deadlines to meet, sippy cups leaking milk on the stairs, broken hot water heaters in the basement which need repairing.

So how do we reconcile the person we are now, our experiences flooded with the elasticity of time, with the person that we used to be?

I say we don't. Maybe we need to get used to the elasticity. Quantum physics suggests that "time" may only be our perception of one linear path through something that already is. Schrodinger's Cat is neither alive or dead until we open the bag to see.

So in one sense the entire universe may be contained in one split second. We may be on to something, and the love we have for our children allows us to sense it, even with the feeble perceptive capability of an earth-bound mammaliam biped.

I say, let's stop thinking about this perception of the elasticity of time as surreal. When we see Dali's melting clocks we should say, "Ah, they have returned to their natural state at last!" And give our kids more hugs because we know secretly that it won't last forever.

Doomsday Thinking in our Popular Culture

To continue on the theme of the politics of fear from the last post, I want to share with you an article from The Nation that made an impression on me. It's about the role of the media, and our popular culture generally, in preparing us for doomsday thinking.

No wonder the area where the two towers fell was quickly dubbed "Ground Zero," a term previously reserved for the spot where an atomic explosion had occurred... No wonder the events seemed so strangely familiar. We had been living with the possible return of our most powerful weaponry via TV and the movies, novels and our own dream-life, in the past, the future and even--thanks to a John F. Kennedy TV appearance on October 22, 1962, during the Cuban Missile crisis to tell us that our world might end tomorrow--in something like the almost-present.

Read the full article here.

I definitely feel a need to think more deeply about the messages that my children are getting from the media.

I invite parents to share their thoughts on this. So far in my home we have introduced the following concepts:

Thomas the Tank Engine
Superman, Batman, the Riddler, the Joker, Aquaman, Aqualad, etc. (mostly DC comic superheros with a 70s feel).
Pirates of all kinds, including Captain Hook -- and Peter Pan
Tintin and his cohorts
Various children's stories, including Where the Wild Things Are, Cordoroy, Olivia, Mike Mulligan, etc.
49ers football games (10 minutes at a time, but enough to get the concept)
Cars -- the Pixar Movie ("Lightneen the Queen" is a current favorite in our house)

Do these stories provoke fear?

How can we make sure our children gain knowledge of this world -- not stand apart from it -- and yet avoid the doomsday dichotomies of good vs. evil in our popular culture?

Write in!

The Politics of Fear and the Urge to Control (a Parenting Perspective)

Yesterday in a press conference, President Bush mentioned the possibility of, oh, "World War III" in passing:

"I've told people that, if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

You can watch him say it here.

That's a good example of what could be called raising the stakes.

It's also a good example of the politics of fear, which we have seen a lot of since 9/11.

But hey. I'm a parent, I know fear. As a dad, I now live in a state of constant fear that some harm will come to one of my children.

My wife and I have an expression: "Little heart attacks every day." We say it to each other after we catch our breath and recover from one of the many near-accidents which occur in our home every day.

You see your child trip on the stairs, and his face just misses the end of that black iron, ornamental, oddly pointed piece at the end of the railing as he falls. Another child has a strange coughing fit in the middle of the night, which sounds like a horse munching on hay, and then is gone as fast as it started. Your doctor notices a slight heart murmur in your child during a routine check-up, and in the moments before he pronounces it "innocent" (wonderful word!) you have actually died, lived an eternity in some insufferably hot and sulphur-smelling place in which you adamantly don't belive, and then come back.

We know fear.

One time I was telling a friend about my dread that my children will, sometime, get injured. I was saying that I feel I should prepare now in some way, since the overwhelming onslaught of adrenaline and heartache which would hit me, if I got a call saying that... that... (my voice building to a fevered intensity here) my child had broken his leg in three places, might be too much!

My friend started laughing. I looked at him blankly. I asked why he was laughing.

He said, "I can see you're worried. I've never actually heard of a leg breaking in three places at school or anywhere else. I would be worried too!"

Oh I can imagine specifics, let me tell you. And I do.

So what you got, Bush?

Fear? World War III? What's that to me? What's that to any parent?

But the other thing a parent knows is that you can't get too hung up on your fear. You have to let your child take risks (within reason), wander off to play, investigate new things. In short you have to let your most loved little ones find their own way in the world. And it starts early.

Sometimes I have to remind myself to back away when I'm standing too close and commenting on every little step they take on a play structure. "How about sitting down on the bench and just watching?" I have to remind myself. And so I sit, and they're fine. Maybe some sand gets in someone's eye. Maybe someone is too scared to go down the slide and gets shoved out of the way by another kid. Big deal. They learn how to wipe the sand out or get out of the way faster.

So there is a balance. Fear plays a role in motivating us to protect and moniter our kids. But we also need to resist our fear. Resist our urge to control.

And this is the insight that perhaps our experience as parents tells us about the Bush administration's use of the politics of fear. It is motivated partly by an urge to control. (It is not only motivated by an urge to protect. And it is not only a cynical election strategy either. Though it is both of these too.)

The politics of fear's deeper motivation, I think, is the urge to control, albeit presented in the form of a humble concern for the safety and simple well-being of others.

Since at least his time in the Nixon administration as chief of staff, Cheney (along with his pal Rumsfeld, who was then Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity) have sought to expand the power of the Executive Branch. They watched in despair as Congress dismantled the levers and knobs which they and others had manipulated in Nixon's White House. They determined to do something about it.

This urge to expand the power of the Exectutive Branch took wing, during the Reagan and Bush years, in a a catchy legal theory called "The Theory of the Unitary Executive." During George W. Bush's years in the White House we have seen its effect: signing statements, expanded Executive privilege, a general disregard for consultations with Congress, the frequent use of interim appointments, and of course a shrugging off of concerns about the politicization of hiring practices at the Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales.

Is it a coincidence that this attempt to expand the power of the Executive, this urge to control, has occurred at the same time that we have witnessed the use of the politics of fear? Smoking guns as "mushroom clouds," equations of domestic dissent with "emboldening" the enemy, casual talk of "World War III" -- all of this is directly connected with the urge to control.

And what lies behind this urge to control?

As parents, we know. It is to avoid messiness, the unexpected, accidents of all kinds. When you ask yourself what is at the bottom of it, I think you will agree.

Take a moment, if you will. Really ask yourself. What is it that lurks behind your own occasional, manageable, but never completely absent urge to control the lives of your children, your urge (which you overcome every day, and will overcome every day for the rest of your life) to have them always in your arms, home-schooled, safe from the influences and dangers of the world?

What really is there, I think, behind this urge, is a flat-out terror of disease and decay and injury and... death.

Death.

It goes deep down to our amygdala, that little part of our brain that we share with animals and reptiles alike.

