I am not mad—though madness would be kind,
A mercy for the ones who lived to see.
I write before the dark consumes my mind;
My country is not what it used to be.

It started small: his gestures turned to slur,
A crippled man contorted for the crowd.
They laughed. They clapped. We froze—unsure
If sorrow still was righteous, still allowed.

Each day a fresh transgression, fresh offense.
Each night we swore we’d face the dawning day.
The outrage dulled—too endless, too immense.
We learned to live with it. We looked away.

The scholars warned. They’d seen this tale before:
The scapegoat, and the rally round the flag.
We called them prophets, then we barred the door.
But still, we felt the ground beneath us sag.

The machinery was building all along—
The lists, the camps, the buses in the night.
We said the headlines had it mostly wrong,
That this was order. Necessary. Right.

He sold the chaos; cronies bought the dip.
A war declared, withdrawn, the markets swung.
They knew his lies before they left his lips;
The rest of us just watched. God help the young.

They sold the land. They silenced all the science.
The data vanished; graphs dissolved to dark.
They waved away Earth’s burning—smug defiance.
They auctioned off the final national park.

He held the codes, and dangled annihilation—
A city, or a country, or the world.
He made the threat, then basked in adulation.
The mushroom cloud: his flag, not yet unfurled.

We waited for the heroes, for the law.
We thought the courts would hold, the vote would speak.
We told ourselves that someone somewhere saw—
But no one came; the ship had sprung a leak.

It happened slow, then fast, then all at once.
We watched it like a dream we couldn’t break.
Many warned, marched, and shouted out for months.
They saw the flood yet couldn’t make us wake.

The truth is simple, and the truth is cold:
Those who could stop it, did as they were told.