Unbalanced Lines

I have lived nearly all of my life within a slow-burning conservative revolution. The broad trends of the past 30 years of American life have been to atomize social bonds, redefine the citizen as a consumer, elevate corporate rights over those of the worker or the individual, lionize police brutality as an expression of justice, and cruelly mock anyone who thinks differently. As a person who supports none of these goals I feel like a stranger in an increasingly strange land.  Few things reinforce this alienation more than what now appears to be a truism of American politics: There is no tragedy so horrific that it will prompt America to re-examine its love for the gun. The mass shooting is now a defining fact of American life and culture--much like binding arbitration clauses, student debt, and the lack of meaningful parental leave. There are more firearms now in private ownership than there are people who live in America. The most reliable predictor of whether a person will buy a fire