Many of us have lost much to the toll of progress. A toll that has been cleverly shrouded by those who set fire to our greatest works and sell us fake plastic trees in return.
Their magic beans of globalism and financialization sprouted no stalks into the Elysium clouds for us dirt people. Instead, they pushed up weeds through the cracks on main street.
Sure, they tell us it is fate. Inevitable. That we must embrace such progress as our destiny.
No. We reject their narrative of progress, their torch of hope and change that lays waste to entire towns like some hungry ghost of Sherman's army.
But as dissidents we do not dwell in our statelessness or in the scorched earth of our nation's heritage.
Because: we have faith, not fear.
We do not lament our circumstance as dissidents, as our faith is strengthened by it.
The hammer and anvil of our enemies does not break us into submission, but rather forges our plowshares into swords, forged in the fire of our opposition.
Our steeled will to live our lives in defiance vexes them even as our polite temperament is taken for weakness.
But it is their own weakness they project, their own empty spirits. Hubris destined to be reconciled by the Truth.
Until then, we take to the task of preserving the spark of our people; the ethos, moral fortitude, and spiritual centering of those who came before us.
We kindle the embers of our nation deep in our mettle and our will. Even if that nation can never be rebuilt as it once was.
We work to sustain our people, for it is who we are, not what 50%+1 of some paperwork and pizza boxes democracy instructs us to worship.
We don't succumb to comforting illusions drawn from those old parchments, but nor do we leave those parchments behind.
The empire of lies has taken so much from us. So, it is only human that we are prone to slipping into those sepia daydreams of yesteryear only to awaken, time and again, to the question: "where is that Nation where I grew up?"
We know, of course, there is no going back.
But we also know, in the end, we win. Providence!
- DISSIDENT RAGS