Picture a lizard sitting on a rock. A shadow moves over it. It's eyes send an signal to the visual part of the brain, and then that part send a signal -- ping -- to the amygdala. The amygdala sends a strong signal back: Must. Get. Control. Now! And the lizard is off and running. That's about the whole of what's going on in America these days.

So perhaps what we really need to say to Bush and Cheney in their final 15 months in office is this: How about sitting on the bench for a while?

Do your preparation, bring lunch, check for mean kids, keep an eye out for sharp objects, and then just watch. We're fine. It's sunny out.

After a while, you might even find yourself smiling, Mr. Cheney.

Across the Divide

One thing that is strange about becoming a parent: you get to live childhood again, but this time on the other side of a divide you faintly remember.

I don't know about you, but as a dad I often find myself thinking back to my own childhood, and referencing what my parents did, or must have thought. I contrast and compare my children's experiences with my own childhood.

But this time I'm the one loading the car for a weekend trip, or trying to soothe a child who skipped his nap. This time I'm the guy with whiskers. I remember that guy, but last time he wasn't me!

Or another example of how things have changed... When I hear a new song these days, I often think about whether my children will like it. And this often leads me to speculate about what kind of songs they will dance to someday at their teenage parties. And so a train of thought takes off... before I ever seriously considered my own relationship to the song, what it evoked in the first place for me.

The most interesting thing about this change in outlook, I think, is that I see the same data in a completely different way. As I said, I listen to music differently than I did before I had children. But it holds true for almost anything: books I read (What does this signal for my children?), food I eat (Is this healthy? Can we afford it?), world events (How will this affect their opportunities?). Even my most private emotional experiences -- say, a work-related disappointment or success -- have a different quality now that I know they may have relevance for my children.

There is a slight, ever so slight, separation now between me and the constantly changing, churning world. I'm one step removed, on the other side of the divide.

I guess it's called being a dad.

I have, for your enjoyment, two videos which I think demonstrate this change in outlook, this transition from one side of the divide to the other.

You have to watch them back to back to appreciate it. Note that the words are exactly the same in both, and yet the meanings conveyed by the words are completely different.

The times they are a-changin', indeed.

The first (Bob Dylan, 1965, pre-children, when he was the one doing the changin'):

The second (30 years later, now a father... and the one observing the changes):

Thoughts on George W. Bush's... Unique Way with Words

Here is a provocative theory.

We all know that George W. Bush mangles words.

Recently, while promoting the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, he comically urged that "childrens do learn." Over the past six years his clumsy speaking style drew frequent contrasts to Tony Blair's endlessly cheerful, sustained eloquence. As Bush acknowledged, meeting with French President Nikolas Sarkozy in August: "I don't [speak French], I can hardly speak English!"

Although Bush's unique way with words is a frequent topic in the media, it has never interested me much on the face of it. We all know people who do not speak extemporaneously very well but nevertheless have intelligent and complicated responses to the world. Vladimir Nabokov, for one, was famously tongue-tied in person. He demanded interviewers submit their questions in advance, so as to avoid his endless "umms" and general incoherence as an interlocutor. What they got, after submitting their questions as instructed, was stunningly lucid language, which Nabokov made to seem effortless only by a massive amount of work.

So give Bush a break. Forget "misunderestimate" and the like. Imagine if any of us had to speak spontaneously every day in front of multiple recording devices. I know I would spend every night with my regrets.

But maybe there is something about the way he talks that is significant after all.

This is what got me thinking:

I noticed that Bush not only says silly things -- it's the way he says them.

I'm sure it has caught your attention that he also emphasizes words more than most people. Jon Stewart's imitation of Bush captures some of the habitual emphasis he puts into his sentences with that sharp, downward gesture with his hands on the last word (followed of course by the "he he" knowing laugh).

Think back to every time Bush has introduced an appointee (or said goodbye to a departing one) in his administration. He often says, "He's a good man" in a strange way, as if this simple description carries with it a tremendous amount of meaning -- which we are expected to share. Or think more recently to the clips you have seen of Bush insisting that we "don't torture people." Again, the word "torture" has a kind of talismanic quality for Bush, as if by saying it out loud, and insisting that it is what our country does not do, he has separated himself from it. Done deal.

Well, what's wrong with this use of emphasis? It gives him a kind of charming everyman quality, doesn't it?

Exactly. It does give him an everyman quality. And how does it do that? It signals that words to Bush are not malleable -- they represent fixed things in the world. Bush's way of talking suggests that he believes that things simply ARE a certain way, and he is privy to the key, the talismanic words, which reveal the simple truths of this world (which were obscured behind, no doubt, a cloud of confusion stirred up by liberal "PhD types").

It's very effective, this certainty Bush has about even the most abstract words like "good" or "freedom." And it's very dangerous.

I would imagine that this misapprehension about the nature of language is natural for someone who struggled with it as a child. If we can imagine that George W. found reading difficult because of his dyslexia (or some other learning disability), he might have learned to think of words as deeply mysterious, holding some key that was often just beyond his grasp.

The point of all this is that he used this mindset to craft a very powerful self-image -- a man who speaks more haltingly and simply than his friends at Andover and Yale, but who nevertheless has the keys that are necessary to access the Kingdom of Things as They Really Are. He believes that words count, and he makes you feel that.

You might be saying... Wait, words do count. Isn't Bush right in this?

Of course they do. We rely on them to count every time we speak. But most of us know, consciously or intuitively, that words are only approximations of meaning -- and inextricably social in their meaning at that. They do not represent anything fixed underneath them, any Platonic ideal that stands apart from their use in context.

I am influenced by the philospher Wittgenstein here, who pointed out that without both a speaker and a listener -- a social interaction -- words cannot have any consistent meaning through time. Robinson Crusoe on his island, calling a bird a "redfeather," would have no way of confirming that when he called a bird a redfeather the next day it would still be the same word or the same kind of bird. The sounds produced by "redfeather" would simply have no meaning. (This, incidentally, is what is known in philosphy as Wittgenstein's "anti-private language argument.")

So instead of thinking of words, rightly, as a social process, and definitions as fluid, Bush learned somewhere along the way to think of words as, well, name tags, each placed on a definite and unchanging thing. "Torture" has some meaning in his mind (I don't even want to know the series of images that flash through his consciousness). So when he says that we don't "torture," he means it. The problem is, without discussion it means nothing to anybody else. The word alone is worthless. And so is the false sense of sanctimony that his private languge provides him.

Here we begin to see how Bush's problem with language has many real-world repercussions. A talismanic understanding of language (perhaps brought on by a childhood learning disability?), has created a kind of short-circuit to our President's ability to think in terms of process, streams of data, analysis.

He is the Decider. The One Who Knows What Things Really Are.

