Adults have failed these kids by being all too willing to accept that nice white Catholic boys obviously could not have intended to be racist, and therefore were not racist. Adults have failed these kids by raising them inside a comfortable bubble of wealth and whiteness and teaching them they don’t have to bother thinking beyond the walls of that bubble.

I do feel emptiness sometimes, in a way I have never felt it before, when I reflect on how much rage this presidency instills in me. The Yang of a terrible Yin, I suppose. I’ve never experienced the desire for revenge, the way I want for it now.

Like me in high school, we aren’t learning that that smugness doesn’t win elections it merely makes us feel warm and fuzzy as if our ineffectual resistance will be noted by future historians as somehow significant when figuring out how to persuade those out in the world of real, flesh and bone humans separate from the avatars of the digital world that perhaps we might be able to work together for the better of everyone.