That’s what the boy asks his father in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: “Are we still the good guys?”
It’s the boy’s sweetness, his insistence on doing the right and kind thing, despite the darkness of the world, that keeps the father from spiraling into despair or cruelty.
Are you the good guys? Or have you curdled along with your political party? Have you been corrupted by your industry? Have you grown callous and indifferent with all the responsibilities and stresses of life? Are you too busy worrying about your mortgage and your golf game to care about other people? Are you too far down the road to change? To question and reflect? To see things from a new perspective? The good news is that you have a boy like that in your own life. Your kids are a wonderful source of innocence and purity. They see things with fresh eyes. They are not yet jaded. They are also a kind of warrant. Why should you change? Why should you be one of the good guys? For them.
Give them hope. Give them a model. Be one of the good guys.