Saturday, August 22, 2026

#1037. Bonds of Freedom 8

Here’s the thing
About the Red Scare:

Well, of course!

Everything in this one
Is a lie.

In the aftermath
Of WWII,
Berlin
Became split
By a wall.

It was literally 
The coldest city,
Where Americans 
And Russians
Straddled,
Where the crux
Of the postwar world
Existed
In its purest form.

The Red Scare
Existed
Because communists 
Existed
In the United States,
And even the communists
In the United States
Started realizing
That communists
In the United States
Were probably,
To characterize them
With a single word,
Crazy.

Then the culture 
Started telling us
They were heroes.

Even when they denied
What they were
Or had been
But were clearly there
Because of it
To have them
Attempt to stem the tide
Was called a sin.

The Berlin Wall
Came down,
And Germany
Officially reentered
The modern world,
And Russians 
Stopped being Soviet.

But communists
Still got to be heroes.

I can’t explain it.

Freedom from tyranny 
Is the ability to comprehend 
That reactionary impulses 
Should not define
Anyone’s idea
Of mainstream thought.

Freedom is freedom
When it counts everyone.

When it trickles upward,
That is the death of freedom,
When it stifles the individual 
While claiming
To liberate them,
When they cannot speak
When they think they are a martyr 
Because they cannot speak,
When the wheels of society
Are falling by the wayside 
For what they call the greater good,
When power centralizes 
And grows paranoid,
Seeking and eliminating 
The enemies within
And refuse debate,
That is not freedom.

Freedom is knowing
The difference.

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