The rest of us, still mulling over nuances are, in his mind, merely "PhD" types. We can debate into the night, while he sleeps the sleep of the innocent.

Most voters, or half of the voters in this country at least, apparently appreciate this short-circuiting of thinking. If you say, in a subtly aggressive tone, "I don't know about you, but I love America because it is free," then you don't leave a lot of room for a discussion about what this term "freedom" conveys. If you have to ask, you are on the wrong side to Bush and those like him.

Perhaps to compensate for boyhood slights due to difficulties with what is often called "book-learning," Bush has developed an uncanny ability to channel the charisma of not-thinking. When he speaks in simple terms of freedom, evil-doers, or even hot dogs, we are compelled to listen because he invests in these words a sense of an unchanging, unreflective meaning which they otherwise lack.

The last point I would leave you with is that neuroscience may support a connection between difficulties with language (diagnosed as dyslexia or some other learning diability) and a tendency to impulsive decision-making. We may be able someday to speak accurately about specific areas of the brain which are affected. Wouldn't it be interesting if someday, in a peaceful world (a guy can dream, can't he?) the disasters wrought by the Bush Presidency are taught in terms of the unique nature of his brain and his adaptations to it as a teenager?

If only it were that simple.

Sam Harris Rejects Being Called an "Atheist"

Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, both books which I admired, recently gave a speech at the Atheist Alliance conference in Washington D.C.

In it, he raised questions that are relevant to parents (like me) who are searching for a way to talk to our children about religion while not being religious ourselves.

Harris says we should not label ourselves "atheists" because that only plays into the hands of those who would like to marginalize non-religious people. And it also sets up a crude dichotomy between "people of faith" and the... faithless? This dichotomy gets in the way of more nuanced discussions of ideologies of all kinds and their specific commands, rules, catechisms, influences.

As he puts it: "The problem is that the concept of atheism imposes upon us a false burden of remaining fixated on people’s beliefs about God and remaining even-handed in our treatment of religion."

Sam argues instead that we should simply advocate reason, humility, doubt, science, arts, and other values which we aspire to in our own lives. The speech generated a lot of controversy at the conference.

You can read Harris' speech here.

Toilet Training and World Politics

Just think of it: whatever the culture, whatever the religious beliefs, whatever the living conditions, the world over, parents have to teach their children when and how to go.

Some parents, as is reflected in this new trend, teach their babies in their first months how to go "diaper free." We didn't do this, though I have no doubt that it works. If you have ever watched the movie Nanook of the North, and you are a parent, then you have admired with growing envy the skill of Eskimos in carrying their children on their back without any need for diapers.

It would be fascinating (well, perhaps that's the wrong word -- revealing?) to read a study comparing the techniques of all the nationalities in the world when it comes to toilet training. I am certain that it would speak volumes about each nation's outlook on all sorts of political issues... If nothing else, we might gain new insight into the friction between the "poliics of fear" and the "politics of hope." (That about captures the politics in our home when my wife and I are discussing whether to skip the diaper during George's naptime these days.)

In lieu of such a study, I leave you with this glimpse into contemporary Japanese toilet training techniques. I have to admit that the way the parents talk excitedly of a funny feeling, while rubbing their bellies, is eerily familiar from our house. It's a small world after all:

Alice Walker on Obama

Alice Walker endorses Obama -- and mentions how his experiences as a dad may be significant to his politics. Having a daughter (or two) makes you see the world differently. I would agree with that.

Superhero Costumes We All Wear

This morning my oldest, George, arrived as school with something missing. He was wearing a plain pair of jeans, a shirt with a cheetah on it, underwear, socks, shoes.

That's it. No "S" on his chest. No spiderwebs. No cape.

It was hard for him. He looked down at his feet. He was suddenly shy when his friends approached. Poor little guy. His mom barely got him to accept that at least he could chase his friends "as fast as a cheetah!" With some doubt still registering on his face, he took off running, long cheetah strides and all.

What happened? Why no "S"?

Well, yesterday my wife and I tried to create an incentive to get George to make the final step towards complete toilet training. We said that if he used the toilet consistently (even at naptime -- which was the problem) for a whole day, then he could get a new, 3-year-old-sized Superman costume (he has been fitting into the same worn, now hopelessly flooded Superman costume since he turned 2). The catch was: no superhero costumes, not even the old ones, until he showed us he was ready.

No orange "fish-scale" shirts. No Batman utility belts. No Flash costumes with the yellow gloves. And no Superman.

For most boys, this probably wouldn't be a problem. But George (like me when I was his age -- genetic? socialized?) insists on being a superhero... not occasionally, mind you, but every day. This has been going on for a year.

What my wife realized today when she dropped him off at his preschool, is that the superhero costume acts as a kind of buffer for him against the worries and pressures of his day. When caught offguard or confused by a teacher's request, or bumped by another child, he can always assume the hands-on-waist imposing stance of Superman, or the ironic, lifted eyebrow of Batman, or the speedy, exaggerated run of the Flash. Without the costumes, he is just a 3-year-old boy in a huge world.

This got me thinking about the superhero costumes that we all wear, even in adulthood. My last post was on Gore and Clarence Thomas and their different ideas of honor -- based on integrity or reputation. What are these but superhero poses, embodying different idealizations of their actual selves, with slightly different enumerations of powers?

What is my "superhero costume" as I write this post? Am I a Defender of the Left, whose power is to use my X-ray vision to expose hypocrisy on the Right? Or am I a Concerned Parent whose power is asking questions... questions that act as a heat-ray to melt the facade of daily life and reveal our shared understandings behind? I guess I would hope to have a variety of costumes, from which I can choose on any given day (and sometimes change them minute by minute -- just like George does!).

What about you? What "superhero costumes" do you wear at work, at home, with your children?

Of course we all know that our children aren't fooled by our costumes any more than we're fooled by theirs. By about 12 years (or earlier?), I expect, they will know with certainty that I'm just Dad, a man who happens to have lived longer than they have and who loves them very much.

I would just hope that, when that day comes, they will have the same reaction I do when the superhero shirt squeezes over George's head and settles on his shoulders: I know he may not actually be Superman, but when he hugs me I know that his powers are far better than knowing how to fly.

And at least his mom and I can check kryptonite off the list of things to worry about.

By the way, here's the current favorite youtube video in our house. You'll soon see why.

Integrity vs. Reputation

The awarding of the Nobel peace prize to Al Gore today caused me to reflect on two different understandings of honor that are floating around in our contemporary culture.

To me, Al Gore represents the kind of honor which is rooted in his own private sense of self. It is inward-looking. When, for example, Gore conceded the 2000 election to Bush, he acted in a way that was no doubt painful when considered from the perspective of his public life, but which his inward sense of honor told him was right.

