I'm from the United States of Erasure, where the things that stand in the way of power are quietly swept away.
Where the leader of our country announces he will "take back" Washington DC by eradicating homeless people from the streets, and we are left to wonder if he means by whatever means are necessary.
Where he threatens to strip the city of its own governance if leaders don't obey. The capital (the symbol of American self-rule) told it will be put under federal control like a conquered territory.
This is not about crime. It is about making poverty invisible. Turning human beings into political props to prove strength. Just like authoritarian leaders who "clean up" cities before international events, the goal is to create a sanitized stage for power to strut across. The people left with nowhere to go are not seen as citizens. They are not even seen as actual people. They are seen as clutter, as discarded trash. In history, removing the visible poor has always been a way to signal control, from Mussolini's Rome to Pinochet's Santiago. It's the same message now: if you do not serve the image of the state, you will be erased from it.
Where the same administration rolls out a wave of "religious freedom" policies that sound noble until you read the fine print. They are not about protecting faith. They are about enforcing one faith, the ruler's chosen faith, not yours. They allow public schools to push prayer, government agencies to favor churches that endorse the Trump regime, and social services to deny care if it conflicts with their doctrine. Faith becomes a tool for power and control, not compassion. And when faith is captured by politics, it stops lifting the vulnerable and starts serving the throne. In theocracies past and present, from Franco's Spain to modern-day Iran, religion is not a shield for the people (it is a sword for the state).
Where the portraits of former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush are taken off the White House walls and shoved into a hidden stairwell. Not because of lack of space. Not because of new renovations. But because the man in power cannot stand to see the faces of those who came before because they remind him of everything he isn't.
They are like mirrors into his empty soul and he would only allow them to be seen in his glass castle, if they bow to him and his demands. In dictatorships, history is rewritten in real time. It starts small (a painting moved, a name removed from a building, a book banned from a library) until one day, the only history left is the one the leader has approved. Stalin once had political rivals airbrushed out of photographs. The instinct is the same: erase the past, control the future.
Where the Environmental Protection Agency slashes a $7 billion solar program meant to help families save money and cut energy bills. Missouri households will feel the loss first, but the ripple will spread. In its place? Nothing. The promise of a clean energy transition replaced with the reality of higher costs and fewer options. We are told this is about "efficiency" and "redirecting funds." But the truth is simpler: when clean power threatens the profits of fossil fuel donors, the sun itself becomes an enemy of the state. History shows that when regimes tie their survival to extractive industries, the environment is not collateral damage (it is a battlefield).
Where JD Vance, once a critic of Donald Trump, now sits before cameras promising a wave of indictments over "Russiagate." Not for crimes proven in court. But for daring to investigate potential crimes. The message is clear: if you challenge power, power will come for you. This is not justice. This is vengeance dressed up as law. In Turkey, Erdoğan used "terrorism" charges to jail journalists. In Russia, Putin used "espionage" laws to silence critics. The words change, the method does not. Trump wants one thing, and one thing only. He wants to punish anyone who has ever questioned his authoritarian ways and he wants to use them as a warning to others: you bow to King Trump or you will pay.
Where books are pulled from school libraries under the banner of "protecting children" (but the books they target are almost always the ones that tell the stories of marginalized communities). Where history lessons are rewritten so the next generation never learns about the cruelty of slavery or the reality of Jim Crow.
This isn't coincidence. This is strategy. Erasure is not just about the present. It is about building a future where inconvenient truths never existed at all. He has told us he loves the uneducated.
Those that he can fool with lies, right in front of the truth.
He is now showing us that he plans to manufacture more of them. If you remove the books that teach empathy, if you erase the history that shows the consequences of unchecked power, if you eliminate the stories that help people recognize patterns of oppression, then you create a generation that cannot see what is happening to them. They won't recognize authoritarianism because they were never taught what it looks like. They won't resist injustice because they never learned that resistance is possible. This is the most insidious form of control: making people complicit in their own oppression by ensuring they never learned they had other choices.
Where Homeland Security posts recruitment ads saying "Serve your country! Defend your culture! No undergraduate degree required!" with a link to Join.Ice.Gov. The phrase "defend your culture" does all the heavy lifting here (it's a dog whistle so loud it's practically a bullhorn). Whose culture needs defending? From whom? They're recruiting people who already know the answer to those questions. When regimes need enforcers, they don't want critical thinkers (they want true believers who see deportation as cultural preservation).
These are not random policies. They are chapters in the same playbook. The goal is always the same: erase what challenges your power, and the people will only see what you allow them to see.
In Russia, portraits of past leaders vanish when they fall from favor. In Turkey, investigating corruption becomes a crime. In Hungary, religion becomes state policy. Here in America, the erasures are multiplying. History moved to hidden stairwells. Programs cut without replacement. People treated as trash to be swept away.
When enough pieces disappear, the shape of the country changes. We wake up one day to find the America we knew has been quietly scraped away, piece by piece, until only the version they approve remains.
But erasure is not inevitable. It requires our silence. Our exhaustion. Our willingness to look away.
And that is the one thing we will never give them.
Every time they try to hide something, we make it visible. Every time they move a portrait, we share the photo. Every time they cut a program, we tell the story of who gets hurt. Every time they recruit enforcers, we expose what they're really asking people to do.
The antidote to erasure is memory. The cure for darkness is light. The answer to their systematic dismantling is our systematic rebuilding of truth.
They are counting on us to be too tired, too overwhelmed, too afraid to push back. They are betting that we will accept each small erasure until we forget what we've lost.
But we remember. We see. We refuse to let them rewrite our story.
This is not the America we will accept. This is not the future we will build. And this is not the legacy we will leave our children.
I will never stop fighting for the America that cannot be erased. You shouldn't either.
I'll see you tomorrow,
Heather
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