It Will Take Decades to Fix What These Republicans Have Destroyed

I kneel by the ash heap of my country, pulling out the charred bones of laws once tender with purpose. A womb, a book, a vote—each gutted clean by men in ties who grin as they light the match, who quote scripture as forests burn and children cry in cages built from policy. My daughter will not inherit a peace I once believed in. She will patch what I could not protect— clean air, clean water, a truth without spin, a touch without price. Her hands will be calloused, her hope hard-earned. It is not that we lost something. It is that they took it and smiled.