🐍 America, Dear—You Mistook the Snake for a Savior

A Trauma-Informed Guide to President Trump’s Projection

You kept thinking someone would stop it.
That truth would hold. That the old words still meant something.

But every day, the meanings shifted.

Justice didn’t mean justice.
Freedom didn’t mean freedom.
A court decision meant whatever he said it meant—until it didn’t.

They weren’t just rewriting the rules.
They were rewriting the language.

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And then came the voice.

I’ll tell you what to think.
It happened the way I say it did.
If you need to speak—I’ll tell you what to say.

Familiar, isn’t it?

If you don’t believe this is what’s happening—
I feel you.
It’s hard to absorb that into your mind.
Hard to wrap your heart around the idea that everything is upside down on purpose.

Classic gaslighting.
But worse.

This isn’t just someone manipulating a relationship.
This is someone manipulating reality.

Throwing so much at you from every direction,
so fast, so loud, so often—
you stop asking questions.
You accept.
You shuffle along.
Because mentally, you’re just... shut down.

In my family, we just did what he said.
Because it was easier.

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Real Life: The Language of Power

He doesn’t burn books. He rewrites them.

In Florida, new curriculum standards reframed slavery as a "job-training benefit," stating that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
🔗 Reuters

In courtrooms, where justice should mean facts and law, Trump rebranded nearly every legal challenge against him as a "witch hunt."
🔗 PBS NewsHour

Onstage, he claimed he could "terminate" the Constitution to restore himself to power:

“A massive fraud… allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
🔗 Wall Street Journal
🔗 Politico

And when his supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, Trump called it a "day of love."
🔗 CBS News

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Words don’t just lie now.
They erase.

They weren’t criminals.
They were patriots.
The courts weren’t defending democracy.
They were attacking freedom.
History wasn’t recorded.
It was revised.

And still—he dares you to object.
Because the more you object, the more unhinged you look.
That’s how gaslighting works when it’s turned into governance.

It’s not just my way or the highway.
It’s my way—or you’ll forget what the road ever looked like.

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America, dear—you are in an abusive relationship.

“The Thought Police are always watching. The only safe way was to think nothing, to know nothing, to believe nothing.”
—George Orwell

You don’t owe your silence to the abuser.
You don’t owe your trust to an abuser.
They abuse that trust—and then laugh at you
for being stupid enough to give it.

"Like taking candy from a baby," they’ll say.
And nothing will change—until you do.

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Tbird
Founder, HadIt.com Veterans (Founded 1997)
Editor, Tbird’s Quiet Fight
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