Publius—Author of Satire and Politcial Commentary

If you live in the United States today, your existence resembles life in one of 1984’s superstates more than most care to

admit. Or, maybe your town is starting to feel a little like Maycomb, Alabama, in the 1930s. It happened so brazenly that it seemed like a fictional farce. Then it built up for decades. Eventually it became the accepted norm so quietly that pundits, politicians, and lawyers continued to debate the constitutionality of authoritarian actions while the house of

democracy burned around them. Maybe you watched it on TV (propaganda light), or perhaps you read it on Facebook (propaganda full-throated).

At the end of the day, I don’t need—nor do I even want— everyone to agree with me. Democracies are about not always getting your way. Only weak, self-conscious people need everyone to agree with them all the time—sound like anyone

you see on TV every single day? This, weak my-way-orthe- highway mentality is why those types gravitate toward authoritarians in the first place, but when you throw your lot in with the authoritarian, you’re only in the safe group until

you’re not. Eventually, you’re Leon Trotsky in Stalin’s Russia, with nowhere to go. 

The existential fear that these people feel toward otherness. clearly informs a type of pho-patriotic hypocrisy and a type of cognitive dissonance that motivates them to cling to the stars and stripes while simultaneously pissing all over what it stands for—that being democracy and liberty. If only two words were allowed to describe what the United States is meant to be, those are the ones, democracy and liberty.

Why do I write? Because democracy shouldn't die without at least one good note from the underground to make it's case.