They Can't Kill Us All!

I was feeling militant and angry a couple of days ago when I first wrote this down. I wasn’t going to post it because, well, because. Then I saw one more video of one more person being run down by our current day brown-shirts and I thought, well, why not. Please keep in mind, while this is very in your face, it is not really a call to arms, just a warning that we should be madder and more in people’s faces about what is going on these days.

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I owe my very existence to a cataclysmic event. A world at war for the second time in the same century sent two people who would never have otherwise met on a journey that ended with their becoming one in the strange and foreign land of the war’s victors.

I am the product of that union, the byproduct of that war.

As I grew, I heard stories, first in hushed tones, reciting a poem you would just as soon forget. Then the tones grew louder, and I began to hear and understand words that maybe people would just as soon forget.

Hitler

Mussolini

Fascisim

Resistance

Somewhere in the history of my family are the stories of two men. The first one who, when faced with foreign invaders, fought them all. He stole from them to help feed his family, to kill them, perhaps, when it became necessary. This man did not care which side the invaders were on; they were ALL Invasori. His cause was survival, not glory.

The second comes from a different part of that same country, when another man had enough of cruelty and brutality and one day decided enough was enough, and that he and others like him would not submit to the will of their oppressors. There aren’t any statues or other commemorations for either man, only stories passed down that lose detail with every generation, until they finally stopped being told altogether.

Therein lies the problem, as they say.

We thought ourselves immune to the rise of a darkness that almost seems cartoonish; a great nation hijacked by people who value ignorance over ideas and mistake cruelty for strength. We invited these people to rise to power, and now, amidst a cruel violation of our standards and morals, they believe that some wars never ended, which stains their knowledge of history. A blueprint written by oligarchs and robber barons who promised punishment to people who disagreed with them is their new bible.

But somewhere deep within this nation’s collective soul, the place where my parents came looking for a better life, is the spirit of righteousness, of the shining city on a hill that housed the land of freedom and opportunity. Somewhere there is a maybe naïve idea that might does not make right, that right makes might.

So as the jackboots come to crush that spirit, we must rise and stand tall and shout, “Enough!”

Hearing that they will unleash their dogs on us, and we will give them treats and make them our friends.

They will gas us in the streets and shoot water at us through cannons meant to knock us off our feet, and we will hold our breath and use the water to clean away the tears.

Finally, when all else fails, and the jackboots have decided that there is no other choice, they will march on us, bayonets fixed, rifles loaded, coming to mow us down in the streets.

And we will lock our arms together, looking at the brothers and sisters we have just met, chests out, brave and unflinching because we know that sometimes fortune favors the brave, and because deep down in our hearts we know…

They Can’t Kill Us All.