We are the Germans in 1930s Germany.
We are allowing this to happen.
We are watching as those being scapegoated and dehumanized
Are put on planes to a prison camp.
This is now.
This is us.
We are culpable.
We are guilty.
We are the bad guys.
We are the fascists.

How do I wear this mantle?
I want to rip it open,
Pull my arms out of the heavy wool sleeves
Emblazoned with swastikas.
I struggle and struggle
But the heavy gold buttons stamped MAGA
Will not open, will not release me.

I did not choose this.

How often have we asked
“Why did the German people let it happen?”
As if we know that of course we wouldn’t have let it happen.
But the Germans, they are all guilty,
If not for supporting the Nazis
At least for not stopping them,
Just as we are guilty for today’s atrocities.
Our resistance does not matter
Unless it is effective.
Unless it can beat back this tsunami of hate and evil
That has turned the world upside down,
Making friends of enemies
And abandoning the allies who rose up with us to defeat the Nazis.

We have become the evil empire.
Risen from the ashes of our democracy.
I am unable to shed the mantle that marks me as a subject.
The weight bears down on me,
Making it difficult to move.
A kind of paralysis.

With great concentration and deliberation
I manage to slowly put one foot in front of the other.
I try to shield with my body those who are most vulnerable.
I shout to the deaf ears of those in power.
I cry in the arms of loved ones and alone in my car,
Every day.

I cry out to a God who feels far away,
Who has lost battles to the Devil before
And seems to be losing now.
He trusted us with our free will
And it has come to this.

Perhaps one day
Good will triumph over evil in this land,
Probably not in my lifetime
But perhaps in my children’s
Or my children’s children’s.