Oh, the constitution, that immutable and unchangeable avatar of rights and righteousness. These rights shall not be infringed. These rights shall not be qualified or contained. These rights must remain immutable, and the alternative is unthinkable. Yet is not the death of school children equally unthinkable? Not, it seems, equally.
There are people who think tighter, more sensible gun control is one of many solutions to the death of children. At least 60% of America, as it happens. If you ask about specific policies, such as stricter background checks, even more of us agree: to possess weapons are a right, but it should be a well-regulated right, not a free-for-all.
Agreement does not lead to action. Agreement creates a great body of followers, willing to go along with a thing, but unlikely to champion it. By and large, Americans want more control over guns. The problem is not with the public unwillingness to agree, but with the champions.
I have been pulled over. I have been in accidents. In both cases, I have interacted with the police. Once I was pulled over for speeding at 1am, which I was, because I missed the transition from 55 to 30. I was doing 60 in a 30, and the cop said “you don’t have a record in New Hampshire, so I’m going to give you a ticket for 45mph instead.” I certainly didn’t fear for my safety.
Whenever the state yields to a smaller, less powerful group, we are tempted to cry “victory.” And this is what many of us are doing now that the state has 
There are a bunch of people out there right now who want to tell you “support the police” and “blue lives matter.” Many of these people also say slightly more nuanced things like “there is more crime in black neighborhoods so police are needed there” or “there are 
People lie. People lie pretty much all the time—but most of those lies aren’t the sort of lies that matter. They are untruths that we expect and reinforce socially. They are lies that are, in a sense, required.
This is too bloody to be peace. Every week, nearly every day, this does not feel like peace. And yet, if this is war, who is the enemy? We all seem to be searching, and many of us claim to have found that enemy—but our claims don’t agree.
At the end of each month I compile links to articles I found thought-provoking over that month, categorized with pull-quotes for your perusal and edification. Each of these is a story that made me stop and think, and hopefully one or two of them will do the same for you.
It hasn’t been a good week. You wouldn’t think much could be worse than a hate-motivated mass shooting against LGBTQ people who had gathered just to be themselves; but the killer also claimed to have been driven by an ideology of hate, inspired by a small segment of religion that hates people for not thinking the same things they do. And it isn’t just ISIS that does that, because there are large swathes of American Christianity and American Politics that say the same thing. So it was a bad start to the week.
Horror is all too common of late. It indicts us, and our inaction, and our self-righteousness. It leaves us searching blindly for narrative, for meaning, for sense. It drives us to a place of confusion and darkness because we already have a story, and the story is about being a beacon of the free world and a bastion of hope and a place where anyone can be great, and this is not that story.
Honesty is the most important thing—at least, that was a value I learned growing up. No criticism was left unspoken, nor was there any thought that it should be. I learned to value blunt, direct language. I learned to say what I thought. I learned to be brutally honest, and to believe it was the right thing to do.
Fond Impertinence 
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