another dead oppressor

towards dick cheney's second death.

the first death is personal, physical. it’s the end of a heartbeat and a body in a box. the kind of death every living thing owes the earth eventually.

but the second death is collective. it’s the end of a myth, the silence of propaganda, and a system in collapse. death by truth.

ANOTHER DEAD OPPRESSOR

he lived like a virus, spreading profit through pain, leaving smoke trails over countries, over bodies, over futures. built a legacy outta other people’s graves, thinking money and medals could hide the stench. now he’s dust. just another man who thought he was untouchable, reduced to the same dirt he never respected, the same earth he used like a punchline. fuck him.

we got work to do. we gotta finish what the dirt started. we gotta drag his lies into the light, strip the costumes off, make the world see him for the empire’s footsoldier he always was. his heart failed. good. great. now we make the empire fail too. every office, every institution, every law that protected him gotta feel the collapse. monsters don’t die when their bodies do. they die when the people stop letting them live rent-free in history.

but here is the truth that keeps me awake. the first death does nothing to the harm. flesh going cold don’t make the graves less deep, u feel me? a man can stop breathing and still have the empire breathing for him. and any fool can show up to a funeral. the thing that matters is what happens after the last mourner leaves and history starts to decide which parts of the story get told.

the second death is the one we owe the world. the second death is slow and surgical. its the unmaking of the myth, the takedown of reputation, and the dissolution of every alibi. the second death is when the language that fed him goes hungry. tha’s the one we gotta work for.

we need to be clear about what we mean by working. this is about accountability and education, and making sure the next kid who hears his name knows the real ledger. that ledger isnt numbers in a budget or some speeches about security. the ledger is ash on a mother’s floor.

start with the stories and tell them loud. put the rubble in their timelines. juxtapose the photographs they air with names they never screamed. where a news anchor says “strategy,” we say carnage. where a textbook says “stabilization,” we say occupation. take every euphemism and unmask it. make it uncomfortable for polite people to keep using the language that kept him alive. start getting real rude.

the institutions that fed him will mobilize to defend themselves, but we not the ones asking for death. we are the ones asking for truth. we the ones asking for systems to reflect the cost of what they do. rage is not our only strategy, but rage keeps us honest. let it be companion to clarity, and not the main event. they always call the truth inconvenient. remember that inconvenience lives at the heart of change. every time a bureaucrat complains about historical revision, remember who wrote the first drafts. they wrote them from the vantage of power. we write from the vantage of the buried.

the second death is collective. it’s an ecosystem. artists, teachers, lawyers, organizers, survivors, archivists, poets, kids, elders. every one of us plays a role. sometimes the quietest transcript becomes the smoking gun. we gotta keep working, keep collecting.

and finally, do not delude yourself into thinking that erasing a name erases violence. it doesn’t. removing a statue doesn't bring back the people taken and naming an atrocity doesn't unmake a massacre. the second death aint a cure for the harm. it’s saying “we won’t ever let this harm be normalized”

so when the first death comes, let that nasty lil body go. let the eulogies be ugly and hollow as fuck. let the hypocrites have their stage. then we gather the receipts and speak the names. then we build the archives and the lessons. then we bury the idea of him.

because a man dying is history’s “quiet moment”. a legacy dying is revolution’s loud one. the first death is his. the second death is ours. and if we move with patience, rigor, and fury, then the world will one day stop saying his name with reverence. thats the second death.

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i celebrate when oppressors die. they'll quote me on this when im dead but i don't give a fuck.