The endless turns one takes while searching for a parking spot in the city.

///

I spent nearly an hour trying to park my car the other night.

We’d returned from dinner with my Dad. I dropped L. off at home, chimed a sweet “love you!” and set myself to parking.

Left at the light. Nothing on this block.

Left at the next. All booked up.

Left at the light.

Maybe a right.

It went like this.

Left. Left. Right. Left. With every turn I felt more of myself slide away… my sanity fraying like a windblown flag. Left. Left. Left. On and on until the last scraps had eroded finally away.

Hope. Was there ever such a thing? Certainly not.

For the world is barren. A dead place. Bereft. A corridor of parked and empty cars. No life. Nothing stirring. Young couples loved, once. They walked their dogs and jaunted happily through the streets in well-tailored, seasonally-appropriate jackets. But that time had passed. Now dawns the age of rubber and glass.

I was born to die in that car… lost forever… left behind. Left. Left.

Left.

And then…

Abruptly, without any reason or purpose… I found a spot.

And everything was alright again.

A creepy, ghoulish, or otherwise disturbing looking child.

///

Look, I don’t hate kids.

Far from it, actually. I’m happy to report that I’ve become a man who rather likes them. They’re wonderful, and strange; they’re hungry little ids who run around all hopped up on fudge, asking uncomfortable questions and occasionally pooping themselves. How can you honestly not appreciate that?

These behaviors are the proud marks of a free creature, flaring gloriously through the black misery of the Cosmos. Kids are great. They should be celebrated. Hooray for kids.

That said…

There’s a time in every child’s life… somewhere around three, I think, when they take a turn.

They get spooky looking.

Eerie.

Their parts start growing at varied paces, making them physically syncopated and rangy. Suddenly afire with curiosity and wonder, mind overrides mien… so, when unoccupied by iPads or juice-boxes or coloring books, they often appear vacant and expressionless… leering about and gawping… their mouths faintly reddened by juice, their smiles a mushy handful of baby teeth.

I like kids. I do! But zoiks can they look damn scary sometimes.

NB: I feel it’s very important to point out that me at 8 was a SPECTACULAR example of this word.
Woof.

A person who hasn’t yet decided what they’re morally opposed to eating.

///

Two young women sit debating the dwindling ethics of sustenance.

Chicken’s out. They’re kept in those awful cages.

Beef! Ooh, but methane is a greenhouse gas. Worse than cars, I’ve heard.

Pork? But pigs are super smart; they’re basically people without any clothes on.

Soy. Wait, doesn’t that cause breast cancer or something?

Fish? … Eh. Fish.

Any act of consumption short of actually sitting outside and photosynthesizing lunch ends in an ethical cul de sac.

I over hear them while I wait for my own order. They trace their refusals back to girlhood, when they’d eaten the food their parents had insensitively plopped before them (perhaps lovingly prepared after a long day of working in a miserable job).

“Ugh,” the one says to her partner, “so gross.”

When the waiter approaches.

“Ladies? Any thoughts?”

Oh… many, Waiter. So many thoughts.

They look up from their menus and shrug.

“We’re gonna need another minute.”

Crying fully, cathartically, wildly, and without restraint.

///

The Leftovers aired its finale last night, and I lost 20 pounds of water weight directly through my face.

The Leftovers is, among so many things, a lachrymal diuretic. An ipecac for the heart. It’s an enema applied directly to the feelings.

And I loved every last goddamn drop of it.

Last night, while L. dozed beside me, I sat and watched, rapt in weepy silence – a pillow clamped in my arms, my nose a drippy faucet.

Oh, I adored The Leftovers.

I loved it so, so much.

I loved it with the same immensity I have for certain novels, or poems, or those pieces of minor key classical arrangement that detonate me into saline hysterics… like a fragile aunt at a graduation party.

I can’t think of a single piece of popular culture that’s even attempted to do what The Leftovers did, let alone accomplished it with this level of elegance and deftness and style. The Leftovers lovingly examined our most primordial anxieties – the ones we used to fashion out of stained glass, or etch into marble, or paint on cathedral ceilings. It’s a modern tale about Renaissance preoccupations – love, death, sex, and god (or his abject and crushing absence, as it were).

It’s the oldest story, told in the newest way. And I’ve spent 36 years failing to express what The Leftovers gorgeously conveyed in – all told – just under 28 hours. I cannot thank the makers of that show enough for their contribution to our culture, and to my own personal experience as a human being.

