Gathering Storm

You were strong—once. Two hundred fifty years ago, the bright red blood of our fathers and sons stained the ground, freely shed for the promise of freedom. You shook your fist at your oppressors and refused to back down, choosing liberty over tyranny. Like a phoenix, you rose from the ashes of that new beginning to embrace the dawning of a new era. Your tenacity, will, and heart inspired a world of others stuck in oppression to break their shackles and chains, lift their voices, and also demanded their emancipation.

How times have changed.

A flag which once stood for courage, purity, and justice is trampled underfoot while talking heads in drab suits wax eloquent about what they would change “if only.” I wish you would stop talking and just do something about it already. Half of you are ostriches with your heads in the sand while the other half—jackals closing in for the kill. Loyalty, liberty, and rule of law fester while you make yourself fat. How much longer do you really think this endless cycle of bread and circuses, bread and circuses, is going to last? The rancid stink of swamp permeates throughout the gleaming white building where you pretend to work. No longer blind, justice, it seems, is dead.

How far the mighty has fallen.

Storm clouds are gathering, and my future rests at the epicenter.