Three liberal snowflakes walk into a shooting range...
Or: embracing the "Sarah Connor School of Parenting"
I recently did a thing that, at one point in my life, I never thought I would do. I spent five hours at a shooting range with some friends, learning pistol safety and basic skills, and shooting a bunch of guns. While the vibes were uncomfortably military/law-enforcement-forward, and there was a bit too much complaining about strict Illinois gun laws, the overall experience was actually pretty good, and the shooting part was - am I allowed to say this? - fun. It was also a good opportunity to get outside my very blue bubble, which I think is extremely valuable at a time like this.
Now why would I, a certified lefty, gun-law-loving, snowflake, want to learn to handle and shoot firearms? Good question! The answer comes down, entirely, to preparedness, of course. I have no plans to purchase any guns, and I sure as hell hope I never need to use one. That said, we’re living in a weird and volatile time in a country where there are more guns than people, and I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of right-wing militias patrolling our streets sometime in the near future (if you count ICE, they already are). Some of these people have made pretty darn clear they have no respect for the bodily autonomy of folks who aren’t White men, and perhaps feel a growing sense of impunity as our administration continues to decimate the rule of law.
Guns are a fact of life here. They’re ubiquitous, and they’re often in the possession of people I don’t entirely trust to use them safely and ethically - to put it mildly. So it seems prudent to not be a complete dummy about them. They’re intimidating and not intuitive; after five hours in a class, I can say with certainty I wouldn’t be able to safely handle them. It’s almost as if we should regulate people’s access to something so dangerous! Anyway, all told, there’s a good chance I’ll be going back to the shooting range soon.
The whole experience brought up my complicated feelings about nonviolence. My very strong preference is for nonviolence. I can’t imagine I’d ever be able to pull a gun on somebody. I don’t even kill bugs in my house. (Can I scoop up a White supremacist in a cup and just gently remove him from the premises?) That said, if a Nick “your body, my choice” Fuentes type is harassing my daughter, I also couldn’t guarantee I’d use the so-called “moral high ground” and try to appeal to his better nature. That would be stupid and naive. I’d much more likely go feral on him.
More broadly, I’m not convinced that appealing (by way of persuasion or vote) to the moral conscience of wealthy, powerful people determined to enact systems of harm and oppression is a winning strategy. And, unfortunately, that applies to both the Repubs and the Dems. As Assata Shakur said: “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”
The right of armed resistance to occupation is enshrined in international law. Armed resistance has always been a force against colonization and violent systems of oppression. The insistence on strict adherence to nonviolence sometimes feels like a privileged White people take, and a kind of whitewashing of the history of resistance and justice movements, to which some form of violence has often been integral. (Andreas Malm writes about this; Margaret Killjoy talks about this in her podcast episode “The Armed Nonviolent Civil Rights Movement,” and, of course, Frantz Fanon wrote extensively about violence as a necessary tool in the fight against colonization.)
Mostly, as a financially comfortable White woman, my body has never been a site of systemic state violence. Patriarchy and misogyny create the social conditions of violence for all women, but wealth and Whiteness have a way of insulating one from the full force of gender-based violence.
All of which is to say, I’m deeply uncomfortable condemning all uses of violence within a struggle for justice because I have no experience with fighting for my life. I feel I have no right to tell folks who contend with state and societal violence regularly not to engage in violence themselves, either as self-defense, or toward liberation (which are functionally the same). It’s dangerous to insist that the state have a monopoly on violence.
Positioning nonviolence as the only “right” way to approach a justice movement flattens and simplifies the deep complexities of these movements, which have always been characterized by a whole host of tactics, from armed conflict, to sabotage, to nonviolent direct actions, to protests, marches, and persuasion.
I don’t presume to know the best way to enact social change on the scale necessary to build a just, post-capitalist world capable of mitigating the climate crisis. We’re talking about what’s probably the biggest, most global struggle in human history to fundamentally recreate the material conditions of our world. And the people we’re up against are armed to the teeth. Best to be realistic about that, and be prepared.
Also, what if we need to hunt for food someday? Fascists can’t put a tariff on those rabbits in my backyard!
After I went to the shooting range, a friend shared with me this article by Elie Mystal, “Parenting In the Age of Trump,” in which he argues for adopting a Sarah Connor parenting playbook - referring to Linda Hamilton’s character in the Terminator movies. The point is not necessarily about teaching your kids to be able to fight sentient robots (though, let’s maybe not rule that out?), but about preparing them for a world that will almost certainly be harder and scarier than the one many of us grew up in. This means imparting skills that many of us don’t actually have, focusing more on resilience and resourcefulness, street smarts (both physical and digital) and survival, than on resumes and internships.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what we’re teaching our kids. I don’t have many of the skills I think my kids need to learn; and what skills I do have, I’m so far not doing a great job of teaching (my kids have little to no interest in growing potatoes… yet!). But at least I’m not in denial, and I’m open to new ways of thinking. Getting back to the idea of building a movement capable of responding to systems of extreme violence, this quote from Mystal’s piece has been sitting with me:
“People can entirely miss me with “But golly gee, Elie. If we use the tactics of our enemy we are no better than them.” That way of thinking is obsolete. That way of thinking is how you get whatever the hell the “Democratic Party” is doing right now. Everybody wants to raise Barack Obama. I’ve got to start trying to raise Harriet Tubman. In a worst case scenario, I have to be raising Oskar Schindler. I need my kids to be able to chloroform a baby they’re hiding in their attic when ICE comes around, then walk downstairs and pay Musk’s troops in Bitcoin to make them go away.”