Also – it introduced me to Carrie Coon, upon whom I shall moon and pine and flutter and die until the day of my own departure. Oh, Carrie Coon. Let me sing of Carrie Coon. One of the most exciting, challenging, intense, heartbreaking actors I’ve ever seen.

And sweet. jesus. what. a. dish.

❤ Carrie Coon ❤

Okay, I’m done gushing.

Let’s get to the point, shall we?

This should surprise no one… but, I’m a crier.

I love it. I love a good cry. I’ll put on sad music, or watch a sad movie (or entire television series) just to whip myself into a lachrymal froth. I find the whole thing massively satisfying and even kinda fun.

Not about life, of course. If ever confronted with hardship or sorrow, I tend to veer all Western Philosophy and negotiate, argue, and berate myself back into relative comfort. I’m a grouchy, Liberal Arts educated rationalist all the way down to my fingernails. It’s probably my greatest emotional failing – I think I can think my way through a feeling.

But that’s about real life. Now… fake life – movies, books, music, theater (my god, theater) – that splits me open like a rotten melon. I can’t keep it together when it comes to the cultural sads. All I ever want to do is watch a tragedy and weep about it in the aisles.

So! To honor said weepiness… and The Leftovers which provided me so many nights of beautiful, sink-grappling, red-faced, hide from your girlfriend, “I just need to pee, I’ll be right back!” bathroom sobbing – here’s a list of some of those things that make me cry.

Openly.

Wildly.

With great drama and gesticulation:

Videos of dogs greeting their returning soldier parents.

Cochlear implant activation videos.

The scene where Connery dies in The Untouchables

The entire movie Summer Hours.

Same with the Clouds of Sils Maria

Every scene from The Leftovers… 

The movie/play Wit – specifically designed to make me die

The scene where John Proctor refuses to sign his name.

The song rainbow connection – I once cried while reading the lyrics aloud, and in fact, started crying almost immediately upon finding this video.

The scene where Emma Thompson loses it and puts herself back together in Love,Actually – yeah, I like that movie. Deal with it, you hipster toad.

Any scene from Certified Copy (it’s so French…)

Any scene from The Thin Red Line

This one from The Tree of Life

This one from The New World

This one from Paris, Texas

This is but a smattering. I have such an immense collection of little sobby clips.

Watch a few. Cry at work.

I do it all the time.

The arrangement of one’s parts so as to hide the greatest amount of chub.

///

I shaved the other day. This was a mistake. I say this literally.

I’ve been wearing a facefull of fuzz for a long time now. Not a beard, per se… in today’s age of wool-faced, Rabbinical sheik the best I can muster is a wispy arrangement somewhere between a sunparched lawn and a shabby bichon frise.  It’s been a half-hearted stylistic decision if ever there were one – more a lack of will than an act of it. But still… it’s been my look.

But then, a few nights ago, I decided to clean my face up a bit. What had begun as some light touchup work quickly unraveled into complete whisker teardown. I had knicked a bit too much from one side… so I had to edge a bit from the other… and on and on like this it went: left, right, left, right, buzz, buzz; trimming more and more from each hemistache until only a wee Hitlerian puff remained… bunkered, quivering and desperate, under my nose.

Naturally, it had to go.

My face is a freer place without it, for sure. Everyone’s very pleased. So pleased, in fact, it makes me wonder just how bad I looked when I had fur on my face. But it also revealed something terrifying: Good god have I have gained weight. Not an unmanagable amount. I’m not a butterball. But all of that weight lives almost entirely in an adipose halo around my face. Age has sent me shambling into an entirely new phase of decrepitude – jowliness. There’s more chin now, more throat, than my face requires. I have an overabundance of countenance. And it means only one thing – a dull thudding truth that hammers against my heart.

I have to fucking exercise.

I’ll do it. I swear. There’s a sweet muscle-boy who works at my agency who’s been just dying to help usher me into the world of athletics. He’s 23 years old – a fetus with shoes on – who “lives at the gym” and can help me “get swole.” Once I realized that adjective didn’t refer to my genitalia, I decided to find it charming. He’s offered to draw up an exercise regimen for me. “We’re gonna shred your abs, man. It’s gonna be great.”

Alright. Yes. I relent. Let the shredding commence.

