"The Revolution Was Over" by Christopher Klinges

WE WOKE UP IN CHAINS.
THERE WAS NO APPEAL OF OUR SENTENCE.
OUR BONES WOULD BE FOUND IN SOME NOT TOO DISTANT TIME DANGLING IN THOSE CHAINS; NO LONGER FETTERED, BUT BEREFT OF THE VITALITY TO WALK FREE OF THEM.

   Change was gradual, so nobody saw how much had changed. Nobody saw it coming; things moved so slowly it was later asked in bewilderment "Who noticed any change?". A well contrived program of desensitization had stripped us of our natural revulsion, outrage, and opposition to the currents that eroded the sanctuaries of our nation, our homes and our hearts. By the time the seas had risen to flood; by the time the temperature of the water in the pot had risen to a boil; by the time the winds had gradually risen from a breeze to a gale to a hurricane, it was too late to avert disaster; too late to escape.

   There was general amazement the day all the people realized they could no longer speak their minds, practice their beliefs according to their consciences; own property; possess means for self-defense; affect a change in the direction of policy by voting their will in free elections. There was general amazement the day all the people saw clearly that they were now the property of the state; and that the state could move its property wherever it wanted; could lock away its property in any convenient hole according to its need, its whim, its coercive vindictiveness; to use its property as it wished even if just to stick it in a hole and let it rot in unseen darkness; stick it in a hole that was really a latrine of human waste; stick it in a hole to bury it.

   An entire nation which had revulsion to slavery written in its DNA, had somehow been oblivious to the weighty discomfiture that the chains of subjugation wrought as they were being forged and slapped on everything that once moved free...