There weren’t any subtle warning signs for the political violence that erupted on Jan. 6.

There were blaring sirens, flashing red flags and alarms in every direction. President Donald Trump’s loyalists had been openly planning an insurrection on the internet.

For months, an older, white male Trump supporter had warned me about impending violence. He’s been writing to me regularly for several years, but after the last election, his predictions had become more dire and frequent.

“In my opinion this action, along with President-elect Biden’s other promises to overturn the Constitution, can only lead to violence and even civil war,” he wrote on Dec. 23. (Biden has never said he would “overturn the Constitution.”)

Earlier, this reader had written to say he was “getting the impression that people are moving from complaining to preparing.” His previous emails had similar warnings: “I sense gunsmoke and violence and blood in the future ... I am horribly afraid that the troubles will make the Watts riots look like a love-in.”

So as horrifying as the events of Jan. 6 were, there was no secret or surprise about what was coming. The Washington Post reported that an FBI office in Virginia had issued an explicit warning the day before the insurrection that extremists were preparing to travel to Washington to commit violence and wage “war.”

Trump, who helped to incite the attack on our Capitol that led to five deaths, had been promoting a protest based on lies of election fraud for days on Twitter. He reiterated his love for his supporters soon after they breached the Capitol, beat a police officer, broke windows, stole items, smeared feces on floors and walls and waved a Confederate flag in the nation’s halls of power.

Everyone knew -- including those lawmakers who fueled the fires of false grievance -- but no one took the threats seriously.

I had feared this scenario.

My parents emigrated from a country that has had four coups, and several attempted coups, in its short history. We never talk about the political instability they left.

Last week, I talked to my children about this attempted coup in America. They watched as the peaceful transfer of power was shut down. And hours later, six Republican senators and more than 100 House members sided with the man who sent armed rioters storming into the Capitol. Seditionists in Congress continued their attempts to delay and cast doubt on a fair and lawful election, which had been deemed so by dozens of courts and judges Trump himself appointed.

As the events unfolded, I received a text from a friend asking if I thought it was safe to go for a hike in a park. (We live in Missouri, far from the chaos in D.C.) Others asked what kind of accountability there would be for those brazenly desecrating democracy. I heard from several immigrants and children of immigrants who thought they had left scenes like this behind.

Adults may have been stunned, but our kids weren’t really fazed.

This is the generation that has come of age in a time of protests, state violence and political chaos. They are living through an information war that recruits their peers. They’ve seen schools turned into killing fields. The online spaces where they socialize are peppered with insults and dehumanizing remarks.

As the shock of what happened on Jan. 6 wears down, perhaps we will take more seriously the threats of violence that lie ahead. Posts are again circulating on social media, calling for armed marches on Capitol Hill, and on statehouses, before and on Inauguration Day.

Just a week after November’s election, the reader who emails me about civil war accused my newspaper of following the methodology of Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda of Nazi Germany, adding that the abuse inflicted by my colleagues was “beyond the pall” (sic).

“As with Herr Goebbels, eventually justice will strike back,” he wrote to me.

What does “justice” look like to the devoted followers of a corrupt and malicious leader?

We saw signs of it during the insurrection. One of the rioters scrawled a message on a door in the Capitol.

“MURDER THE MEDIA,” it said.

A Hollywood screenwriter shared a startling discovery on Twitter after a conversation with his teenage nephews and nieces: They claimed Helen Keller was either a fraud or that she never existed at all.

This absurd belief apparently arose from a meme that spread widely on TikTok, a video-sharing social media channel popular with teens.

“They believe people around (Keller) ‘pumped her up’ and wrote the book for her,” Daniel Kunka posted this week, referring to Keller’s autobiography in the exchange with his younger family members. “And apparently 15 million others on TikTok feel the same way.” He added that his nieces and nephews are “bright and well-intentioned.”

“This isn’t from lack of education or empathy,” Kunka said. “This is more about how groupthink can travel through social media like a virus until it suddenly just becomes the truth, I think.”

We’ve all seen this disturbing phenomenon become commonplace in recent years. There are still millions who believe that former President Barack Obama wasn’t born in America, or that he is a Muslim. Or that the Holocaust didn’t happen. Or that Sandy Hook was staged. Or that Donald Trump actually won the last presidential election.

But in the case of each of these lies, there are people who stand to benefit by duping others.

The Helen Keller lie strikes closer to the “flat-Earth” variety of conspiracy. Why would anyone want to spread such an easily disprovable, silly lie that doesn’t appear to benefit any particular person or ideology?

Isabella Lahoue wrote a post outing herself as a member of Gen Z who doubts Keller’s existence. She wrote that she considers the inspiring historical figure to be an “urban legend.” Lahoue attempted to explain why many in her generation share this mistaken belief.