I will buy sneakers. And shorts. I will wear them while I lift heavy things. I will shred my abs like so much boiled chicken. I will work my chest and trunk until it resembles a pan of muffins. I will feel the burn and shred the gnar… or whatever.

But until that time when I have lifted myself from the blobiform gutter in which I currently writhe and into the highest glittering strata of hardbodied swolness… I’ve got to do something about my goddamn face.

When I turn it, it vanishes into my neck, you see.

So for the next few weeks, I will posture myself accordingly. I will suck in my gut and photograph myself ONLY from an approved, Myspace bathroom angle circa 2003.

I will act thin. And work fat.

And I will appear, if not swole, than at least to have swelled less.

So shall it be written. And so shall I run.

 

 

Sordid tales of sexual anxiety, misfortune, and embarrassment.

///

Okay. I’ve got an idea for you. Hold on to your butts. This one’s a doozy of a humdinger.

Open-mic… stick with me… Therapy Night.

Once a month – maybe twice – I’ll post up at some dingy bar or event space, and encourage society’s broken and bereft, demented and depressed to share their insides with strangers.

Five minutes. Open mic. Have a drink and tell me about your dad.

I’m convinced it would slay.

But then, I’m big on catharsis. Doubly-so if it’s public.

Triple if it’s pubic.

In full candor – it’s not my idea. It was a throwaway gag in a teeerrriibllee (see: wooonnndeeerrfulll) romantic comedy from the late 90s/early ’00s about a neurotic dweeb who falls in love with his best friend. It’s called “Let it Snow” and I’ve seen it probably five thousand times because my mother raised me to be a doily.

It was the maudlin opus of the implausibly named Kipp Marcus – who I’m 98% sure composed his own Wikipedia page. Bernadette Peters plays his mother and is, in accordance with every conceivable law of existence, absolutely perfect.

A then-unknown Stephen Colbert plays a minor but brilliant role. Seriously. Find this movie. Watch the whole thing. Twice. You’ll be better for it.

Extra knowledge, no charge: I adore shitty romantic comedies. Especially the vein of schmaltzy, meet-cute pap that flourished from the mid-90s to the early 00s. I consider it the height of the depth of American binnable pop culture. If you’re looking for a map to the labyrinth of my heart… look no further than what played on HBO at four in the afternoon, circa 2002.

Anyway. Back to Open Mic Therapy Night.

Here’s the thing – it scratches a bunch of my itches.

For one, I think it makes for great theater. Bad news makes always makes for the best stories. Any success I’ve had at storytelling (and I’ve had a bit) has owed to two simple and conjoined precepts:

1. When you’re being ugly, you’re being honest. And honesty is what makes people lean forward, listen, and care.
2. There is nothing more boring than someone else’s good news.

So as a form of public theater and entertainment… I think it’s a peach.

But I also think there’s something potentially healing about it.

There’s something cleansing about getting on stage and being as ugly and honest and raw as you can to a room of boozy silhouettes. Everyone gathered to swim in each other’s uglies… not celebrating our accomplishments – to dance, or sing, or tell jokes, or strip and wiggle… but our failures. The things we’re ashamed and afraid of.

Failed in love? Let’s hear it.

Got some warped sexual urges? Spill em.

Hate your kid? That’s okay, too.

Feel sometimes that the whole world is a crushing black nothing, and that we’re all just kicking around, waiting for something tragic and awful to happen if merely to confirm that you’re not crazy for feeling that way in the first place? The mic is yours.

I just love it. Everyone there, together… listening. Nodding and mm-hmm-ing. Judging. Celebrating. Commiserating. And ultimately, applauding.

It’s the ultimate catharsis.

It’s Jungian karaoke.

Guh. Sign me up.

A rapid and indiscriminate farewell made while exiting.

///

You’re tired.

Your feet hurt.

You’ve partied enough.

You don’t even remember why you came to this party.

And there’s an uncomfortably good chance you were responsible for the toilet overflowing.

Time for a hasty exit. Are you actually going to shake everyone’s hand? Hug everyone you said hi to?

No way. Huggin’s for chumps.

Bye!Solong!hugandkiss!talksoon!Loveyou!Takecare!Gottago!NahI’mtired!Goodtoseeyoutoo!SayhitoBarnoldforme!HahaIknowBarnoldissuchagreatname!NoI’dlovetostay!Yeahlunchsoundsgreat!

Door.

Car.