For some, his concession forever branded him with the stigma of a "loser." (Who can forget the bumperstickers and signs we saw during that time saying "Sore/Loserman"?)

I felt that, on the contrary, we witnessed, on live TV, a true act of patriotism; whether right or wrong, Gore made his decision based on what he believed was best for the country at the time. Gore's honor is strongly associated with the idea of integrity.

Consider another kind of honor that competes with Gore's. This other honor requires the vigorous and constant defense of a person's public image. Justice Clarence Thomas makes clear in his recent book that he believes that great harm was done to his honor in the Anita Hill controversy. He carries his bitterness with him even today. But what harm could possibly be done to his honor if he simply carried himself in a dignified manner, acted as he saw fit, and told the truth? Justice Thomas' idea of honor -- traditionally heralded as "a man's sacred honor" -- is strongly associated with reputation.

The tension between these two conflicting ideas of honor -- one based on integrity and the other based on reputation -- lies beneath many of the cultural skirmishes we see playing out in our national debate. The media promotes reputational honor above all else -- because this kind of honor requires an active defense on the part of those who feel their's is under attack, and that helps ratings.

As a result, most TV talk programs (spanning the political spectrum from Bill O'Reilly to Keith Olberman) present everything as a debate between opposing sides. One side says something shocking, and the other side defends itself.

In our private lives, however, many people continue to cherish the idea of a quiet, private sense of honor based on integrity. We tear up when we hear stories of dedicated parents who provide for their children, without any recognition, in the face of enormous hardships and even humiliations.

This cuts across both political parties. Republicans and even the religious right do celebrate integrity-based honor when they see it in a working family who quietly cares for the poor in their charity work. The left celebrates honor based on integrity when they see someone working for an unpopular cause such as ensuring a woman's right to choose to have an abortion, despite the protesters outside the door.

Both also celebrate the kind of honor based on reputation: members of the Republican Party, reflecting the values of the Old South, talk of facing down opponents almost as if they wish to fight a duel -- as Limbaugh did last week when he called for Harry Reid to act like a "man" and to come on his program to discuss the "phony soldiers" comments personally. Democrats celebrate honor of this kind too when they vaunt Hillary's "experience" over Obama's naivete. What is naivete but sticking to your own sense of what is right in the face of tough odds (in other words, showing integrity)?

As a father, I hope to teach my children to value the kind of honor that Gore shows. I sense that it starts, for Gore, with childhood, for this is the reference for our most closely-held sense of identity.

My sense is that the other kind of honor, the one based on reputation, starts not in childhood but in adolescence. It recalls our first victories and embarrassments among our peers. It is suggestive of high school shenanigans.

Reputation is a poor substitute for integrity.

Raising Children Right... or Left

Do we make our children liberal or conservative by the way we raise them -- even before we ever discuss politics with them expicitly?

I would argue that we do give them an outlook on the world which likely predisposes them one way or the other.

But there are too many dimensions to politics, too many values informing our positions, for our children's political views, once they emerge, to conform perfectly to our own. Thank golly.

Into this teeming mix of values and lessons and clashing political views -- familiar to parents with teenagers, I imagine -- comes a new theory. It is worth examining from a parenting perspective.

Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist, has proposed a theory of morality which involves 5 "moral axes." They are: harm, fairness, loyalty, authority and purity. His ideas were discussed in the New York Times's Science section a few weeks ago, and the article generated a storm of commentary on the internet.

Haidt claims that liberals and conservatives, answering the same questions (you can do the test yourself to see where you come down) will find that their results cluster around different axes. Liberals will, according to Haidt, put far more emphasis on avoiding harm and ensuring fairness. Conservatives will add to these concerns a strong feeling for ingroup loyalty, a respect for authority and an interest in preserving sacredness/purity.

So Haidt would suggest that we are influencing our children's politics by the values we teach them.

"Of course," I wanted to say when I first read this. "Values inform politics, what else is new?"

But something about Haidt's approach continued to nag at me in the week after I read about it. Then I finally realized why. He suggests that conservatives have more moral axes, more resources for decision-making, than liberals -- five rather than the stunted two that I favor.

Here's how I counter Haidt's theory:

A dear friend of mine had a birthday recently, and I was thinking about his great qualities. One of his qualities is his deep loyalty and steadfastness towards his close friends. Suddenly, I remembered the Haidt moral axes. And so I asked myself, "Does this loyalty that my friend shows make him more moral in my view?" My answer was no. I realized from this that I do not consider loyalty to be a moral quality, merely an admirable personality trait.

With this thought-experiment in mind, the three "conservative" axes, (loyalty, authority, and purity) seem to me more tied to personality traits than they are a sense of morality.

Haidt (and cultural conservatives) would argue of course that I am so steeped in the contractual model of morality that I simply can't see these for what they are -- axes of moral decision. But the burden is not on me. It is on Haidt to demonstrate that his "5 axes" matrix is truly an exhaustive list of moral axes. Otherwise it's just a cute exercise.

Has he done that? I don't think so.

Why not add a few more "moral" axes, such as flexibility/rigidness, or openness to difference/desire for homogeneity? These two suggestions have a bias towards recognizing culturallly "liberal" acts of generosity and kindness as opposed to the Haidt axes of purity and authority and loyalty, which are biased towards recognizing conservative virues. But aren't they just as legitimate?

I would bet that we could generate a list of some 20 or 30 axes which would be borne out in studies as distinguishing liberal vs. conservative inclinations about morality. In short, the whole thing reeks of the typical weakness of psychology: mistaking labeling for insight.

Certainly, by encouraging, say, "openness to difference" rather than "ingroup loyalty," I am predisposing my children to political views on the liberal side of the spectrum. On that we can agree. But I am not making them morally deficient. They have the two crucial "moral axes" covered: minimize harm and try to be fair. The rest are a matter of taste. And some, like the cult of sacredness/purity, are not to my taste at all.

President Hillary

Just over a year from now, Hillary Clinton may be elected the 44th President of the United States of America.

My first reaction to that prospect is relief.

But once I get over my relief that it is not President Guiliani or President Thompson, what about President Hillary Clinton herself?

I feel mixed.

First, the good. I would argue that there are, to put it very bluntly, two competing narratives in American history: rights and power.

The Clintons, whose political education took place in the civil rights era, are part of the "rights" narrative.

This narrative, the Clinton narrative (and my narrative), goes something like this:

From its pinched beginnings (see the denigration and destruction of the indigenous people's way of life, the institution of slavery, etc.), America has steadily expanded the rights accorded to its citizens. Our ideals continue to live precisely because they are still unfulfilled ideals which require new efforts every day to acheive them. The Clintons' narrative is one of progress through process.

