One time, I saw a Prager U video where Dennis Prager in what’s the saddest moment ever caught on tape, makes fun of kindergarten and elementary school signs that say “The world is a better place because you are in it”. He chuckles, sneers at the phrase and then, unprompted, tells a story about how his father was an uncommunicative man, and he would have never said something like that to him. I was a new dad to my first born son. In my mind’s eye, I could picture a long chain of patriarchal violence repeated and reinforced with each generation. Men unable to give their sons anything other than tough love and hard lessons, ending in a pathetic loser sneering at children having a better world than he experienced.

To this day, I tell my sons how beautiful and kind the world has become with them here. Somehow I do hope Dennis gets a mysterious ache in his chest, every time I do. Lmao.