Home.

Netflix.

One who speaks with absolute authority, while being the authority on absolutely nothing.

///

As a member of the human race with eyeballs, ears, and a functioning neocortex, I’ve developed many reasons for loathing Donald Trump. With any luck, if you’re reading this, you’ve got a few of your own. Just in case you want to borrow some, here are a few of mine. Ya know… just for kicks:

He’s a greasy flimflam man who’s conned, corrupted, and bilked thousands of people out of their money. He’s a low rent panic merchant, sowing fear and hate with abandon. He’s a hysterical, thin-skinned reactionary. A misogynistic twerp. A crooked huckster. An exultant failure. A wrath-brimmed bully. A gaudy dilettante. He’s a bigot. A brute. A sleaze. An ass. A fool.

During his candidacy alone, he:

Cheerfully advocated for torture; the construction of a border wall with no sane explanation how to fund it; he suggested our military should murder families simply under suspicion of their being related to terrorists; blithely stated that abortion should be criminalized; he’s mocked the disabled; banned journalists; he somehow remains in thrall to the misapprehension that dousing an object in gold renders it a veneer of elegance. Drunk on a cocktail of wrath, vanity, and good ol’fashioned racism he prolonged a fight with the parents of a soldier who died in service for his country; he actually called Hillary Clinton the devil, and kicked a crying baby out of one of his rallies. 

Class act, this guy.

Donald Trump is a man who stands in cross-armed opposition to the most basic civic virtues of this country. And grins.

He is a pauper of the soul.

Nothing about this is shocking. We all know about it. Because he’s been this way for as long as he’s been famous. And he’s been famous, I’m sorry to say, for my entire time on this planet.

But still… there’s something about Donald Trump that I loathe beyond all else. It rivals his vulgarity, his combativeness, his classless narcissism.

It’s his vagueness.

His sniveling, abject vagueness… and the cowardice that’s behind it.

Donald Trump has turned vagueness into the most devastating weapon of our age. Forget about the hats – vagueness was the brand of his entire campaign. And now that he won, it continues to be the grease with which he lubricates his bullshit machine.

It’s how he’s soared to such infamy… on the oily wings of sloganeering, bullshit, and innuendo.

Vagueness. It’s the sludge that’s toxified our discourse, threatened our civic order, and advanced his own personal agenda. It’s the act of a spineless, soulless twerp without purpose or conviction… and if we had even a sip of the quick spirit of our founders we’d have driven him and his nest of zealots, cranks, creeps, nazis, and goalongs into the sea with the rest of the bottom-feeders.

When Donald Trump speaks, facts evaporate. They are rendered irrelevant. Utterly. We need only know that with Trump, we’ll get the “best” of whatever’s there to offer. The very best. Better than you could ever believe. Many people say it’s the best. Many very, very smart people.

We joke about this.

Even America’s would’ve-been VP, and youth group talent show moderator, Tim Kaine has joked about this. We need not know the details of Trump’s plans. It’ll all be great. The best. Believe me.

Think of pretty much any Trump statement. He justifies every bizarre, racist, myopic, or invented truth by claiming to have heard them from, “plenty of people” or, “something I read” or, “people [who] tell me.”

When asked who he’d nominate to the Supreme Court, Trump responded: “really great legal scholars.”

When asked about his plan to cut corporate taxes in the face of our country’s $19 trillion dollar deficit, Trump said: “That’s right. We’re gonna grow the economy so much…”

In an interview with Scott Pelley, Trump mentioned how we need to “get back” jobs from Mexico, China, and Japan. “Everybody’s taking our jobs,” Trump explained. When asked how he would get these jobs back, Trump responded, confidently: “You get em back.”

Want to know about his economic team? “I have the smartest people on Wall Street lined up already.”

How will he finance civic improvements and his general attempt to “make America great again”? “We’re going to absolutely be able to pay for it. My economy will expand so rapidly– we’re going to take jobs back from other countries. And we will be able to pay for it.”

When challenged by NJ Senator (future president and captain of my soul) Cory Booker, Trump insisted: “I know more about Cory Booker than he knows about himself.”

Do you hear the innuendo? Do you see the circular logic? The bullshit. Can you smell it?There is no detail here. Not a jot. Not a comma. There’s no thinking. There’s no plan. No consideration. No dedication. No belief. There’s nary the flicker of a fucking neuron.

