Dystopian Utopia

My biggest mistake was having faith in the government.

Like so many others, my excuse was that of Martin Niemöller's:

I didn't care when they began hunting down refugees and illegal immigrants, since I was neither. I didn't care when police brutality was on the rise, since I was white enough to pass by. I didn't care when they began purging the country of non-Christians, since I was (sort of) Christian. I didn't even care when they began killing all members of the LGBT community, since I was (maybe) straight and cis.

Even when my friends and classmates were being sent to concentration camps and not returning, I still trusted my government, since those laws didn't apply to me.

But then they did.

I had been subconsciously sugar-coating this total genocide until it came to me, due to being mixed and coming out on a lot of things. (Apparently, even I wasn't a cookie-cutter citizen for them.)

This opened my eyes to what was actually going on outside: public executions down the street, reactionists and radicals of all kinds causing anarchy, the very framework of the nation being burned down by the polarization of different facets of identity and politics.

Even when I had followed those twisted laws and held my head down, being the bystander still led them right to me. I no longer have faith in corruption, only a sliver of faith for what this country is supposed to stand for.

Now, I am tied to a pole with the flag of my country at half-mast. Gasoline is poured on my face, and through burning eyes, I see them light a match. While my executors had considered the electric chair or gas chamber, they thought this was a far more allegorical way of going.

I am crying, not just for the deaths of my friends and family (and soon, me), but for the death of America. The deaths of the stars-and-stripes and bald eagles above us, and the ruins of Washington just a few miles west.

So above their citizens, disconnected to what is really about to happen.