By contrast, under Bush and Cheney, we have had seven years of a "war" narrative. This shadow narrative of America, which takes aggressive form on Fox News every day, emphasizes above all the history of this country's ever-expanding power -- political, economic and military. Our greatness is our greatness.

So rather than think of ourselves as humble citizens, we are encouraged to think of ourselves as fighters for the cause of Freedom in a conflict waged overseas (so as not to interfere with our other "sacred" role as cheerful consumers).

History is written by the victors, so the war narrative looks pretty grand in retrospect. The genocide of the Indians was, well, an unavoidable consequence of Manifest Destiny. We crushed the British, the Mexicans, the Spanish, the Kaiser, the Nazis and the Japs, and our ideological figurehead Ronald Reagan vanquished the Soviet Union. (We'll skip over the Koreans, the Vietnamese and a certain bearded irritant named Fidel Castro.) We stand against Europe and the Arab World to defend our friend Israel and its efforts to establish a... well, if not a pluralistic democracy, then at least a stategically important outpost of empire. And so on.

Insofar as she rejects this war narrative in favor of a rights narrative, the prospect of a President Hillary Clinton is good.

But here's the bad part. Over her past seven years as a Senator from New York, Hillary Clinton has:

authorized the war with Iraq (which has led to a foreign policy disaster that is still unfolding);
refused to renounce the K Street culture of lobbyists in D.C. (the number of lobbyist has grown exponentially);
recently voted in favor of a resolution declaring the Iranian Republican Guard a "terrorist organization" (paving the way for a reckless military escalation sometime in Bush's final year);
and on the campaign trail, used the now familiar political techniques developed over the 1990s by the Republican Party (quoting out of context, knowing distortion of the facts, repetition in the face of denials) to label Senator Obama as "naive and irresponsible".

None of this is shocking.

Each of these can be explained by reference to that hoary old phrase: bare-knuckle politics. Clinton is willing to make concessions to the war narrative as necessary to secure political gains.

She knows that, as a woman running for President (as she has been all along in the Senate), she cannot seem weak on security. Hence the Iraq war and recent Iranian Republican Guard votes. She knows that money drives politics in Congress. Hence the position on lobbyists. She knows that she needs to get through the crowded field of the primaries to be the one Democratic candidate. Hence her treatment of Obama.

Indeed, the tone is familiar. The Clinton's, for all of their concerns about civil liberties and equality and inclusiveness, for all that they value the "rights" narrative of America, are ruthless political players if nothing else. They decided long ago that means justify the ends in politics.

Is this the only way to power in the current political world? I don't know. I do know that, if they are right, then the political model upon which this Republic is based is simply broken.

Who can feel triumphant about the future of America if politics has devolved into a charade, a game, a contest of wits. If that is so, how can we expect policy to lead to progress?

*

Here's where the parenting side of this post comes in. I would ask the moms and dads out there to look at their own homes as an analogy to this country as a whole. Can you raise healthy, loving, confident children in a household that functions on white lies and subterfuge? Even with the best intentions, parents who lie to their children undermine the basis for their family's love and closeness. Then they wonder why the children grow apart and stop calling.

In their many concessions to power, the Clintons concede too much.

I will vote for her if she is the nominee. I will feel relief and even a little exhilaration. But I will also feel a sense of sorrow. America the ideal will have to wait. We'll be back in the right narrative for this country, but it will be one with little momentum, little pace, and lots of maneuvering.

Behind the Bright Lights of Tonight's Republican Debate

Watching the Republican Debate tonight on CNBC, I was struck most of all by the production values, and what they say about how our media distorts our lived experience, even in this supposedly "unfiltered" setting of a live debate.

Just as in every TV debate I can remember, the candidates were placed against a red, white and blue, luminous backdrop. Patriotic design elements (stars, stripes, etc.) appeared to dance around their heads.

The faces of these older white men looked well-tanned (read: made-up), and their eyes flashed pleasingly in the lights. The graphics that introduced them to the viewers were swift and expressive. The snatches of music that led into advertisements -- and grabbed us again after breaks -- were, frankly, invigorating.

The candidates' answers, of course, were uniformly banal, just as the Democrats' answers are in their debates.

What is going on?

Well, here's what I think. What we are seeing is something profound: a picture, if you will, of our society's blinkered values, presented in flashing lights and smiling faces.

We have grown accustomed to a picture of the world, as presented on TV, that is protected from suffering. This picture does not show garbage loosely strewn across the floor. It does not show skin cells that are infected and pink, or lacerations on cheeks, or stubbed toes with cracked nails. It rarely shows tears, or if it does they are stylized (Paris Hilton shielding her tender face from paparazzi). They are not the snotty tears, the snorting gasps and choked-off shouts that we experience in our private lives.

Where on that stage could possibly fit anything recognizable from daily life? Where would we indicate -- in that spare, "patriotic" design -- the odd mix of cultures which we now see in most American cities, large and small?

We're so used to it that it is easy not to see anything is amiss. But while Romney and Thompson share a laugh over whether the debate seems like an episode of "Law & Order" (ha ha!), the country's homes are filled with people who actually don't have health care, who actually smoke marijuana, who (some of them) actually talk in languages other than English, who actually can't pay for a new transmission for the car and so will have to take the bus to work for the foreseeable future.

I don't mean to sound righteous at all. I live in that privileged world which the media does represent on our TV screens -- the "high-protein land" (as the band Pavement once memorably put it). I drink cafe lattes, never question paying utility bills, call friends long distance, worry only occasionally and indulgently about financial ruin.

But without sounding righteous, I can say that I do recognize my world as uncommon, an anomaly. A fraction of us (including most of the people in the national media) live like proverbial royalty, while the rest of the country has a far more immediate sensory experience of poverty, filfth, unwanted noise.

To look at the Republicans debate is to know where they stand. And the same goes for the Democrats (perhaps Gravel excepted, since every time he speaks he angrily attacks the frame). The politicians, as presented by our media, are just as "clean" as Senator Biden controversially described Obama. They stand in opposition to darkness, smelliness, toughness, dryness -- in short, the world as lived by most of the people in it.

How do we teach ourselves and our children to break through this shimmering barrier of media and see behind it? It seems to me that we must actively seek media alternatives. I welcome suggestions.

Obama the Dad

Barack Obama has spoken at length about the anguish he sometimes feels when he considers how his political career takes him away from time he would otherwise spend with his two girls, Malia (9), and Sasha (6).

I can hardly imagine how painful it must be to lose so many opportunities to witness and participate in your children's development. When do our responsiblities to our careers, to the world outside, outweigh our responsiblities to our own family?

I happen to admire Obama greatly. I have read both of his books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. I consider him a brilliant, searching, driven, caring man, as well as pretty much the ideal candidate for President.

