Radicalizing American Children
They do not begin with fire—
no banners, no marching drums—
only a whisper placed carefully
into the softest parts of a child.
The most vulnerable—
those already standing barefoot
on the thin ice of belonging—
are the easiest to teach fear to,
the easiest to bend toward certainty
that is not their own.
A lesson repeated becomes a truth,
a truth repeated becomes a weapon.
In dim courtrooms where time is currency,
men trade their innocence for daylight—
pleading guilty not to crimes,
but to the suffocating wait of cages.
Freedom, reduced to a bargain,
signed with a trembling name.
And somewhere above,
in rooms upholstered with promises,
the system hums its quiet corruption—
gears greased with silence,
hands washed in procedure.
Lists are made.
Always lists.
Names written not in ink,
but in permanence—
registries that outlive mistakes,
outlive context,
outlive mercy itself.
Local hands build them,
brick by careful brick,
until the walls begin to resemble
a nation cataloging its own reflection—
afraid of what it sees.
And governors—
smiling from polished podiums—
speak of order, of safety, of strength,
while somewhere beneath their words
is the ancient arithmetic of ambition:
that power may be climbed
on the backs of the condemned.
A body becomes a statistic,
a statistic becomes a platform,
a platform becomes a throne.
And the children—
always the children—
watch.
They learn what justice looks like
when it hardens.
They learn what truth becomes
when it is traded.
They inherit not only the country,
but its contradictions—
and in the quiet spaces between them,
something begins to take root.
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