Like most parents with school-aged kids, I think my kids’ public schools do a fine job.

There’s a longstanding American belief along the lines of, “My local school is great, but most other public schools perform poorly.”

This pandemic has thrown a wrench in that paradoxical belief system. For the first time, I’ve been hearing from tons of middle-class and affluent parents pointing out how their kids were getting shortchanged by their schools. I tend to agree with them, or at least sympathize with their concerns.

Most students needing special education services have not been getting what they need through virtual schooling. In some schools that reopened, and where the vast majority of students returned in person, the few who stayed with online learning were treated as afterthoughts. It’s hard to watch students in neighboring districts attend in-person classes while your own kids are isolated at home for months on end.

Even though I understand and appreciate the reasons that virtual schooling has been necessary in many circumstances, I’ve also felt the pangs of education envy for the first time.

I wish my children were in a school that had all the resources and space needed to safely educate them, so they would not miss out on the experiences some of their peers are still having. And we’re among the lucky ones: Our teachers have gone above and beyond for their students.

The quality of education that kids are getting during this pandemic depends on many elements outside parents’ control: How well does your community adhere to CDC guidelines? How tech-savvy are your kids’ teachers? How fast and reliable is your internet service? How agile and responsive is the administration?

All of a sudden, inequality has landed on the doorsteps of those unaccustomed to it.

“Inequality” is another way of saying “unfairness.” Our society has long tolerated unfairness in schooling when it’s based on how much money people have: Kids from middle-class and wealthy families get better educations than kids from poor families. It’s been that way for so long that it’s hard for some people to imagine it could be any other way.

But in this pandemic, people of similar socioeconomic classes saw their children affected in unequal ways. And when we perceive that someone in the same boat as us is getting something better, for no apparent reason, it provokes a strong reaction.

In the Rockwood School District in suburban St. Louis, a group of parents became so incensed over virtual schooling that they threatened to sue the district, and insulted the teachers and administrators online. Last fall, more than 200 people protested outside the home of St. Louis County Executive Sam Page, demanding that he allow high school sports teams to compete.

It was strange to watch adults agitate for youth athletics while those same youth were still shut out of classrooms. But the outrage was about more than just sports; it was about what people feel entitled to.

Parents who felt their schools were denying their children opportunities argued that the detriments of virtual school far outweighed the risk of teachers and staff catching a deadly virus.

That’s still debatable.

What’s more clear is that the students who have lost the most educational ground are the most marginalized -- those from lower-income families, those with disabilities and those living in the most underserved areas. All the inequities that we know are baked into our education system, which affect students’ entire life outcomes, have been amplified and exacerbated by the pandemic.

The thing is, it’s hard to get other parents to care much about the plight of students who have less than their own. I wonder if we will remember this sting of unfairness, the desperation of wanting more for your kids, once the pandemic is over.

Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but what if this close encounter with inequity challenges our indifference to unfairness elsewhere?

There were no mass arrests, no declaration of martial law and no “Great Awakening” on Inauguration Day.

Instead, a new president pleaded for unity and an end to the assault on truth and democracy. The first woman -- more specifically, a Black, South Asian daughter of immigrants -- became vice president.

This was not what QAnon, the followers of pro-Trump conspiracy theories, had been promised. They’ve been devoted to the notion that Trump was secretly saving the world from a global sex-trafficking ring of child-eating Democrat Satanists, and that their god-king would remain in office.

The rise of this cultlike world is perplexing enough from the outside. But for those whose loved ones have fallen directly into it, it’s also painful and isolating.

Kayla Elliot of DeSoto, Missouri, said her mother-in-law was a hardcore liberal when she met her 18 years ago. Now, it’s as if a switch flipped.

“She has M.S. and doesn’t work. She sits and listens to Fox News and goes down rabbit-holes on the internet,” said Elliot, who is Black and is married to a white man. After her mother-in-law tried to convince her that Democrats were aborting full-term babies, Elliot completely disengaged with her. She said QAnon has given people’s “latent racism a place to bloom.”

Audrey Brown of St. Louis is grieving the loss of her relationship with the grandparents who helped raise her. She unfollowed them on Facebook when they started sharing racist memes and conspiracy theories. She has tried to keep in touch through phone calls, but has a hard time talking to them because of their outlandish beliefs.

“It absolutely gutted me to have my grandma publicly shame me on Facebook,” she said. “I spent my childhood with them. ... It’s like mourning someone who has died, but they’re still there.”

She partly blames Facebook algorithms, which show users content they are likely to agree with and then introduces them to more extreme sites. Social media has certainly played a role in radicalizing some of these adherents.

“They prey on people who are alone,” Brown said. With more people isolated and adrift during the pandemic, Brown says she has also seen stay-at-home moms find a community and sense of purpose in believing that they are “saving children.” In fact, QAnon purposely infiltrated mom groups on Facebook with messages like #SaveTheChildren to recruit followers, without revealing their QAnon connections.

When Brown’s young daughter asked her why they don’t see her great-grandmother anymore, she explained, “Nonni is believing things that aren’t safe for us. I don’t want to expose you to things that might hurt us.”

Melanie, who asked to be identified only by her first name, said both of her parents are heavily invested in “deep state” conspiracy theories. Her father is convinced the government will try to confiscate his guns, and their basement is full of ammunition. She visited them a couple of years ago, and when she put her toddler down for a nap in their bedroom, the little girl discovered a gun under the pillow.

“My heart stopped,” Melanie said. She hasn’t been back to their home since. “We’re pretty much not speaking to each other.”

Others prefer to try to maintain a connection with their relatives while trying to help bring them back.

“When the insurgency happened, it really scared a lot of people,” said Jess, who asked to be identified by her first name. Jess’ father sends her texts and mass emails with QAnon warnings.

She posted on her Facebook that people alienated from their QAnon-believing families needed a support group. After several people reached out to her privately for help, she created just such a group that meets through Zoom.

“We are all just trying to process how the people we love got where they are,” she said. “The larger question is, how do we prevent this from happening to more people?”

She said some of the indoctrinated parents even believe their own adult children are part of a pedophile ring, if they challenge their beliefs.

Jamie Collier of St. Louis began tracking the sites where some of these ideas take root after losing her relationship with her grandparents. She is trying to figure out how their brains have been short-circuited to accept such illogical ideas.

When she tried to challenge one extreme idea online, someone commented that “the Great Awakening will happen” and that “true patriots have a list of far-left liberals ... to get rid of.”

But now that their fever-dream political fantasies haven’t come to pass, there is a sliver of hope among those cut off from their families that they may have an opportunity to break through to their family members.

“We focus on what’s within our control and what isn’t,” Jess, the organizer, said.

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.