They vote to hurt the other man. That’s what it looks like. They don’t vote for roads or bread or doctors or better schools for their kids or ours. They vote to watch the other man bleed out in the street. And they smile about it. That’s the damn thing. They smile.
.
It used to be, I think, that a man ran for office to build something. A bridge. A system. A future. Now they run to tear down. Tear down books, tear down clinics, tear down the people they disagree with. Not with a hammer, mind you, which at least requires sweat. No, they tear down with words like “woke” or “groomer” or “enemy.” Words you can shout without ever leaving the couch. Lazy words. Coward’s words.
.
I saw a man in Iowa say he’d rather his kids be dead than gay. That was his platform. He said it with his eyes wide open, his wife nodding like a churchgoer beside him. And folks clapped. Not because they agreed, maybe, but because it would own someone. Own the libs. Own the people in cities. Own their sister-in-law who went to college and won’t shut up about pronouns. That’s the national pastime now. Not baseball. Spite.
.
In Texas, where the summers get hotter and the grid shudders like an old mule with bad knees, they vote not to fix the grid, but to punish librarians. In Florida, the beaches flood and the man in charge says the problem is drag queens. In Tennessee, they kicked out two young Black lawmakers for being loud and left the old white ones who were loud and armed. That’s not policy. That’s a bar fight in a suit.
.
You start to wonder if it’s about power at all. Maybe it’s just about hurting the person who makes you feel small. Who you think sneers at your truck, or your God, or your flag. Maybe it’s about pain passed down like bad land — you can’t grow anything on it, but you sure as hell can torch it..
.
And the politicians — God help us — they sell this like soap. They grin in ads about shooting bills with rifles. They promise retribution like it’s a pension plan. They talk about the “deep state” while cashing checks from it. They say they’ll go to Washington not to work, but to fight. You’d think they were running for sheriff of a spaghetti western.
.
What kind of country says its mission is vengeance? What kind of man wakes up and says, “Who can I hurt today?” Not a strong man. Not a good one. And not a free one, either..
.
Humor me for a second. Imagine you’re at a town meeting. Real American stuff. Folding chairs, bad coffee, a flag on the wall. You stand up and say, “I think we should all have clean water, good schools, and affordable medicine.” A fellow across the room sneers. “That sounds like socialism,” he says. Then he sits down proud, like he’s swatted a fly off the Constitution.
.
Meanwhile, the pipes in his own house leak lead, his kid’s teeth rot, and he can’t afford insulin. But by God, he sure showed you.
.
It’s funny in a way. The sad kind of funny. Like a man sawing off the branch he’s sitting on because he doesn’t like the squirrel one limb over.
.
We could help each other. It’s not impossible. Not even hard, really. But it takes guts. Takes a long view. Takes something more than the thrill of watching your neighbor suffer while pretending you’re fine.
.
It says something about a nation when the ballot is a blade instead of a brick. You can build a home or slit a throat. Right now, too many are choosing the latter, and calling it patriotism.
.
It’s not. It’s just blood on the floor. And it’s ours.
 
 
15 comments
Selected byJenn Zed
Image credit:Max Sulik
Grady VanWright
Grady VanWright

Grady VanWright is a poet, author, and playwright based in Houston, Texas. He writes in a style he calls muscular lyricism—a fusion of Hemingway’s grit, Joyce’s lyricism, and Camus’ philosophy of the absurd, where clarity and compression meet rhythm and existential depth.

 His poems balance strength and tenderness, silence and rhythm, absurdity and hope. He has been published in Washington Square Review (2025), The McNeese Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Oddball Magazine, Blood+Honey, Querencia Press, The Genre Society, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Sheila-Na-Gig, Mayday Magazine, The ManifestStation Magazine, and other literary journals. He is a member of The Authors Guild and The Poetry Society of New York.