All that said, I find it difficult to understand how he could leave his children so often.

I find it hard to imagine leaving my kids even for a weekend.

But I suppose that it is a question of the possible influence that you can wield.

In the cost-benefit analysis for Obama, the benefits (leading the nation from the White House in a time of global terror; changing the American narrative of race forever) are far greater than they are for me. And our costs (time lost with our children) are the same. The little brass weights on the "benefits" side of his scales are simply heavier than mine.

The quick conclusion to draw from this is that I should get a life, maybe run for office somewhere, anywhere!

But another way of looking at it is this: How sad for Obama that this great responsiblity, drawing him away from his private life and the presence of his loved ones, has become unavoidable for him.

Perhaps, as a person who has shown a commitment to thinking carefully about consequences, he feels he has no choice. Certainly his public service is something to be praised.

But cannot we also feel sorry for him?

Thinking along these lines I find myself suddenly aware of the strange undercurrent of sadness that flows through gatherings of politicians. Take any debate -- scan the faces of Guiliani, Romney, McCain, Brownback, or Clinton, Edwards, Obama, Gravel, Biden. Or a press conference on Capitol Hill -- Reid, Pelosi, McConnell, Graham, Kennedy, Stevens. Isn't there a palpable sense of loss amid all of the urgency, the clarion calls to action, the passion? These people are driven to fulfill what they see as their responsiblity; they carry on their shoulders the burden of power. Most have actively sought it; for some, it arrived through a chain of events only partly of their choosing. But whatever the history, they are now in a position in which their private lives are severely diminished. And public concerns dominate their waking lives.

This of course goes back to any chapter in the life of our republic. Jefferson famously complained about spending any time away from his home in Monticello. Lincoln wept openly and trembled as he stood speaking to his friends and neighbors on the morning he left Springfield for Washington D.C. Even our current G. W. Bush (a hard man to sympathize with, but I'm trying to be inclusive) gets a jauntier step when he's back in Crawford.

Those whom we ask to lead must lose something that we take for granted: home. For those who, like Obama, cherish the intimacy they have with their loved ones, it must be nearly unbearable at times. For those who don't, I imagine that, sometimes imperceptively, they cross over into a life that is permanently public -- and unmoored from the deepest kind of attachments.

Maybe the pained expression that appear sometimes on Obama's face when he is on the campain trail, or the lines that became deeply etched in Lincoln's cheeks and brow as he drew apart from Mary and his sons (and lost Willie) during his time in the White House -- maybe these signs are the best indication we have that a leader is still psychologically whole.

Maybe great leaders are always sad.

When Religion Comes Up in a Secular Home

I'm still thinking about Burma...

My children are only 3, 2 and 5 months, so I have not yet had the opportunity to discuss religion with them at length -- or really, at all. So how do I talk to them about the monks making news in Burma?

As someone who believes that the major monotheistic (read "sky-god") religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam are dangerous and lamentable -- yes, I am with Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and the "New Atheists" here -- I have a certain amount of reluctance about broaching the subject of religion with my children. When I do talk religion with them, I hope that we will be able to discuss these Iron Age fairy tales (with various embellishments and borrowings), blood-soaked as they are, with a view to their decidedly mixed history.

It seems too complicated a topic to open up just yet. They have enough to worry about when it comes to Lex Luther and monsters in the closet. I would like to wait.

But how do I talk about the monks?

Can I describe them neutrally? Or does it open a floodgate of supernatural thinking to discuss even this distant religious tradition with my children at this early age? Should I just dodge the subject altogether?

Of course I don't want to dodge anything when it comes to my children. I want to answer their questions in the most appropriate way I can. So here goes:

Let's imagine that my oldest, George, catching sight of a report on Burma tonight on TV, asks: "Who are those funny orange guys, Daddy?"

I believe that, for now, I would avoid the dogma of Buddhism. It's too early to get into enlightenment and reaching nirvana. Instead I would focus on the tradition in that country for young men to choose a life of quiet and contemplation, where they can dedicate themselves to being attentive to the details of their existence: a bowl or rice, a ceremony, a gesture... I would tell him that they live together in monastaries, where they do all the work and sit still for long periods. In efffect I would secularize what they do.

Some religious people may criticize my approach to talking to my children. They would ask me to acknowledge the courage, the love for humanity, and the steadfastness which the monks' Buddhism -- their form of religiosity -- gives them. Is this not evidence of a benefit from religious devotion? Doesn't it at least support the idea that religion is a spur to social transformation?

I hear these arguments, but I am not convinced of this link. And therefore I think it would be too blunt a message, as well as misleading for a child of his age, to tell him about their religious status as monks.

I know that in Burma today (and in the U.S., say, during the civil rights movement of the 1960s) acts of unbelievable courage are taken with a religious pretext. And the language of religion certainly expresses many of the longings of those on the front-lines of change. Yet I would argue that this religious aspect to these movements is not inextricable to it. It is the legacy of millenia of religious tradition, based in ancient texts and superstitions, whether in Burma or here. It may provide the symbols and language of the movement, but without these symbols and language the movement would stand on even stronger footing.

Replace the saffron robes -- or the clerical collars -- with a group of diversely dressed people with flushed faces, and you get the same result: a picture of human beings banding together to do something greater than themselves.

I am in awe of the Burmese monks who walked the streets of Rangoon and now find themselves in mortal danger. They have done something great -- I will never forget it. In saying this, I do not believe that I also need to feel awe for their religious commitments, ceremonies, and stories. These may have aesthetic value (I'm sure they do, as do temple, church and mosque services in our more familar traditions), but that does not translate to something important that I must tell my child at this early point in his development.

As my children get older, of course we will talk about the attractions of religion, as well as the distractions and delusions it causes in otherwise kind and forthright people. But now is not the time.

The religious side of the Burma situation is secondary. The people are primary.

Torture, First Principles, and Our Children

The New York Times today revealed the existence of "secret memos" in the United States Department of Justice under Alberto Gonzales, which authorized "enhanced interrogation techniques" for use on terrorism detainees. "Enhanced interrogation techniques" is of course a euphemism; the same phrase in German, "Verschaefte Vernehmung" was used by the Nazis during World War II.

In either language, it means torture. The United States of America, our beloved country, now belongs to the long list of nations which have used and continue to use torture as a tool of public policy.

How does that make you feel?

The specific techniques -- a word that is far too sterile and scientific-sounding as a description for the sweat-stained, shit-streaked, brutal actions involved -- which Gonzales' Justice Department authorized, and the Bush administration used, include:

keeping detainees naked and shivering uncontrollably in extremely cold cells;
keeping them in a sleep-deprived, semi-deranged for extended period of time;
playing non-stop loud music;
hitting them on the head repeatedly;
and waterboarding.