His every sentence is the rank exhaust of a mind unburdened by thought, consideration, or expertise.

He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And what’s worse… he doesn’t care.

Donald Trump knows about, cares about, and understands nothing. Nothing. He’s an idiot. And were this a different time, a different country, and I suppose were human beings not the dullards they seem so dead set to be… this would be an issue. But he wears his idiocy with gaudy confidence. Absolute, unquestioned, ironclad, fulminating confidence.

And this is what makes him so powerful.

Consider how cowardly this is. The cruelest cowardice. The kind of cowardice that, during wartime, would get you fucking shot. Trump uses this rhetorical vagueness to elide. To slither. To slime his way away from any responsibility for what he says or does. He’s turned the entire country on its head. He’s fomented racial, cultural, and religious fury. He’s urged violence at his rallies. He’s raging, insisting we tear the whole system down around us… yet is bereft of any plausible reason as to why, or any suggestion for what’s to be built after the rubble is swept away.

This is the linguistic equivalent of giving a pistol to an eight-year-old.

This is rhetorical terrorism.

And as such, it renders Donald Trump an enemy of this country, its principles, and its people.

He is a traitor to anyone who thinks, or cares, or loves.

Donald Trump is your enemy.

Let us be rid of him.

And soon.

All things being equal: the most simplistic explanation is the one most likely to be believed.

///

Okay. This is gonna be nuts.

I am going to prove the principle of Hokum’s Razor to you. And weirdly enough, there’s no better example of it than the word itself.

Stick with me, k?

Hokum’s Razor is a verbal riff on two things:

First – the word “hokum” which is a fun way of saying “nonsense.”

And Second – Occam’s Razor – the 14th century philosophical precept which most of us think means something like this:

“All things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one.”

Here’s the thing: That’s not what Occam’s Razor says.

It’s actually a line from the movie “Contact,” and is a slightly fancified way of putting this generally held scientific principle:

“When there are two competing explanations for an event, the simpler one is more likely.” 

Unfortunately, this principle also is not Occam’s Razor. It’s actually another simplification of an entirely different statement:

“We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.”

This… also… is not Occam’s Razor. William of Ockham didn’t write that statement. Isaac Newton did. In his own reinterpretation of Occam’s Razor. Even friggin Newton wanted a chance at rewriting the goddamn thing.

So… what the hell is Occam’s Razor? Naturally, there are several different statements that scholars say are William of Ockham’s words. And, surprise surprise… they’re all in Latin.

I’m gonna give you my favorite one. Not that I read Latin. I don’t. It’s just the most impressive-sounding one. It it is:

“Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”

Translated into English, this means – and I’m not kidding:

“Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.“

Like, really. That’s what it means in English. Don’t complicate shit… As if he knew people were going to spend centuries quoting and misquoting him.

Please join me as I soak in this perfect, bonkers irony.

 

As I was saying…

Do you see how I inadvertently proved my own point? I didn’t do this on purpose – I realized it after the fact.

I could have based the definition to Hokum’s Razor on that statement… on Occam’s actual Razor… but I didn’t. Because that statement (despite its precise language) is actually far more complicated a thought than Contact’s definition – “All things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one.”

Occam’s Razor is too tough an idea. Too unforgiving. It’s a precept often used by physicists to strip away faff, metaphysical irrelevancies – as strict and as serious as a carpenter’s rasp.

It’s too complicated.

I’m not smart enough to really understand it.

So I chose the simpler one.

And this… I think… is why we’re fucked.

We’re fucked because I’m dumb. And because I’m right.

When faced with a complex set of circumstances… most people will choose to believe whatever’s easiest to understand. Because the vast majority of us just don’t have the time for nuance. True complexity makes us itch. Even the moderately educated, and reasonably intelligent among us (hello!) don’t want to dedicate ourselves to the mastery of a concept.

We’re happy just to fudge it.

And that, I’m sorry to say, is why Donald Trump was destined to be our president.

Because on the one hand we had Hillary Clinton who (despite it all) is a sober-minded, dedicated policy machine. She’s a seasoned states-person, and a strict rationalist who understands and thrives on the complexities of the issues facing this country and the world at large.

And then there’s Donald Trump. He promised to, “Make America Great Again.”

Just as Bush distorted, packaged, and sold the War on Terror… because, “They hate us for our freedom.”

Just as religions elide their inconsistencies… because, “God works in mysterious ways.”

