A Few Good Men

The line of difference

between a survivor and a victim

is a very thin one.

One builds a future out of rubble,

the other builds excuses out of memory.

That thin line of difference

is called accountability.

There are countries that invent tomorrow.

They build machines to replace exhaustion,

dreams to replace hunger,

and systems that outlive governments.

We call them first world;

not because they were born rich,

but because they invested in becoming so.

And then there are others —

countries that borrow those same machines

to film conspiracy theories

about a past no one alive has seen,

no one dead can verify,

and no one sane would wish to return to.

They build castles of ruins

and call it heritage.

They delete dissent

and call it discipline.

They chant progress

while worshipping fossils.

And the citizens cheer,

because noise is cheaper than thoughts.

I wish I could name the country,

but the good men running it insist

that naming it is treason.

That questions are infections.

That disagreement is blasphemy

unless printed on official proclamations.

And if a good man says so,

it must be true.

After all, I’m just a stupid, illiterate nobody

in a nation of bike-riding godmen

and monks selling governments.

Imagine a country so haunted by history

it begins to exhume it for dinner, 

where erasing centuries of pain

is sold as repentance

for centuries of pride.

Where textbooks are rewritten like scriptures,

and truth is a circus of convenience.

Where good men insist

that rewriting the past

is the first step to correcting the future.

And if good men insist,

it must be true.

How would I know any better?

I am but a stupid, illiterate nobody

living under the fluorescent faith

of slogans and empty speeches;

where faith wears crowns,

and gods endorse decrees

while the dead scroll through our mistakes.

In this country,

the present is always an inconvenience;

too modern to be sacred,

too corrupt to be celebrated.

So we export the future,

import nostalgia,

and call it civilization.

We curse colonizers

while colonizing reason.

We declare wars on ideas

and call it patriotism.

We topple statues

and call it purification.

We erect new temples

and call it ambition.

We rebrand memory

like toothpaste: fresh, white, and forgettable.

The good men nod,

halos fueled by power,

sermons sponsored by fear.

They preach restraint with sirens.

They tax morality.

They subsidize silence.

They invent synonyms for obedience.

And if you refuse to learn the language,

you become the lesson.

So I’ve learned my place —

to whisper, not speak.

To ask in metaphors,

to protest in poetry.

Because even irony here is under surveillance.

Because even laughter needs clearance.

Because even hope comes with conditions.

And yet, 

the survivor in me still hopes.

That someday,

accountability will not be exile.

That dissent will not need disguise.

That good men will stop measuring patriotism

in decibels and donations.

That this country will stop treating its citizens

as children with opinions,

and start seeing them

as adults with rights.

Until then,

I’ll remain what I was born to be —

a stupid, illiterate nobody

in a nation that punishes remembering

and worships forgetting.

A survivor, not a victim.

For that thin line of difference

is still called accountability.

And when the good men smile down from their thrones,

counting obedience like coins,

I will whisper back, 

"I survived your sermons,

your statues,

your history-washing factories,

and I am still standing.

I am the question you cannot censor.

The dissent you cannot tax.

The truth you cannot rewrite.

I am the echo of every word you deleted,

the laughter of every citizen who learned to think,

the ghost of your good intentions,

the shadow of your legacy…"

And when the next generation asks,

“Who fought?”

I will let silence answer.

Because the survivor

never needs permission.

And the victim

is already history.