Be Afraid

Oh, sorry. Did you think I was talking to you? I’m not talking to you. You’re fine. We’ve got this. I’m talking to the monsters.

Hi. Yes, you. You fucking monsters. We’re coming for you.

You might think you’ve had a big victory. Did you feel no shame, cheering for stealing money from children and sick Americans, in order to feed the rich? I feel sad for you. You’re broken inside. I know it haunts your dreams at night; I know the effort it must take you, to squeeze your eyes so tight shut that you can’t see the suffering around you, so you can pretend it isn’t happening.

How awful it must be, to live inside of you.

And you know, don’t you, that it’s coming to a close. I can tell you know. Your behavior is giving you away.

You call things big and beautiful as if that will hide the fact that they are foul and awful — but you’re not fooling anyone.

We’re onto you.

We see how frantic you’re getting. Crueler and crueler, because you know the walls are closing in.

In Germany a few generations back, most people kept their head down because they were scared of the monsters. Have you noticed? I know you have. Our heads aren’t down. We’re standing straight up.

You’re opening concentration camps, and giving them branded merchandise, “Alligator Alcatraz,” and threatening to put political opponents in there. It’s not because you’re strong. It’s because you’re terrified and you’re weak, and we can see it.

Jeff Bezos wrote in a letter to his shareholders, “I constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified.” We get it. You want us to be afraid. As long as we’re cowering, as long as we are spiraling with fear and anxiety, you can control us. Fear makes us feel weak. It makes us feel like victims. It makes us think we need someone strong to protect us.

You’re not strong. You’re a moron having a foam bubble party on a yacht while the world burns. You’re a bully standing in front of warehouse cosplaying a tyrant and thinking it’s funny.

Oh, you can do damage. And you keep doing damage, thinking more of us will cower. But guess what?

We are not afraid of you.

Look me right in the eye.

We are not afraid of you.

We are onto you.

We see the ludicrousness of your gazillion dollar weddings, and we chase you out of the city. We’ve scared you out of your own town halls, the representatives of the people who are too afraid to serve the people. That never turns out well.

We see you trying to get Jewish people to be terrified of a 33 year old brown skinned man with the foreign-sounding name who is standing up to Empire, as if that’s never happened before.

Now you pass this bill, and you expect us to cower. You expect us to howl, to weep, to rend our garments, everything is lost, everything is ruined, we are so afraid.

Boy did you get that wrong.

I have never been less frightened in my life. I am doing things you can’t even see, I am making plans you can’t even imagine, and I am not alone.

My heart breaks for those who are suffering. Your cruelty is something that you will have to answer for, some day, but I’m not thinking about you, except to say this.

I see you. We all see you. And we’re coming for you.

You’re not the hero of the story. You’re the monster, and history has always known what to do with monsters.

In this world, we don’t run from monsters. Monsters run from us.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Here we come. Your time is almost up, but us?

Oh, we’ve never been more ready.

Three. Two. One.

Run.