“Maybe we don’t believe in her because we’re growing up in a world of fake news. We know the power of manipulation and lies in the media, and we’re losing faith in the sources everyone once trusted,” she wrote. “There’s too much data and too many lies circulating for us to process and believe it all.”

Bad actors have capitalized on social media as a fertile ground to spread lies and chaos.

The most perplexing thing about the rising tide of fact-deniers is that no amount of evidence can sway them. They can discount video footage, phone calls, historical records, data and science that is contrary to what they have seen on YouTube, TikTok, Reddit or far-right sources like the OAN Network.

A longtime reader once told me, “Jesus Christ himself could say Obama was a Christian, and I wouldn’t believe it.”

While it can be tempting to write off such beliefs with horrified amusement, the pandemic has driven home the deadly consequences of misinformation. COVID anti-maskers, those calling the virus a hoax or claiming it’s caused by 5G cell networks have influenced the behavior of millions, contributing to the deaths of 357,000 people in America.

The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review published a study in August investigating the spread of COVID misinformation on social media, and how content moderation by these sites can help contain the spread. The study found that mainstream sources like Fox News and the New York Post actually do more to spread conspiracy theories than alternative sources, because social media platforms filtered far fewer conspiracy posts from mainstream sites. The platforms were too slow to react to the magnitude of misinformation being spread, the researchers found.

As soon as we learn that misinformation campaigns are gaining traction on these sites, that’s when parents, educators and tech companies must act to correct it.

Helen Keller said, “Some people don’t like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions; conclusions are not always pleasant.”

Imagine the conclusions she would have drawn from her social media erasure.

Tyra Johnson had been planning for the first day of school at home for weeks. She ordered workbooks and a sling book rack online. She transformed a 50-square-foot corner of her living room into a learning nook for her preschooler, Madison, and first-grader, Meegale.

Johnson, 30, had the tablet and password ready to log in for Meegale’s virtual schooling. The newborn, Mason, would sleep in a baby carrier she would wear all day while teaching the other two. Her 10-year-old niece would also be staying with her in her north St. Louis apartment.

“I have a first-grader,” she says with a laugh, as if she can hardly believe it. She points out that her son actually reads on a grade level higher than his age.

Both of the children have been out of school since mid-March, with their mom trying to find ways to keep their education on track despite the challenges of losing her job and living in a neighborhood with frequent gunfire. She doesn’t let her children go outside the apartment to play; they spend most nights at Johnson’s mom’s house across the river, because it feels safer to her.

I’ve been checking in with her since the spring, but the first time we met in person was in late August -- the day before the new school year was scheduled to start. Meegale was trying to put together a safe out of discarded cardboard boxes, and recruited me to help him. He searched on YouTube for how-to videos for his project, then looked outside his window. A few kids were hanging out on the street below.

“Those are hoodlum kids,” he said. What made him think so, I asked?

“Because they outside by themselves. Only grownups can protect kids. Kids can’t protect themselves,” he said.

There are bullet holes in the wall in Meegale’s room and in the short hallway outside the room.

The next day started rough. The kids stayed up too late and had trouble waking up. Both came downstairs cranky and tired.

Johnson was trying to get breakfast on the table, moving the stack of delivered groceries out of the way, feeding Mason and cleaning up a few spills. A knock on the back door meant it was time to take the trash out.

She was fixing Madison’s hair with one hand and trying to call Meegale’s school with the other.

For some reason, she couldn’t log him into his virtual class. She kept getting an error message on the tablet, and a busy signal or voicemail at the school.

This day was nothing like she had planned for weeks.

She pulled out the kids’ workbooks and told them to work on the matching exercises. Meegale lay down on the floor to rest. After a few minutes of teaching, the kids were upset and crying.

“By the fact that you didn’t go to sleep,” she said to Meegale, “and you didn’t go to sleep,” she said to Madison, “this is the aftereffect. That means, the next time I tell you to go to sleep, you go to sleep, OK?”

There was a day earlier that year when Meegale got to put on his school uniform: a navy shirt and pants. His mom had agreed to let him go back for in-person learning in St. Louis Public Schools. When she picked him up after his first day there, he talked about seeing his friends and teacher again.

But then Madison caught a cold, and Johnson had a sinus infection. Her fears about contracting COVID -- despite their months of isolation -- spiked again.

After three days of in-person school, she decided it was safer for him to stay home.

They were all sitting together in their living room last month when shots fired into her apartment again.

She and Meegale hit the ground.

They packed up some clothes and left that day for her mom’s, and haven’t been back since. She’s still paying rent at the apartment they fled. She’s now working two jobs, trying to find her family a permanent new home.

Meegale still talks about the safe we tried to build.