On the responsibilties of a parent in this place and time.
We’re in the age of anti-enlightenment, anti-intellectualism, and epistemic hubris. It appears that these forces will be primarily responsible for the end of the American empire and the liberal principles and ideals that have shaped the world over the last 200 years.
It’s hard to see how we pull ourselves out of this spiral, one in which our contempt for our institutions and one another is so great that there is no norm of good governance and no standard for debate that we are not willing to abandon.
The current moment feels tumultuous and convulsive. While America and the world have experienced violent upheavals before, this moment feels different.
As a parent, I feel this bone-deep sense of despair that the world in which my daughter is coming of age is filled with many insurmountable problems.
What does making ethical, moral, and loving choices as an American parent today mean? Does my love and parental obligation to my daughter trigger an obligation to find a new home?
When my parents fled Somalia in 1991 with three children in tow and found refuge in Minnesota, they did not concern themselves with seeking to preserve a collapsing society. To my knowledge, they didn't feel a sense of duty to stay and fix things, and having left before things got terrible, they also didn’t wait until the worst of the fighting to begin before emigrating as refugees.
The America that served as my family’s refuge feels like a country on the precipice. Many things make America extraordinary; until recently, I didn’t realize that what truly made America exceptional was that much of the citizenry didn’t have to be afraid of the government.
Will you feel safe in a country governed by a political party you do not subscribe to?
How many Americans will be targeted and persecuted when all checks and balances fully coopted to remake society in the image of one party?
What hope is there for rebalancing when persecution is codified, institutionalized, and receives an imprimatur of approval from our highest courts?
I know that I will not and do not feel safe. And I wonder what that means for the decisions we make as parents.
Anahí Wiedenbrüg, while discussing the responsibility of dominated states, describes “a dominated state as one where the citizenry’s ability of control is structurally inhibited by the state's position in a hierarchically interdependent global political economic order, and where those actors occupying positions of advantage have the ability of interfering with the dominated state through multifarious means and relative impunity.”
To paraphrase Professor Wiedenbrüg, “A dominated citizenry in America is one where the citizenry’s ability of control is structurally inhibited by the total cooption of the state’s governance and punitive powers, and where those fellow citizens occupying positions of advantage can interfere with the dominated citizenry through multifarious means and relative impunity.”
What are our responsibilities as citizen parents in a country moving towards significant subjugation of large portions of the citizenry?