13 NOVEMBER

 I have come to the realization that this is not the place for the remaining letters in my "Dear Harry" book. It is now close to 350 pages, and complete in a third draft. I have published quite a number of the letters here, but I have reached a point where they become too personal and affect other people--not unpleasantly, for sure, but in ways that leave me feeling uncomfortable. They are better kept between the pages of a book. I hope to find some way to publish them in that format, and will certainly announce that here if and when it happens.

In the meantime... I woke thinking that the "Dear Harry" format cold also be repurposed. For years I have been putting out occasional, sometimes daily reflections on matters of personal, political, philosophical, even spiritual interest. Why not continue to do so under the guise of these "Letters to my Father." He is long gone, of course, but we can maintain the fiction. As in the following:

Dear Harry,

I wonder what you'd have thought if I had told you that here, in this country where I have now lived the better part of my life, there are places where people are permitted--encouraged, even--to walk around armed in public places with military assault weapons slung over their shoulders? To what end? For show, perhaps, to parade their macho credentials, to intimidate those who have political opinions other than their own... 

You'd think this was utter madness, no? I think so, too. Worse still, they get to use them. There is a man--a boy, really, 18 years old--who is currently on trial in Wisconsin for having killed two men and wounded another after bringing one of those weapons to a scene of violent social upheaval, with the intent, as I understand it, of "protecting property." He used it instead, he now claims, to protect himself. But what was this child, then 17, doing there in the first place with a weapon of this kind? Dropped off, for God's sake, by his mother. With his gun!

There is a madness in American culture. The gun is at the center of it. As is, it now becomes apparent, the cause of white identity. As in Germany in the 1930s--can you believe this, Harry?--we are beset by the threat of right-wing extremist bullies, fascists, really, fed with the delusional lies of a would-be dictator and ready to do violence to protect the white race.

Oh, Harry, you would be as appalled as I am.

Your son, Peter