AMERICA IS NOT FOR SALE

by Shereen Lobdell

What are we to do in the face of this?

Watching all the good works burn and turn to ash?

No future is guaranteed, and no job is indispensable.

The scaffold of trust is knocked away.

Gone are the safety nets, the checks and balances.

Can’t the maga-ites feel the rug being pulled out from under them?

How did we get to a place where humanitarian arguments and facts have no effect?

Why are the very worst of us able to seize power?

Perhaps the generous and the selfless have cleared the path,

expecting their leaders to be moral with no safeguards against a lack of character.

Now, the oligarchs travel on an uncluttered highway at great speed,

Enabled to crush our futures under their heels and seize all for themselves.

Don’t expect them to have an ear tuned to your righteous outcry.

They are blind to the suffering of others, the multitudes of abandoned citizens.

They sneer openly at the needy, the dying, and the suddenly unemployed.

What are we to do in the face of this?

How do we resist oligarchy and beat down our nihilism and despair?

Must we rise in a violent revolution?

They rely on apathy and complacency and our love for peace.

Have they forgotten that we all own guns?

Do not go quietly.

America is not for sale.