He’s being only partially hyperbolic here. We all know the very real horrors people have endured under fascist regimes. For many in the U.S., they’re already a reality.
It’s particularly interesting to hear how parents in my community talk about college right now. Many with younger kids are already actively saving for college if they have the financial privilege to do so, many with older kids are visiting universities and going through the usual college motions. If folks are questioning the value of it, I’m not hearing those conversations publicly.
Even before Trump got elected, I wasn’t convinced my kids would go to college. A lot can change in a decade, and we’re already living in a world where college is more likely to guarantee years of crippling debt than a decent job. But now, with the attack on universities, and boards and administrators across the country capitulating to the demands of a fascist government, universities are on a fast-track to becoming hollow shells of themselves. I’ve never wanted to send my kids to school solely for the purpose of landing a job. Call me quixotic, but I still believe in the value of learning things about the world simply for the purpose of developing a greater understanding of it. But if college is going to become a place of thought control rather than the free exchange of ideas, then what’s the point?
Perhaps it seems alarmist to assume universities will basically become fascist education camps, but it’s a classic authoritarian strategy. It should be pretty clear - between the McCarthyist attacks on free speech (thanks, Biden, for getting that ball rolling), detaining and deporting students, punishing universities by pulling funding, and dismantling the Department of Education - that destroying education is the point. It’s no coincidence that students have always been at the forefront of social justice movements, and authoritarian regimes ruthlessly go after schools.
It’s difficult for our human brains to perceive and accept change as it’s happening, especially when it’s large, structural, and somewhat abstract. This applies quite clearly to climate change. But it also applies to societal change. The twin threats of climate change and fascism, and the incomprehensible disruptions those will cause, are not marching toward us anymore, they’re inside the gates. It now feels irresponsible to prepare my kids for a future that looks like my past. I need to confront head-on the struggles they’ll likely face, and prepare them for that.
There’s no way to really know what the future will look like. But I can use the knowledge I have about what’s going on around me now, and make educated guesses as to what may be valuable for my kids in the future, while also teaching skills for the world I hope they’ll get to live in. In my case, whether I’m being realistic or hopeful, I get to the same conclusion: that I want them to know how to use their hands to build and grow and fix things, how to have the emotional maturity and empathy to live in complicated community with complex people, how to protect themselves and their communities from fascist, racist, and violent threats, and how to navigate the inevitable material insecurity that comes from living during global ecological collapse. No matter what happens, it’s a solid bet these will be valuable life skills.
Back to Elie Mystal’s piece on parenting in the apocalypse, he writes:
“My middle-schooler just finished a unit on “environmental justice” and the soft, progressive part of me was like, “Great, exactly the kind of training for a good liberal of the future.” But the Sarah Connor part of me was thinking: “What? Justice? My dude, Trump and Musk finna bottle the atmosphere and sell it back only to white folks. These kids don’t need to learn about environmental justice, they need to learn how to find water in the desert on a walkabout.”
I understand that we all need to go about our regular lives, even as we witness the fall of the American empire and the collapse of the natural world as we know it. But it feels particularly alienating when it comes to planning for our kids’ futures, and so many folks are still assuming it will be business as usual in five or ten years. Absolutely nothing about this current moment gives me confidence that my kids’ future will be one I recognize. All I know is that they’ll need to eat, drink clean water, have shelter, and have access to healthcare, whatever that may look like.
I hope to god they won’t need to be blowing away sentient robots with military-grade weapons, but like Mystal, I’m taking lessons from the Sarah Connor school of parenting, just in case. My goal is to learn a few skills that may be useful to pass on, be strong enough - physically and emotionally - to handle the labor of survival, (are the other suburban moms at hot yoga there because it’s valuable to train their bodies for physical exertion in humid, 95 degree weather?) and yes, perhaps know my way around a 9mm pistol. If you want to join me at the shooting range, I welcome the company.
"The point is not necessarily about teaching your kids to be able to fight sentient robots (though, let’s maybe not rule that out?), but about preparing them for a world that will almost certainly be harder and scarier than the one many of us grew up in. This means imparting skills that many of us don’t actually have, focusing more on resilience and resourcefulness, street smarts (both physical and digital) and survival, than on resumes and internships."
This This This!
This was a really challenging, difficult read for me. I currently live someplace that feels protected from this administration (with plenty of other problems from local gov’t). It shouldn’t have been, but it felt like a surprise when ICE showed up in the community. I feel less worried about food and clean water because we have long growing seasons and already have a sizable cistern to collect rain water.
However, I fret about visiting family and friends. My husband and I go back and forth between being closer to family to have a better support system or staying where we are where it is a bit safer.
I have held firmly to nonviolence for the last 20 or so years. I have a small child who is gentle, creative, empathetic. I don’t want her to toughen up. I don’t want her to have to know about reality. And yet, I also can’t keep my head in the sand.