This brings to mind the question of how to instill moral "first principles" in our children. By first principles I mean bright lines over which we simply cannot cross without losing a sense of who we are.

I believe that opposition to the torture of another human being is a moral first principle (just as the stirring statement in the Declaration of Independence about those rights which we hold to be "self-evident" represents a political first principle).

Let's examine what morality is at its core. I would argue that it starts with that most unique human characteristic: our capacity to empathize with other human beings by way of our imagination. It is this capacity, coupled with our pre-cognitive instinct to protect other human beings from harm if we can imagine them facing harm, that is the source of morality. With this small imaginative leap -- "Oh, that sharp stick will hurt him if I poke him, just as I have felt sticks hurt me when I am poked!" -- we begin a huge project, taking place mostly in our formative years but also throughout our lives, to build a sense of moral interconnectedness to others.

If you follow me so far, that the basis for morality is our capacity for empathy (by way of the imagination), then I am sure you will agree too that there can be no clearer violation of what we term "morality" than the intentional causing of severe pain to another person. If we do not renounce this act unequivocably and unmistakably, then morality becomes nothing more than a strategy for advancement, a code for proving loyalty to our own in-group. But morality is something else than a strategy or a code. It is a stop, a boundary, a means of knowing who we are.

Of course there are scenarios in which we would be tempted to physically hurt another person, even severely, for some larger cause. If you have watched a recent debate between the Republican Presidential candidates then you have been conditioned to think reflexively of the example of the nuclear device primed to explode in a major metropolitan area, and the one man that can defuse it glaring at us with defiance. Guiliani relishes this hypothetical -- there is a glint in his eyes when he brings it up. In such a situation, I would not predict how any of us would act. I suspect that most of us would do something that would qualify as torture under those circumstances. But this act -- which we must remember is an unlikely occurance, as it would require an astonishing constellation of events to create this scenario -- must be considered outside of our moral range. it would change the person doing it forever. It should be viewed as rupture of our moral principles rather than an adaptation within them.

For someone to claim that this would be a morally justifiable act shows that his or her sense of identity is simply not bounded by first principles. He may be a charming person; she may live a generally admirable life; but such a person, I would argue, missed out, at some formative stage, when it came to establishing a bedrock upon which to build a coherent moral outlook.

So back to the initial question of this post. How do we instill first principles, particularly moral first principles, in our children?

Already, when faced with an altercation between our 3-year-old and our 2-year-old (his birthday's today!) my wife and I say things like, "There is no hitting in this house!" But those are just rules, and they are understood as such. I believe that first principles are not taught through catch-phrases or "time outs." My sense is that first principles are taught by the everyday reinforcement of the values which define the relationships in the home.

If, as I would like to think, our compass needle points regularly to the practice of love and concern for others, then when the needle spins the opposite direction to the practice of dehumanization and cruelty to others our children will have an immediate gut reaction that something is off.

Those times in my life when I have managed to dehumanize someone enough to be cruel, I have felt an uneasy feeling, a gathering creepiness, inside. You can't always put it into words, but you know it.

I believe that it is up to us, as parents, to encourage empathy, to ask questions about other people, to speculate about our children's friends' feelings with them -- "Why was Jack crying? Was he upset that his bubbles spilled?" In short, to create a sense of a larger world of sentient human beings -- in which each of us happens to inhabit only one body. When we do this -- in a million ways, by the way we make sure they share their birthday cake as well as the vigor with which we wave goodbye -- we create the sense of first principles without ever overtly discussing them. The outer boundary, the web that holds our moral self together, if you will, is woven from countless, subtle, daily interactions, not from spoken rules.

In this way, as parents, we create citizens who would simply not endorse the physical abuse of detainees as matter of public policy. It is not even arguable -- regardless of the perfect-constellation hypothesis about a ticking nuclear bomb pitched by Tim Russert or Brit Hume on any given night.

One wonders what the parents of the polite, articulate John Yoo, architect of the legal memoranda in the Justice Department supporting these secret memos, did NOT do. Surely they taught their son manners. Surely they taught him how to succeed in the world. Surely they taught him much about equipose and patience. But why did he not acquire a set of first principles which would exclude torture? I would find it very interesting to know how much value, if any, John Yoo's parents placed on the imagination (and the capacity for empathy) when he was growing up.

Memories of Burma and the Impetus Behind Politics

One thing I did not mention in my last post is that I traveled in Burma with my family when I was young. It was 1981, and I was 12. The memories I have are so vivid -- and, what is more relevant to this meditation, they are from a child's perspective.

I believe that the direct, non-analytical nature of these experiences, even dating back 26 years, adds to my feeling of connection to the people there today -- and my sense of political urgency about the situation.

Let me share some of my memories with you:

In Rangoon (now Yangon) we stayed in a creaky, gorgeous colonial British hotel. It had slowly circling fans in the lobby, where we drank lime juice on ice to stay cool. Vintage 1940s and 50s cars lined the streets -- used without thought to their antique looks, but simply because those were the models of car available. I suffered a mysterious allergic reaction (never repeated) one night as we returned to our hotel room, and I began breathing frantically, trying to get air. In retrospect I can only imagine how frightening that was for my parents. I remember they called the front desk to try to get medical assistance, but by the time they had communicated the problem my attack had subsided.

I remember the beggers and the monks, the gleaming, gold surface of the central Buddhist temple (the Schwedagon pagoda), the talk of the Buddha's tooth once preserved there. We then traveled north to Mandalay, and we also visited the most fantastic place I had ever seen, Pagan (now called Bagan).

There are hundreds of temples dotting a flat dusty plain in Pagan. They have secret stairways, ornate carvings, impossible balconies, and dark tunnels. Each one is different in design. My sister (a year older at 13) and I raced around these temples, laughing and gasping for air while my parents took a more leisurely pace and considered the history.

My sister and I felt as if we had discovered the real Disneyland, the one that wasn't at all ersatz -- a true lost kingdom with crumbling stone and stange aromas and odd shafts of sunlight. We rode from temple to temple in a horse-drawn cart, with our driver occasionally giving rides to villagers. The people smiled and some spoke broken English. It was the most memorable single day I experienced in all the travels that my family took through Asia during those years (we lived in Hong Kong from 1979 through 1981 and took the chance to travel extensively in the region).

How do these memories bear on politics?

The simple point I take from this excursion into my private archive of sights and sounds is this: We are driven poltiically as much by what we FEEL as what we think. I feel sorrow (and anger too) when I think of Darfur -- as when I watched the documentary by a friend of mine, Annie Sunderberg, "The Devil Came on Horseback," at Sundance this year. But because I have no direct, sensory connection to that part of Africa, my motivations are more analytical than visceral. When it comes to supporting aggressive action again the regime in the Sudan, I am all for it -- but out of calculation rather than the force of conviction. When faced with similar suffering Burma, however, my childhood memories provoke me to brood on it more. I am more inclined to talk about it with loved ones, check to see what my government is doing about it, even take to the streets (if the chance arises).

