The Fall of Rome.

 It started when I was asleep, surrounded by teddy bears that a year later would be packed up and taken to donation. My sheets had racecars, my pillow was a dog, a Captain America poster was taped to the wall. And then it was 4am. I woke in a sweat, panting from a night of listless dreams. I wouldn’t go back to sleep that night.

            I pulled out my iPad, a bedtime accompaniment of my preteen years, and looked for the election results. There it was, in a collage of red and blue states: Donald Trump was to be elected our president. My stomach sank, my throat turned scratchy. I needed water but also felt like I was barely keeping my head above it.

            This would be my first evocative encounter with US politics. I was eleven, in the 6th grade, just starting pre-algebra and still wasn’t allowed to be home by myself. But even then there was something with this election that I knew would be different. It was the first time I was aware Barack Obama wouldn’t be president. Of course, during his administrations, I couldn’t have cared less for politics. All I knew was that the US was comfortable, and as an extension of it, so was I.

            My early political opinions were formed entirely from dinner-time conversation. Mom, a school teacher, expressed concern about her job, food prices, home costs. Dad was more reserved in his criticism, but which came in waves of profanity I was unfamiliar with at that age. I knew inherently through these discussions that this was no ordinary election, that this man posed as a much larger threat than the traditional Republican candidate. But what was there to worry, he wouldn’t be elected. Would he?

* * *

COVID-lockdown started at the end of my freshman year. That meant a full year and a half of online learning, social isolation, and a new, restricted routine. Video games became my view to the outside. It was at my computer that I would have my second encounter with the Trump administration.

            January 6th, 2021. I was in a voice channel with a few friends, passing the time between Zoom classes with a few rounds of our favorite game.

            “Woah, check the news,” one said.

            “Hold on, let me just finish this level,” I replied.

            I didn’t have to wait long. My computer chimed and a news panel popped up in the bottom corner. Odd, a notification like this only appeared with urgent breaking news.

            It read Protestors Raid Capitol Amid Election Result Hearing and had a picture of the Capitol building, smoke, flags, and lots of red hats.

            “Holy shit,” I muttered.

            This is what I would consider the middle ground in my understanding of Trumpism and the change that was happening in the United States. Before then I disagreed with many of his policies, thought his border wall was stupid, imagined him as simply an egotistic businessman. But this was something more. This was a violent attack on a key tenant of our democracy. I had heard people champion the United States’ peaceful transfer of power. Inciting people into an uprising was something that only happened in third world countries as I was led to believe.

            I didn’t say anything before disconnecting from the voice channel. I switched my computer off. I needed to think.

            Mom entered the room then and stood by my desk. There was a heavy silence between us. We looked into each other’s eyes, her face only confirmed my concerns. Nothing needed to be said; but there was also nothing to say.

* * *

Lockdown ended, we returned to the classroom restless and adorned with facemasks. My understanding of the outside world—both as a result of the social circumstance as well as my own maturation—had changed significantly in that year and a half. What before was a rhythm of school, homework, sports on the weekend suddenly seemed crass, juvenile. COVID broke my perfect routine. It made me realize that the world is an unsure place, that it’s susceptible to change.

            This realization inspired the second-half of my high school tenure, in which I focused heavily on the humanities and social sciences, learning about systems of government, international relations, and our recent history. We learned about the feeble legs that our democracy stands on—systems of checks and balances, Constitutional amendments, the electoral college—and about the rise of Hitler in what was a seemingly stable German equivalent.

            What these lessons manifested was a great deal of anger within my younger self, in which the world was seemingly malleable to powerful leaders and in which history seemed to favor the villain. I brought this anger into a particular English lesson, where my teacher, Mr. Bartos, helped me think about things a bit differently.

            “Politics is never easy,” he said. “But I’ll ask you something: what did Orwell, Havel, Kundera, and Stowe all have in common?”

            “They were writers,” I replied.

            “Yes, but they were also more than that. These were people who found themselves in some of the most turbulent political situations. These were people who felt like they had no other choice but to write about things. And what happened?”

            “Things changed.”

            “Exactly. Never underestimate the power of words. Sometimes it’ll feel like you’re merely screaming out into the void, but trust me, things will change.”

            And he was right, things would.

* * *

In November, 2024,  I gathered with my university friends in the local pub to watch as the state election results came through. I was nearly halfway through a degree in writing, a notebook Mr. Bartos had given me sat next to me on the table; I scribbled notes carelessly.

A month earlier I sent in my ballot in by email; a disappointing feeling. On the one hand I felt proud for practicing one of my democratic responsibilities, but on the other, I knew my vote had little impact in the grand scheme of things. I again felt powerless.

My friends, pints in hand, chatted easily around me, and I was jealous of their carefreeness. I sat quiet in the corner, dog-earing notebook pages. There was a sense of foreboding that overcame me then, like how some animals can sense when there’s a violent storm in the air. There was discontent, apathy, hatred in my country. In the weeks leading up to the election there was no talk of unity, of national pride. It was a game of who could yell the loudest, who could bully the other more.

I sat there sipping a pint of lager as the results came through. I felt so involved, yet so far removed. 56%, 61%, 55%, so on and so on. The projected map of the United States was slowly becoming a sea of red. Just like that, we had lost.

            I thought back, then, to one particular lesson in high school, when we learned about the fall of the Roman Empire. The empire’s collapse came from a chain reaction of collapsing systems, ineffective leadership, and a loss of confidence from the people.

“It was like a slow burning candle,” my teacher had said.

It was hard to sit in the pub that night and not think about the fall of Rome. It was hard to not think about the millions of citizens, my friends and family, my future being led by a party so antithetical to its country’s constitution. It was hard to not sit there and think about the point of it all, to feel powerless in the face of such an existential threat.

But I realized then, that’s exactly what they want. They want people to fear speaking out, they want it to be difficult to imagine a better future. The worst thing I could do would be to succumb to their pressure, be squashed under their thumb. I thought back to Mr. Bartos, to my anger, about the power of writing. Suddenly, the path forward seemed clear.

There was an empty page that needed to be filled.