MODUS OPERANDI

THE TESTIMONY OF THE WATCHER AND THE SNARE

Hear this, O people of the afterlight,

you who wake to glow and call it morning,

whose first breath tastes of signal

and whose last thought belongs to a screen.

Hear this, O nation trained to watch endlessly

and never taught to see.

“They have eyes, but they see not;

they have ears, but they hear not,”

said the psalmist,

and the line has followed every empire into ruin.

Before iron learned to sing in war,

before ink learned to flatter kings,

before numbers learned to lie and call it science,

a voice stood on hardened ground

and named what was coming.

“For the time will come,” wrote the apostle,

“when they will not endure sound doctrine;

but after their own desires

they shall heap to themselves teachers,

having itching ears;

and they shall turn away their ears from the truth,

and be turned unto fables.”

That time learned many names.

That voice still speaks.

The ground remembers footsteps

even when mouths forget truth.

The wind tastes sharp and metallic,

like bitten wire.

The air hums low, like warning machinery,

a sound so constant it becomes invisible.

You gather around light

that gives no warmth.

You bow to reflections,

metrics, mirrors, and numbers,

and call it sight.

A modern critic warned

that people would not need censorship

if they could be drowned in amusement.

Another warned that when facts collapse,

power no longer needs truth —

only repetition.

Your days are loud.

Your nights refuse rest.

Sleep flees from houses filled with noise.

Dreams dry up like wells fouled at the source.

Children learn the shape of enemies

before the shape of stars,

the sound of slogans

before the sound of wind.

Once, messengers ran with torn clothes

and bleeding feet.

Now messages run clothed in gold.

Once, prophets shattered kings with whispers.

Now whispers are buried under shouting.

Once, trumpets warned of danger.

Now danger markets itself as news.

“They cry, Peace, peace;

when there is no peace,”

said Jeremiah,

and the phrase has been profitable ever since.

They call bitter sweet,

and sweet bitter.

They dress fear in silk

and sell it as wisdom.

They carve lies thin,

slice them narrow,

repeat them gently,

until no one notices the blade.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue,”

wrote the wise,

and the tongue learned to rent itself out

by the hour.

Words harden with use.

Say them long enough

and they pass for bread.

Stories sharpen themselves.

Names are stripped of faces.

People become categories.

Blood arrives later —

as it always does.

A survivor of total power warned

that when truth and falsehood blur,

people lose not only facts

but the ability to recognize reality itself.

Another warned that corrupted language

prepares the ground for cruelty

long before the first blow lands.

The city smells of overheated circuits and panic.

Its heartbeat stutters like a failing signal.

Truth limps through the streets,

dragging its name behind it,

ignored, mocked, or monetized.

Two colors shout across the square.

Both swear righteousness.

Both claim virtue.

Both spill the same blood.

The ground does not debate —

it opens.

“Every kingdom divided against itself

is brought to desolation,”

said the carpenter,

and centuries later a president repeated it,

watching it happen in real time.

They do not cry warning to save the house.

They strike flint behind the walls.

They pour accelerant,

then ask who lit the match.

They point to spreading chaos and say, Look there,

while igniting the next room.

“They sow the wind,” warned Hosea,

“and they shall reap the whirlwind.”

History has never found an exception.

“Be aware,” they say,

while counting the coins of your pulse.

They harvest anxiety like grain.

They monetize unrest

and call it care.

They profit from your fear

and label it protection.

A French observer warned

that tyranny in modern ages

would not arrive with chains and whips,

but with pressure —

soft, constant, inescapable —

until thinking itself feels unsafe.

They pull you close

and cut the string.

Outrage is crowned.

Mercy is exiled.

Silence is hunted.

“They received not the love of the truth,”

wrote the apostle,

“that they might be saved,”

and so confusion was allowed to rule,

not by force,

but by consent.

They instruct you whom to love,

whom to hate,

what words may pass your lips,

what thoughts must remain hidden.

A waking mind is named dangerous.

Freedom is treated like contraband.

So they keep the people weary.

So they keep the people furious.

They hand out sides like uniforms

and call it choice.

An architect of republics warned

that faction, once inflamed,

would tear nations apart

from the inside out.

A preacher warned that anger blinds.

A psychologist warned that shadows grow

when ignored.

The news tastes corroded and sour.

Sweet words coat poison.

Drama feeds the fire.

Rage is rewarded.

Fear becomes fuel.

“The eye is not satisfied with seeing,

nor the ear filled with hearing,”

said the preacher,

long before the feed learned your name

or memorized your pain.

The machine learns your wounds.

It presses them precisely.

It never tires.

Calm is useless —

it does not convert.

This is the pattern.

This is the snare.

An enemy is named.

A cure is sold.

The sickness is declared holy.

Control is baptized.

Dissent is diagnosed.

Brother is turned against brother.

This is called progress.

This is called fate.

“Woe unto them,” warned Isaiah,

“that call evil good, and good evil;

that put darkness for light,

and light for darkness.”

A writer of future nightmares warned

that power lives not in weapons,

but in controlling the meaning of words.

Another warned that indifference

always sides with the oppressor.

Stories kill before weapons speak.

Language bends pain

until war feels reasonable,

necessary,

even righteous.

“These things begin with words,”

the elders warned,

long before they ever reach the hands.

Now the soldiers wear no armor —

only screens.

The pressure is quiet,

but it never stops.

The loudest lie rises.

Nuance sinks.

Reflection drowns.

If you do not shout allegiance,

you are named the threat.

Trust erodes without sound.

Decay spreads beneath crowns painted gold.

Neighbors become strangers.

Empathy starves.

“There is a way that seemeth right unto a man,”

wrote the wise,

“but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

Fear feels safe.

Anger feels clean.

Truth feels distant.

“Be not deceived,” warned another voice,

“for whatsoever a man soweth,

that shall he also reap.”

This has happened before.

History keeps saying so.

It will happen again.

No one knows how it ends —

that ending does not trend.

The screen dims.

The glow remains.

The fight keeps selling.

Truth moves on.

And somewhere beneath signal and shine,

beneath noise and banners,

beneath language bent out of shape,

lies the cost.

Silence.

Make it make sense.

Written by Marguerite Grace

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