At the same time, for a lot of us that age it was a fundamental step into understanding “Oh. So our adults are fucking idiots” because we had so many allegedly smart people telling us “well. The PATRIOT Act can’t be that bad and these are changing times. We need to be able to protect ourselves.”
It wasn’t until I went to college that I got good at expressing how specifically something that happened when I was in elementary school was a fundamental affront to my autonomy as a human being, and why that was a threat to everyone everywhere all the time. But it was still a seed that grew within me that we are fundamentally not seen by our government as contributors but as resources
Tbf I was in grade school in 2003 so it’s a bit much to expect me to have been on the “abolish the DHS” train for that long 😆
At the same time, for a lot of us that age it was a fundamental step into understanding “Oh. So our adults are fucking idiots” because we had so many allegedly smart people telling us “well. The PATRIOT Act can’t be that bad and these are changing times. We need to be able to protect ourselves.”
It wasn’t until I went to college that I got good at expressing how specifically something that happened when I was in elementary school was a fundamental affront to my autonomy as a human being, and why that was a threat to everyone everywhere all the time. But it was still a seed that grew within me that we are fundamentally not seen by our government as contributors but as resources