03 July 2025 | America the Beaten (Strophe 1)

There is something that folks don’t seem to get: people in dictatorships go to the movies, operas, plays, sports events and restaurants. They accommodate themselves and more than a few buy into it. (Later, they all claim to have been opposed the whole time.)

The classic question of “how did the German people let this happen?” is now “how did the American people let this happen?” Except we believe that we are fundamentally different: we’re rugged individuals who believe in democracy and freedom and we’re going to rise up and such. Not really. We all know the sentiment of “don’t tread on me” but that cry is now, “well, just you wait until the midterms!” It is a toothless response because we are being treaded upon every day. Oh sure, there was the No Kings protest, but what has come from it practically speaking? A lot of social media posts about how losing a certain percentage of the public spells doom for governments, as if that is all that was needed and it will take care of itself.

We are beaten.

Our nation is in a state of collapse but we see the outward forms of our institutions and think, “we’re still okay.” This is a situation that *none* of us really appreciates as, at the core, being unlike anything that has ever occurred prior in our history. It feels ominous and dangerous in a way that eclipses the brewing storm of the Civil War in 1861. There’s no small measure of hyperbole there, but none of this feels right at all. Who is fighting for our Union now? Hopefully someone else, because most of us have NBA trades that we need to follow.

We are beaten and we are continuing to believe otherwise except in those quiet moments in the dead of night when we our souls realize that we are not “sliding into authoritarianism” because WE ARE HERE.