I am the problem

There are things we must admit to ourselves at 3am, when the family is asleep, a comedy about the government is on TV (the fiction version I turned to after watching the non-fiction farce all day), and there’s too much silence on a Friday night.

I am the problem.

Tonight, while I was working in a job that I love in spite of its inherent work load, my wife and kid went to a little festival. When they got home, my son showed me an inflatable football. He’d won it in some game and was very proud.

“You know what he’s really fascinated with right now?” my wife asked.

One minute later, I held my boy as we walked out into the chilly air. I pointed up at he sky.

“What’s up there?” I asked.

He whispered, almost too quiet for me to hear it, “The stars.” His eyes were heart-breaking. When he saw the crescent moon, his eyes went wider, “The mooooon.”

As we walked back inside, the kid said, “Night night, stars.”

I owe this kid for giving me a new reason to care.

Tonight I watched Act II in my government acting in a way that not only infuriates me, but also makes me hate myself for being a political apethist for the past 12 years. As an apethist, I have no right to complain. The sad part is, there are a lot of people out there who have cared about our government for a long time and voted accordingly. In the last few days, those people have been failed.

I want my kid to grow up in a country of which he can be proud. I want him to love his country as much as he loves the moon and stars. I want him to want to watch the heavens from American soil. Right now, for a variety of reasons, I have a hard time thinking about how I can share that with him.

Today (although it affects my job and, thus, my family) is really small potatoes compared to the things we’ve seen from our elected officials in the past couple of years. Yesterday’s head-shot to habeus corpus was something everyone should care about. I won’t even bother listing everything else.

Tonight, I’m upset with myself for letting the mice play while I went out in search of more cat nip. Tonight, I’m confused. And tonight, I’m sad.