To the American people,
Take a breath.
Not the shallow kind we’ve been forced into for years, but a deep one. The kind that reminds you that you are still here, that this country is still breathing, and that history has not ended in a scream just because it’s been loud.
I know many of you are tired. Bone-tired. Spirit-tired. Tired of waking up to outrage, of bracing yourselves before opening the news, of wondering how much worse it can get and whether the ground beneath you is still solid. I am writing to tell you that it is. And more than that, it always has been.
What we are living through is not the collapse of America. It is the exposure of it.
Every nation reaches a moment where the lies it has leaned on for too long begin to crack. Where the stories told to justify cruelty, hoarding, and domination stop working. Where the old order panics because it knows it cannot survive the light. That is where we are now.
The noise you hear is not strength. It is fear.
Authoritarian movements always get louder before they lose relevance. They shout, threaten, posture, and perform because they sense the shift. They know younger generations are not buying the mythology. They know women are no longer quiet. They know Black, Brown, queer, immigrant, and working people are no longer willing to sacrifice their lives for someone else’s comfort. They know the world is changing, and they cannot stop it.
So they try to exhaust you.
They want you overwhelmed, hopeless, frozen, convinced that you are powerless. That is the oldest trick there is. But look around. Look at who is organizing, teaching, feeding, building, healing. Look at who shows up after storms, after shootings, after laws fail. It is not the loud men on television. It is the people.
Power in this country has never flowed from thrones or podiums. It has always come from communities deciding they have had enough and moving together anyway. From workers. From mothers. From elders. From students. From artists. From those who were told they didn’t matter and proved otherwise simply by continuing to exist.
You are not alone, even when it feels like it. You are not crazy for sensing that something new is being born under all this chaos. That intuition is correct.
Empires do not announce their endings politely. They thrash. They distort reality. They elevate the cruel and the foolish because they think noise can replace legitimacy. It never works for long.
What comes next is not darkness. It is reckoning. And reckoning is not the same as destruction. It is truth rising to the surface so it can finally be dealt with.
There are more people committed to care than to control. More people invested in the future than in nostalgia. More people who understand that democracy is not a performance but a practice. You don’t see them screaming because they are busy doing the work.
So rest when you need to. Laugh when you can. Stay connected to each other. Do not let manufactured panic convince you that hope is naïve or that love is weakness. They are afraid of your calm for a reason.
This country has survived worse than this, not because it was perfect, but because ordinary people refused to let it belong only to the cruel.
The ground is steady. The tide is turning. And you are part of the force behind it whether you realize it yet or not.
Everything is not ending.
We’re finally seeing the truth.
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Matthew Cooke: “Trump Exposed the Office of the Presidency”
• Chris Hedges on ICE: “I Have Seen These Masked Goons Before”
• Steven Donziger: “Let’s Get Real . . . ICE Is a Domestic Terrorist Organization”
• Why Minnesota?
• Omar Fateh: “Folks Are Waking Up”
• Doing What We Can to Stop Unjust Arrests of Immigrants
• Susie Hayward on What’s Happening in Minneapolis
• “It Was Murder”: 12 Powerful Responses to the Death of Renée Nicole Good
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like”
• Derek Johnson on the “Courage to Call Fascism by Its Name”
• An Incident That Feels “Ripped from a Dystopian Novel”
• James Greenberg: “I Am in Mourning for America”
• Karen Salmansohn on the “Duel Citizenship of Being Alive”
• “Most Revolutions Succeed Not Through Violence But Through National Strikes”
• Chris Hedges on the End of the American Empire
• Brent Molnar on the MAGA Cult and Its Intentions
• Garrett Graff: “America Tips Into Fascism”
Image: Artist unknown.
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