, a series of reflections on the meaning and legacy of the Trump years.
“We condemn the violence that took place here in the strongest possible terms,” Vice President Mike Pence intoned in the House chamber the night of Jan. 6, after his boss’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and laid waste to it in a siege that left five people dead. “We grieve the loss of life in these hallowed halls, as well as the injuries suffered by those who defended our Capitol today,” Pence continued. “Violence never wins. Freedom wins, and this is still the people’s house.”
, a series of reflections on the meaning and legacy of the Trump years.
Back in 2017, I was a new parent who had read plenty of Lenore Skenazy and had every intention of defying what I thought was the dominant culture of hover parenting. If you had asked me then whether American society is generally “too safe,” I would probably have said “Yes!” I wanted to be a parent who let my child find her own footing. Head shaking at our “safe society” was something we all did in my very liberal family my mother, reading a long warning label on a stepstool and laughing at all the cautions the manufacturers had to include to avoid a lawsuit; my older relatives, reminiscing about the years when kids used to tumble out the door at dawn and return by last light. The idea that our culture had gone a little too far over to the cautious side seemed like a simple bit of conventional wisdom.