PRESIDENTIAL SILENCE

A dispatch encrypted in grief. A breath carved from betrayal. Written in the aftermath of deception, where silence was not passive—it was militarized policy.

I am standing in the wreckage of a season that didn't have to be a cemetery. As a witch and an author, I have always understood that the most potent spells are woven from what is not said. Silence is the dark matter of the political universe. When the head of state chooses to whisper "miracle" while the nation is drowning in its own lungs, he isn't just failing to lead; he is performing a ritual of mass extraction.

“It’s going to disappear. One day—it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.” And we watched the numbers rise like a tide of black ink. And we watched the ventilators run out, the rhythmic wheeze of the machine replaced by the stillness of the room. And we watched the miracle turn into mourning, a transubstantiation of hope into lead.

“Anybody that wants a test can get a test.” And my sister waited 11 days for results, her life suspended in a vial of saline. And my neighbor died before hers came back, a nameless data point in a backlog. And the nurses wore trash bags as armor, a visual testament to the state's nakedness.

THE ANATOMY OF THE INVISIBLE

There is a specific geometry to political gaslighting. It requires a baseline of calculated indifference. I remember the briefings where the data was treated like an inconvenience to a campaign schedule. I saw the anatomy of the state begin to decay, not from the virus, but from the rot of the narrative being sold to us. The podium became an altar where the truth was sacrificed for the ego of the officiant.

MORPHOLOGY_OF_LIES: A lie told at the top of a mountain travels faster than a truth told in the valley. We were fighting for air while they were fighting for the "vibe" of the economy.

BIOLOGICAL_ERASURE: The transition from "Hoax" to "Casualty" took exactly zero seconds in the minds of the victims. The state's response time was measured in news cycles, while the virus measured its time in heartbeats.

“99% of cases are totally harmless.” And I watched my friend lose her father. And her mother. And her ability to breathe without the ghost of a panic attack clawing at her throat.

“We’re doing a great job.” While refrigerated trucks lined hospital parking lots, steel-cold warehouses for the unceremonious. While families said goodbye through glass, the smudge of a fingerprint the last remaining contact. While the death toll passed 200,000—a number so large it became an abstraction to those who didn't have to carry it.

THE LINGUISTIC WEAPONIZATION

This dispatch is not about politics in the sense of a ballot. It is about the metabolism of the lie. The cost of silence dressed in power-suits. When the state treats the lives of its citizens as disposable data points, it is no longer a government—it is an engine of consumption. I remember the smell of antiseptic that couldn't mask the scent of fear in the grocery aisles.

I do not write this to debate. I write it as a witness to the Great Deletion. I remember the silence that followed the lies—a heavy, pressurized silence that felt like it would burst the eardrums of anyone who dared to listen to the truth. The air wasn't just filled with particles; it was thick with the weight of a betrayal that felt equally infectious.

“This is their new hoax.” And I screamed into a mask until my throat was raw and my vision blurred. And I held my breath in grocery aisles, counting the seconds between every stranger's cough. And I buried my rage in the only place I had left: the silence of the page.

“Only 6% actually died from COVID.” And I read the death certificate myself, tracing the cursive of the end. And I saw the cascade: lungs, heart, kidneys—a system shutting down in a sequence of biological failures. And I knew the virus didn’t just visit—it devoured the host and the family left behind.

THE CLIFF OF COMPLACENCY

The rhetoric was always about "winning," a zero-sum game played with human blood. But in the ICU, there are no winners. There are only those who survive and those who become memories. The President spoke of "rounding the corner" as if the finish line was in sight, but for millions of us, the corner was a sheer drop—a cliff of systemic failure.

“We’re rounding the corner.” And the corner was a precipice we never saw coming. And we fell, a slow-motion descent through the layers of our own safety net. And he kept smiling, the glow of the television lights reflecting in his eyes while our lamps went dark.

He did not forget us; he actively unmade us.
He erased us from the ledger of the living.
With every denial, a brick was removed from the wall of our protection.
Every deflection was a needle in the eye of the truth.
Every time he said “we’re winning”, he was calculating the margin of our loss.

I built this dispatch from the wreckage of the unanswered. From the phones that rang in empty offices while people struggled to feed their children. From the mothers who buried children and were told to be grateful for the flag—a piece of cloth offered as a substitute for a life. I am writing this to ensure that when the history books are scrubbed by the winners, the digital marrow of our pain remains too heavy to move.

Presidential Silence. A dispatch encrypted in the ash of what we lost. A breath carved from the granite of betrayal.

A TRUTH THAT REFUSED TO BE BURIED.

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