As you might guess from the title, I’m going to talk about politics in this one. If you want to skip it, there certainly won’t be any hard feelings on my part.

This morning Special Counsel Mueller gave his first and possibly only public statement about his investigation into the President’s obstruction, and to my ear he made as direct a nod to impeachment that he likely can make, noting that he did not clear the President of wrongdoing, that he wasn’t allowed to accuse the President of wrongdoing, and that if the President were to be accused of wrongdoing that “the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system.” Shortly afterwards, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement that paid lip service to the idea of holding the President accountable but very clearly and pointedly highlighted legislation and specifically HR. 1 as Congress’s call to action. Legislation, not impeachment.

Mind you, a bunch of Democratic Presidential candidates are now openly calling for impeachment proceedings to begin. And House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler responded to a reporter’s question about impeachment by saying “With respect to impeachment, all options are on the table and nothing should be ruled out.” But the Democratic House leadership and particularly Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer are still resistant to starting impeachment proceedings. And a lot of centrist Dems, including my Congressman, want to focus on things like healthcare, immigration reform, and infrastructure. The idea being that impeachment is too politically dangerous and would rile up Trump’s base (and, apparently, undecided moderates), while focusing on legislation would show the American people that Democrats will actually solve problems and govern properly.

That’s a very lofty and high-minded approach that, in my opinion, is most likely to result in a second Trump term.

Here’s the thing: legislation and policy are very important and have real, lasting, material consequences for people’s actual lives. But most people don’t know that and don’t care. The only people actually paying attention to legislation are politicians, lobbyists, and people who have already made up their minds about the President one way or the other. (Yes, I pay attention to legislation. Yes, I have already made up my mind.) More to the point, none of the Democrats’ key legislation this year is going to make a damn bit of difference in the election, because none of it is going to actually be enacted.

House Dems have passed 112 bills this year, among them some excellent and necessary bills protecting and expanding our democracy, banning LGBTQ+ discrimination, addressing equal pay for women, and requiring common sense gun violence prevention measures. These are important bills that we desperately need, that stand absolutely no chance of passing the Republican-held Senate. So far, nine Democratic bills have passed the Senate and become law. None of them are the kind of bill that swing elections. To the extent that any national attention has come to House legislation, it’s been because Republicans have attacked it as socialist, messaging repeated extensively by the press which is certainly not going to do anything to help elect a Democratic President. And to the extent that any House bill does make it through the Senate, those bills are absolutely going to be co-opted and claimed by the GOP, who will take all the credit for anything good that comes out of it. That this will be a lie won’t actually matter to most voters, who have no interest in following the day-to-day process of Congress.

Not only will centrist Democrats’ preference for focusing on legislation fail to deliver them any significant goodwill (because, again, voters don’t notice or care about legislation and Republicans will take credit for anything good anyway), but by failing to pursue accountability in the strongest possible way—that is, impeachment—House Democrats are actually sending the message to voters that the President’s lies, obstruction, corruption, and collusion are just not that big a deal. I know, I know, the word “normalize” has been repeated so many times lately that it’s just become part of the cosmic background radiation of our political discourse. But voter attitudes matter, and encouraging people to view the President’s misdeeds as not worth following up on is effectively conceding the matter.

And then what’s left? Having defanged their own biggest criticisms of the President and having been unable to actually make any meaningful difference in voters’ lives, and being faced with low inflation and low unemployment (numbers that are deeply deceptive that are nevertheless going to be successfully used by Republicans to manipulate public opinion), what are Democrats going to fall back on? What’s the story that’s going to make people care?

Because that’s what makes people vote: stories. Not statistics or data or bills. Narrative. Right now we are faced with the most corrupt, vile, dishonest, destructive President in living memory, a villain so cartoonish that you wouldn’t believe him if he were fictional. And yet instead of rising up to fill a heroic role that people can rally around, Democrats are terrified of opposing him too strenuously.

We need impeachment and we need it to start now. Not because it’s going to get him removed from office—impeachment has no more chance of getting through the Senate than any of the House’s other important measures—but because this is the thing people need to see in order to have hope, and, in turn, to show up and vote for something better. And because failing to impeach, failing to even try to impeach, is the surest way to guarantee a second Trump term.

I took my daughter to her skating lesson Saturday morning. The week before she cried and didn’t want to go, terrified that she would fall. Driving over to the rink this time she said “I’m not as scared today.” On the ice, she was tentative at first but quickly became more confident, even hopping and crouching along with her classmates. After, she said “We did something called a scooter glide and that was scary but I did it.” She smiled, and I smiled.

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Every time I brush my daughter’s hair—which for a while now has been quite long and therefore requires a lot of brushing—I think about the fact that the only reason I know how to do anything with long hair is because in high school my friends and I were metalheads. I think about growing out our hair, the better to headbang with; practicing how to windmill our hair as we thrashed, the catharsis of aggressive music contrasting with the earnestness of that practice; and learning how to start brushing from the bottom so as to avoid snarls, how to brush underneath for thoroughness. Just two boys, talking about the finer points of heavy metal and hair care.

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Listening to Scene On Radio’s “MEN” series last week, I found myself finally anxious about my son’s transition to middle school. He’s always been such a good and compassionate kid, always trying to take care of others. But listening to this dad talk about his son, who announced on the first day of sixth grade that he intended to join the Gay-Straight Alliance, but who by the beginning of seventh grade was defending the necessity of using homophobic slurs, it was hard to hear. We’ve always tried to model kindness and tolerance to our kids, to talk about peer pressure, to encourage them to trust their own feelings and be themselves. But the world is such a toxic place and masculinity is such a pervasive pressure, and middle school is so hard and so confusing, trying to figure out your self and your body, your friends, your community and your place in it. I just don’t know what people will come into his life and how they’ll influence him.

But maybe what this really is is that I’m worried and scared of him growing beyond me, of leaving me behind. Of not mattering to him anymore. It is both a silly fear and completely understandable one, I think.

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A few months ago I woke up to see a coyote standing in my back yard, just standing there in the middle of my fenced-in lawn, which was just getting to the point of being noticeably overgrown. It was gone before I could grab my camera or even my phone, and I didn’t see where it went or how it came in.

At one time, before there were fences and lawns and concrete and patio furniture here—though, not before there were people here, just before people lived this way here—this hill looked, I imagine, much like the hillside just across the street, rocky and scrubby chapparal, the same lizards and birds and insects, though perhaps more of them. At one time coyotes stood in this spot and didn’t look out of place or confused, or at least if a person saw one there they wouldn’t have found it confusing our out of place.

What is confusing is that we assume we have made of this place a place without wildness, a place where things can be in or out of place. We tell ourselves a story of control, of power, and feel comforted, and feel safe. But the world is wild, whatever we say about it. We will one day be dead, we are unsafe, and the world will remind us one way, one day. I saw a coyote outside my bedroom window, and it saw me. I’m more careful now, or at least I try to take care.

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(Brandon, if you’re reading this one, I apologize for the asterisks.)

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I hope you’re well. I’m feeling a little low today, a little worn out and lonely and frustrated. But it will pass.