She was appalled by the seas of ‘Stump for President’ flags she had seen flying through the bus’s windows as she made her way through the small towns of central New Jersey. Erya Rovend had studied history and read or watched every snippet she could find featuring this ‘red’ candidate. In Grigovia under Soviet occupation, ‘red’ candidates had been party hardliners with little concern for the needs of the common man, hardliners who worked to make themselves and their friends rich at the expense of the rest of society. The Ynki, it seemed to her, were too falling for one of the oldest tricks in the oldest of books; they were enamoured with a supposed outsider who voiced simple solutions to complex problems, one who seemingly obscured or denied the truth about his shadowy past in order to win over the hearts and minds of simple people yearning for a better life. A charismatic and quick talker, Stump appeared to be gaining ground no matter how brash and offensive his statements, no matter how checkered and criminal his life had been, previously. ‘A flock of sheep will follow the strongest ram, even if he is a rapist asshole,’ she thought to herself as the bus pulled up to its assigned berth in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Erya retrieved her backpack and headed into town, distracted by the comparisons her brain was making between candidate Stump and Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu, Italy’s Benito Mussolini, and a previous Ynki president, Lyndon Johnson. Each of these eventually brutal and oppressive dictators had taken power on promises of moderation and restraint but had quickly turned autocratic, their fascist policies of military intervention overseas and at home needlessly staining the good Earth with blood. It was still relatively early in the day, and so after checking in at the Grigovian Traveler’s mission and dropping off her bag, she walked over to the buildings in which the Declaration of Independence was housed. There, she wept upon reading the list of reasons that had compelled the supporters of that now-marginalized text to fight for freedom. To her, each reason in that list was something the Ynki regime had been doing to its own and to foreign people since shortly after the ink was dry on its Constitution. ‘The Ynki has come full circle,’ she thought; ‘he is the tyrant he once aimed to oppose, a belligerent beast that violates the principles he once held high, no better than the worst of mankind’s worst oppressors.’ Out of apparent motherly concern, a middle-aged woman sidled close to her, offering her a tissue. “It’s terrible, isn’t it,” the woman said, her dark-brown skin glowing under the bright lights illuminating the Declaration, looking over at the text and releasing a deep sigh. “Let it out, darling. We’ve been fighting for so long we don’t know what peace even feels like, anymore.” Erya sniffled, wiped tears from her cheeks, and said thank you. The older woman nodded in response, walked confidently out into the gathering gloom of a rainy Pennsylvania afternoon, and disappeared into the passing crowds.
© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥
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