This makes me think of a great essay by Richard Rorty on human rights. It's called "Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality." Read it if you want to be provoked.

Rorty's argument is, in a nutshell, that we should forget claiming that we are on the side of reason, that we are "right" and those who abuse other human beings are "wrong" in some absolute sense. Rather, the only effective way to change people's behavior (short of the use of force) is to appeal to sentiment. Show them photographs of their victims. Make them confront what they are doing directly through some method of storytelling (film, TV, theater, writing). Get them to see, and smell, and feel the consequences of their actions. And then ask a simple follow-up question to provoke them: Is THIS the world that you would like to live in?

As David Hume famously wrote: "Reason is the slave of the passions." It doesn't work as well the other way around.

When it comes to Burma, I find that my reason is at work, trying to find ways to alleviate the suffering, because my passions for that country were ignited 26 years ago as a child.

What passions are we igniting in our children today that will motivate them 26 years from now?

Burma, Assault Weapons, and Our Kids

The crackdown on monks and other protesters by the military junta which rules Burma (Myanmar) raises questions for me as a parent.

The obvious first question is: What would I do? The people of Burma do not have weapons with which to defend themselves. They are trying to confront a brutal regime which has shown no compunction about taking murderous action against innocent civilians. To name only one area of past human rights abuses by this regime, this same military dictatorship deliberately engineered the systematic murder, rape and forced labor of many villagers in its efforts to build the Yadana gas pipeline (assisted by Total S. A. and the American oil company, Unocal, now merged with Chevron).

It does not get more ruthless than this regime. They possess the will and the weaponry.

By contrast, the civilians of Burma are only in possession of their lives and their hopes.

But would I, with three young children, join in the movement for democracy in Burma? Would I risk losing my life and leaving my children? The fact is, I don't know if I would. None of us does without being in that situation.

This question of what I would do -- and the fear that it generates in me to contemplate taking life-threatening action -- makes me think of my support for a ban on assault weapon in this country. This has always been a clear-cut position for me: Why would regular citizens need assault weapons?

But what if our country deteriorated into a dictatorship? The growing politicization of the military, the rise of military options outside of civilian control (Blackwater), the increasing links between the Christian right and high-ranking military officers... It may be unrealistic to imagine a dictatorship anytime soon in this country, but it's not impossible -- which is shocking to consider.

And then, what defense would we have? What means of persuasion, other than lofty rhetoric and Constitution-thumping, would we have to confront this take-over of our democracy?

In the end, I still believe that the value of regulating assault weapons – and the resulting lives saved in the short term – outweighs the value of protecting the possibility of armed resistance to an imagined coup d’etat (or, perhaps more likely, an insidious and creeping authoritarianism). I’m sorry, I just don’t think criminals should be able to outgun police.

But the question is not an easy one, and the events in Burma this weekend make it increasingly obvious to me that at some point I might reconsider.

*

Crackdown. What a casual word for the gashes, the holes in the head, the blood, the pain. We can hardly picture the horror felt by those who are in it.

The other question that this “crackdown” raises for me is: How do I talk to my children about the horrors in the world, the cruelty, the violence?

My oldest, George, is only 3 (my two younger ones are Cole, 2, and Adeline, 5 months). But in just a few years they will hear of events like these and ask for explanations. I could shield them from it. Dismiss it with a quick sketch, and a passing reference to good people overcoming bad people. But that won’t do, and I know it. I believe that I will need to confront these events directly.

Of course there are numerous hardships in our daily, more immediate lives. But macro-events, world-historical events, are important too. They shape our view of those things and people whom we never meet. They shape our sense of right and wrong by providing hypotheticals and extreme examples. They give us a sense of the grinding, inexorable consequences of history as it is made outside the home.

So I guess I will say now just what my impulse is. I want to sit down with my kids. I want to get out a globe or an atlas. Show them Burma. Show them monks in photographs. Tell them about Buddhism. Tell them about colonialism. Tell them about governments that rule by force and governments that rule by laws, and how they both mix it up together. I want to tell them about the courage of these Burmese who are resisting. Tell them about the fears of those who are hiding in their houses and apartments, as well as the fears of those boys who are hiding behind the steel mesh of their helmets and behind their machine guns. I believe that the more honest talk we give our kids, the more we allow them to reframe and advance the conversation in their own lifetimes.

Maybe someday they will face a crackdown like the one the people of Burma face, but here in our own country, on our own streets. And maybe, unlike their Dad, they will know that, despite the risks, they need to join the crowd on the streets. Weapons or not.

Why Democrat Dad?

This blog will explore the intersection of politics and parenting. I invite other dads, moms, or anyone else who is interested, to contribute to the conversation. My intention is to write every day on some issue which connects politics with parenting.

Why "Democrat Dad"?

I am a citizen and a Democrat, and I believe that these are not mere labels. They are important aspects of myself.

Why is my political identity so important that I feel compelled to write a blog about it? Well, I believe that we all have a responsibility to take politics seriously.

Those of us worried or enraged or disillusioned about our country cannot simply escape, drop out, or (romantic as it sounds) "drop off the grid," without losing much of what we cherish about ourselves.

I agree with Aristotle here (see his Politics) that human beings, choosing to exist outside of their community, are abdicating part of themselves. They are living as either "god or beast" -- the lives of monks or hermits, but not something that is recognizable to me.

My values are informed by the opinions of others; and this is not a point of shame. We are social creatures. We respond to praise and blame. Our participation in society is a pre-condition of language and a basis for morality.

I am enamored of our country and its laws. When I think of it... when I picture the whole whirring, clicking machine going like crazy on any given day... I am inspired to believe the best of my fellow-citizens and our future, all over again.

Through multiple decisions at many municipal, state and federal levels, through checks and balances of the different branches of government, through experments in legislation taking place concurrently in the states and in Washington D.C., through elections for offices ranging from a seat on the local school board to the Presidency of the United States -- through all of this never-ceasing activitiy -- our system of law provides what I like to think of as a perfect fit.

Think of it as a complex, ever-adjusting, digital map of the analog curve of our collective needs. And it is all thanks to the best "software" ever designed for the organizing of human beings and their diverse interests: the Constitution.

I am a citizen of this country, and proud of it. And politically, I am a member of the Democratic Party.

Hence, Democrat Dad.

Please join me. I look forward to thinking through parenting from a political perspective -- with you as my fellow-parents and fellow-citizens. Fellow Democrats of course are invited. Republican Dads and Moms too! Let's get started!