I used to be deeply political…
embedded in it daily,
fighting the good fight,
raging against the machine.
Twenty years ago I tracked PNAC
with concern and horror,
watching the machinery of power
while most people watched sitcoms.
That horror was prescient:
those ideas shaped wars and policies
that burned through trillions, trust, and lives.
And yet, as I got older,
I became less political.
Marriage. Kids.
The slow erosion of time and energy.
Politics didn’t vanish…
it receded into background noise.
Until it didn’t.
About ten years ago,
ignored realities came flooding back.
A dam broke.
The disregarded refused to be ignored…
even if their refusal was chaotic,
destructive, self-sabotaging.
Brexit–Trump–Biden–Trump.
An anarchic fuck you from the forgotten.
With some existential dithering in-between.
A decade on, the doubling-down continues.
More anarchy.
More do what we want or we burn it down.
America. Europe.
Lurching left and right.
A bipolar world.
Don’t they see the cause?
People shelved, dismissed, left behind.
Whether true or not, it’s their truth.
The right isn’t right.
The left certainly isn’t.
I refuse both.
Democracy is the fairest system we have…
equal voices, as it should be.
But for ten years now,
I’ve refused to participate.
People try to pull me back
into the old teams,
the opposing venoms.
Not me. Not anymore.
I’ve removed myself from the equation.
Do Not Disturb on the door.
The forgotten will vote as they will,
with or without me.
I am extraneous to the argument.
This isn’t apathy.
It’s deliberate withdrawal
from a game that feels rigged,
tribal, and increasingly poisonous…
where hypocrisy thrives
and little changes regardless of who wins.
It’s self-preservation.
You can make your bed.
I won’t be lying in it.
I see both sides now…
different slogans,
same behaviors.
I refuse to be them.
I choose myself instead:
my peace,
my time,
my voice…
for what builds,
not what burns.
— UpsilonA
Afterword
This isn’t a call to action. It’s not an argument to win or a position to defend.
It’s a marker in the ground:
Here is where I was. Here is where I am now.
I’m not building a movement of withdrawal or recruiting others to my silence.
I’m not saying you should follow. I’m saying I’ve stopped following.
This isn’t neutrality pretending to be wisdom.
It’s exhaustion claiming its right to rest.
The door is closed.
This explains why.
That’s all.