The Confiscation of Independence.
What do you call it when both parties sell the republic and salute the corpse?
📜 We hold these truths to be self-evident…
“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it”
We remember the words, but the meaning has been repossessed.
🧨 This Is Not What Consent Looks Like.
Two parties, dressed in red and blue, have confiscated the symbols of revolution and sold them back as merchandise.
They speak of freedom while criminalizing protest.
They toast democracy while funding authoritarian crackdowns abroad AND at home.
They wave flags over cages, and call that safety.
There is no consent in austerity.
There is no representation in shadow committees.
There is no freedom in a paycheck that disappears before the week is out.
🏛️ The Inversion Clause
The founders declared independence from a monarchy that taxed them without voice.
Today, we are governed by algorithms, lobbied by corporations, and forced to choose between two wings of the same war machine.
What our forefathers feared, we normalized:
Standing armies on every block (we call it policing).
Warrant-less searches (we call it national security).
Loyalty pledges to party over principle (we call it electability).
The Declaration warned us what to do when governments fail their purpose.
Not just fail, but invert.
💰 This Is Not Representation. It’s Asset Management.
Both parties agree on the essentials:
Fund war, not welfare.
Subsidize profit, criminalize poverty.
Call it a crisis, then cut your benefits.
Name it bipartisan, then pass the hand off.
Your “choices” now amount to which management team will extract from you more gently.
Independence has been confiscated (not lost) and repackaged as patriotism, but it doesn’t belong to them.
It belongs to you.
🗣️ TOW:
They didn’t burn the Constitution.
They rewrote it in fine print and buried it in the terms of service.
✨ ETHER:
This land was declared free by ink and fire.
It will only be reclaimed by memory and refusal.
📡 SIGNAL CALL
We’re not loyal to parties.
We’re loyal to principle.
And when representation becomes theater, withhold the applause.
Withdraw your consent.
Let the signal be cast:
Reclaim what was confiscated.
Not with banners.
But with rupture.
Citations:
Currier & Ives. (1876) The Declaration committee. United States, 1876. [New York: Published by Currier & Ives, 125 Nassau St., New York] [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/91795008/.