They Have Shown Their Hands. Millions are Responding.

Editor’s Note: The following was posted by a Veteran in a 50501 Veterans group chat. It is reprinted here with the Veteran’s permission.

I feel like this is one of the only places I can voice my thoughts even remotely safely, so I apologize in advance for what will probably be a disjointed ramble:

I am desperately fighting a feeling of existential dread as a suffocating blanket of tech-backed fascism is drawn across the landscape of a nation I barely recognize as the place that I was raised.

The systems that seemed at one time to be unshakable have been revealed to be rotten and hollow to their core; mere scaffolding over the termite-infested bones of what was once considered a beacon of hope and opportunity.

I haven’t felt this desperately alone in a very long time, and yet I know there are literally millions across this country who feel as I do.

The greatest difficulty ahead will be to not surrender to despair and hopelessness, to not bend the knee, to not allow the base instincts for survival and personal desires for safety to allow ourselves to compromise the moral and ethical integrity of our souls.

The faintest glimmer of hope shines through the darkness, however; in their overwrought confidence in their own ability to cow opposition, they have shown their hands. Millions of previously apathetic American citizens – people who had reasonably believed, as I once did, that the system would save them – are waking up to the harsh reality of the gathering darkness.

There will be those, so devoid of courage, that they will willingly compromise themselves, but we cannot allow this to become the norm.

We must, for now, gather quietly, make preparations we would have rather never needed. Steel ourselves to the struggle ahead, and square our shoulders for the weight of our responsibility.

So long as even a single ember remains in the hearts of Americans, the flames of Liberty will not extinguish.

I am under no illusions; many will not see the dawn of that new day. The day that we wrest the levers of power back from those who would grind us to dust. But that day is coming.