Fortress America

Fortress America

Lockdown! Lockdown! The panic and fear!

Clouding and distorting the reality here.
Our schools, our festivals, our concerts, our parades.
Our bridges and our streets lined with barricades

Every month or two mass death hits the pages,

of our papers, our websites, our news feeds and livestreams.

We witness the destruction of hopes and the shattering of dreams.

You go to our Capital, the bastion of leadership, of power, of prestige, and of status

You observe a mentality of selfish ambitions of politicians surrounded by security apparatus

The nation is on edge, with our harrowing anxiety of when the fear and senseless tragedy will strike with an unpredictability that is only matched by the terror and instability that fuels the paranoia and enables the theorists of conspiracies to propagate deceptions and delusions into the hearts and minds of the people of this great nation.

We are terrorized from within, from our own countrymen, even our neighbors,

Who extend an unpleasant favor,

by sowing the seeds of bitterness and division,

exacerbating our primal us-or-them positions that we take against our fellow citizens 

We divide and we fall, our enemies relish and salivate,

at the thought of a decompensation that we can't evade,

a failure to set aside divergences of opinion,

and work for the common interests of saving this dominion

that is and was home to the most brilliant of innovators, leaders, thinkers and hard workers

We moved mountains, launched rockets into the heavens,  and welcomed diligent foreigners,

we added depth and character to the melting pot and greatest social and cultural experiment in the history of the human race,

but now we have a somber fortress in this place,

neighbors don't trust neighbors and friends betray friends,

students mock intellect and parents don't teach respect

selfishness, decadence,  and hedonism prevail, 

the very same things that caused Rome to fail,

We fail to acknowledge the reality of evil

a problem that allows for horrendous upheaval,

We attack our traditions in schools, media, the arts, and entertainment, 

We hold nothing sacred in our actions and statements,

If we fail to alter the course of fear, of terror, of delusion, of degradation, and of hate

We will maintain our Fortress America, and the hour is growing late.