Destroying the Republic

The Second Revolution

Hiding behind the masses, my eyes begin to wander. My attention is drifting from the protestors in front of me to the crowd gathering behind me. Both sides are screaming obscinities at each other, while I am standing in the middle. I want to scream into the crowd, but I know no one would hear my cries. One side screams war while the other screams love. I begin to wonder if I am the only one who does not have an opinion on the situation they are protesting, but even thinking such a thing is niave.

"These people are trying to make this Nazi America! Whose side are you on, the Communists or the capitalists?" Screams an old white man with a loud speaker. 

"We believe in the freedom to think! Think for yourselves! Don't let the government take control of your minds!" Screams the hippie protester, her long curly brown hair flowing in the wind. 

I woke up.

This dream is a constant reoccurring nightmare of a time when I was just eight years old. My mother always told me it was important to go to these government rallies, she said there would be a day when I would think back at the words that were said. When I was a child, I never believed her. I always thought that the people screaming were upset at each other, and I never quite understood all the fuss about freedom versus capitalism.

The protests were the beginning of the second revolutionary war in the United States. Corporations were growing larger while the middle class began to blend with the lower class. Our government attempted numerous times to propose bills that would help the middle class get back on their feet, but each bill was struck down by rich lobbyists who did not want the middle class to recover.

After the fall of the democracy in the United States, the citizens lost the right to think. Freedom was a word abolished by the New Capitalists of America. From the start of the New Capitalists of America in 2024, the social classes were divided into poor and rich. The rich ran their industrial buildings while the poor worked for the rich. The poor were compensated with food vouchers, which could be taken to a local market on any given Monday and exchanged for rations, but that also required the working poor to stand in a line for about four hours for food that may not be there when they finally reached the market. Since the law required the poor to collect their rations on a Monday, most of the poor had to miss a day of work. Missing a day of work meant losing 25% of the rations alloted during the week, unless their boss was graceous enough to let them work the extra hours during the week. 

The United States ended to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. People were beaten in the streets, and buildings were lit on fire. Luckily, my mother had a friend on the outskirts of town who lived on a few acres of land. Her friend let us stay there in the barn as long as we promised to keep quiet about the location of the residence. During the second revolution, having a place to sleep with a roof was considered a luxury. Most people were living on the streets, and those who still had homes had them quickly destroyed from jealous onlookers who lost their homes to militias and looters. Martial law was enacted, which swept chaos and fear throughout the states. The cities looked like warzones, and safety was a thing of the past.