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Branded

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Branded
The numbers are tattooed on the inside of our eyelids at birth, ensuring that we grow up believing that living with our eye closed is normal. We move through life spitting it out like an ATM receipt to anyone that asks. The very name is deception "Social Security Number." There is nothing secure about it. It's a password, a confirmation of identity, and/or a weakness exploited by anyone trying to steal our identity. We wear it like make up to cover up the blemishes of our humanity. Right now, it's a little card we must guard with our lives. The next logical step is a microchip under the thick skin at the nape of the neck like a lost pit bull brought to the SPCA and thrown on death row. It seems that we are all lost, but there are some that know exactly where we are going. Their tattoo isn't on their eyelids, but their forearm. They are fuzzy now. The ink is diluted by the solvent of time, yet the memory is still as sharp as the needle was that day. Time has fast forwarded, yet the atmosphere somehow feels the same. Memories come back as the nightmare of the current reality settle on our chest like a drunk elephant sitting down after a long day. Human cattle. Segregation. Categorization. Appraisal go left go right resource exterminate that one. The smell of so much frightened humanity crammed into a sardine can and held over a fire fills their nose as if they never left that train depot. And, I suppose, part of them didn't. They were branded. A series of numbers that defined them as property and reminded them that they were no longer individuals, but members of a herd that could be called at any moment. They followed the Judas Goats, the sonderkommando, through the halls of the slaughterhouse. Not all made it out. Survival, even now, is feeling death every day, lick you behind the ear; it's hot breath beading the condensation of hatred that drips down your neck. Death by a thousand razor cuts shaving off one shred of dignity at a time. 
These people, these martyrs (for something great in them died that day on the train), see what is coming because they already lived through what's coming. They stare at our ignorance like parents knowing they have to let their children make this mistake and so they swallow the heart break. The streets are stained with innocent blood and goosestepping white nationalist rhetoric. Their hearts are stones because they survived hell...only to wake up today to a world in which nothing has changed. Or maybe it has. It's worse because this time, the coalition of evil knows what mistakes not to make and how to get away with it. The devil learns from history. The word "nationalist" has taken on an even more patently aggressive coat of arms. The Deaths Head isn't dead. The impending storm ahead should make all of our forearms itch. 
There will be...there IS...segregation, oppression and death. History has tried to warn us, but she's handcuffed in the basement with an American Flag gag shoved in her mouth. The events unfolding in front of our eyes; the murder, the corruption, the children in cages...these are our brands, our tattoos on our souls, hash marks to keep track of our sins. The President of the United States of America is the white nationalist son of a black hearted German Nazi immigrant that openly admits to grabbing women "by the pussy" without their consent. It's not a joke. This is reality. He believes that America is a big open  for his tiny hands to paw at. An entitlement, a breast for him to suckle that reminds him of his mother. He collects us like old coins and tries to squeeze every last scent out of us with his fat baby fingers. We are livestock for vampires that don't even try to hide their fangs. These pin-stripped suit criminals hide behind the American Flag pin on their lapels and are more ruthless than Adolf, Herman, Reinhardt, Heinrich, or Eichman because they don't even try to disguise their hatred. It's not that we need to be better students of history, because everybody knows what happened in Germany. Everyone can draw the parallel. It's just that most people, for the most part, don't care. In America, if life gives you lemons, you arm the lemons and train them to hate what is different. It's the American way. So, we need to be a better nation. How do we pull the human race out of the garbage? It's the difference between feeling sympathy and feeling incensed. One is about you and one is about justice. We need to operate from a place of quietly cold rage. The kind of rage that organizes our thoughts into full metal jackets that turns our brains into sharp knives; the efficient lethality of a well organized and angry tool. 
The enemy is looking ahead while we are looking up. We need to stop sleeping and start screaming. We don't need a hero. Hitler was a hate-filled murdering bastard. Trump is a hate-filled murdering bastard. But neither achieved success alone. We can use our shoulders as a step ladder or a battering ram.

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