…reality and reason is not just to leave them dumb and mute. It is also to take away their humanity. And that is what I miss most in American discourse. Humanity. A sense of empathy, grace, compassion, wisdom, justice — all the more powerful when it is shaped by tragedy, loss, and incompletion. I do not read things that sing and touch and soar and fall, about what is noble and beautiful and tragic and inescapable in all human hearts — love, death, grief, dust. I read now about money, sex, indifference, power, spite, and violence. Dull, clumsy ideas, that tel…
