Burn It All

Jude Jones
3 min readApr 14, 2021

After this, all of this, a this so obvious and evident that you know exactly what this is without me even insinuating anything beyond the word “this,” I have nothing to say. No insightful words.

Nothing.

In my younger days I wonded how others could remain so, for lack of better words, docile in the face of injustice. So unmoved. So calm. I wondered why there weren’t double, triple, quintuple the attempts to rage against this obviously hostile machine.

I get it now.

When you realize they have means of retribution degrees larger than your capacity to retaliate; when you realize this is what it is and this is who we are; when you realize you are not leaving because there is no place to escape to, the fight leaves. Malaise sets in. True freedom becomes fantasy. Enduring becomes enough.

Today I can only endure.

I know what should be done.

Yet as I read testimony full of gaslighting lies, a defense that would be laughable in any other context except here, where comedy is sufficient for acquittal, a chill comes over my body. I know what will be done.

Nothing.

Just like last time. And the time before that. And the time before that. And the time before that.

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Jude Jones

Go ask my pre-school, even talk to my old principal / He’d tell you how you I used to pack a number two pencil