Just as the NRA will continue to obstruct gun restrictions… because, “the only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Because the world is way too much to think about… and questions keep us up at night.

Because ignorance truly is bliss.

When a culture becomes inured to terror.

///

A police officer kneels on a man’s throat for nine minutes. The man pleads for his life. He dies.

A man checks into a hotel room. He brings an arsenal with him. He fires into a crowd of over 20,000 people. He wounds over 500. When it finally ends, he’s killed 59.

A man walks into a gay bar in Orlando and murders 49 people with a legally-purchased assault rifle.

A boy shoots his mother, drives to an elementary school, and murders six adults and 20 children.

We have a name for this. Those with something to lose refer to it by innuendo. Those who wish to be accurate call it “terrorism.”

In the days that follow each instance of it, we respondin our own particular portrayals of grief – each role sickeningly familiar:

We post messages of sorrow and outrage to social media.

Many of those messages lead to arguments that lead nowhere.

Our leaders confess their heartache and frustration, while pundits and essayists ferret out what’s to blame.

One by one, our late-night funnymen (and woman!) added their newest statements of sorrow, bewilderment, outrage, and solidarity.

The NRA, sniffing blood in the air, responds with their standard position of moral cowardice and reptilian self-interest.

That death can be so near, so simple, so sudden and so terribly violent – that indeed is terrorism.

That we’ve become so accustomed to this, however, the slaughter of our neighbors, and that our systems of government have been either unable or unwilling to muster any substantive action against it… that, I propose, requires its own term.

I call it “horrorism.”

I’ll explain…

When I was in college, I had this really wonderful Gothic Lit professor. He was born for the role – lean and hollow-cheeked… gaunt… a morbid yet ultimately benevolent weirdo who looked effortlessly like Edgar Allan Poe. He lectured to the middle-distance, never once meeting his students eyes, and spoke in a dreamy, faraway croak. His office was a book-strewn crypt, bathed in amber light, in the basement of my campus’ oldest and most thoroughly begargoyled building.

Oh, and his surname was the Italian word for dark.

All of this is true.

I was probably 19 when I took his class. Which, I’m sorry to say, was quite a while ago. And while most of his lectures have faded over time… one lesson sticks with me: the difference between terror and horror.

Now to you or me, terror and horror are pretty interchangeable. Were there some distinction to be drawn, it’d surely be a tedious and pedantic one. We can swap those terms in conversation without any major derailment of understanding. For example: as a borderline arachnophobe, it doesn’t really matter what I call the feeling I have about, say, a spider crawling up my leg – the outcome remains the same: I will rip off my clothes and set the couch on fire.

But there is a distinction to be drawn. And while it might seem fusty and academic… I would argue it is essential.

This is it: Terror comes first.

Terror is fear in the future tense. It’s the anticipation of violence and death. In slasher movies, Terror is what you feel as a coed pads through a dark hallway… it’s the shred of the orchestra as she reaches for the blood-smeared doorknob.

Horror is what she sees once she opens the door. Terror comes first. Horror comes after. Horror is terror, realized. It is terror in its present tense. It’s what we’re left to live with once our fears have come to pass.

To paraphrase my Gothic Lit professor: Terror is the smell of a corpse in a dark room. Horror is what you see when you finally turn on the lights.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, as of September 13th, 2017, there have been 43,363 incidents (by which they refer to shootings).

253 of those incidents were classified as Mass Shootings.

10,818 people have been killed.

511 were children.

I have not calculated the newest numbers into these figures. But the death count will most certainly rise. Probably in a day. Maybe in an hour. If you’re curious, here’s a link.

That gun violence of this magnitude can inflict itself on so many people without warning or reason – that it could happen to any one of us at any moment: that’s terror.

That even in the face of such unimaginable violence and sorrow – that this terror has become normalized by the feckless self-interest of our leaders, that we would rather fight about this online than see it changed in the world, that  billion dollar industries in this country thrive on the harm we cause one another, that millions of Americans would hold their desire to own a machine gun above another person’s right to not be murdered by one, that we could witness the murder of children and somehow be unmoved: that’s horror.

If we’re going to have to live with this as our new reality – I think it’s only fitting that we give it a name.

The fear of violence inflicted on us is terrorism.

But our inaction is a different kind of violence altogether.

Inaction is a violence we inflict upon ourselves.

It’s time we call it what it is.