“March of the Bewildered”

Filed from the heart of the hallucination—where the suit’s empty, the script is glitching, and the crowd is clapping anyway.

They follow him because the show must go on.

Even if the lead actor is drooling into the teleprompter

and mumbling ancient campaign slogans

like they’re holy scripture wrapped in pork fat and fentanyl.

He says up is down, left is betrayal, truth is treason,

and they eat it with gold forks,

ask for seconds,

and tip him in blood-colored hats.

He contradicts himself before breakfast.

He forgets what he said five minutes ago,

then yells at the wind for misquoting him.

But nobody blinks.

Nobody cares.

The whole stage is propped up on don’t-rock-the-boat syndrome

and a national addiction to certainty-flavored bullshit.

You think it’s about him?

No.

He’s not the puppetmaster.

He’s the puppet with the strings hanging loose—

and people are projecting their own scrambled dreams onto his hollow polyester husk.

Because deep down, they relate to him.

He’s broken in public, just like they feel in private.

He’s the CEO of confusion.

The mascot of mass dissonance.

The sacred fool on Adderall and Ambien,

selling you the mirror you already punched.

And here’s the dirty truth:

They follow him because it’s easier to obey a madman

than admit you’ve lost the plot of your own story.

He gives them permission to be mean, petty, paranoid.

He validates their lizard-brain impulses with a grin and a microphone.

He makes ignorance feel like a movement and cruelty feel like justice.

They know he’s deranged.

That’s the point.

He’s the last performance

before the theater burns down.

And we’re all still in our seats,

clapping

because we paid too much for the ticket

to leave now.

⸻