Oppression in America doesn’t look like chains and shackles. It doesn’t scream at us from decrepit streets or starving faces like the images we associate with Third World suffering. No, oppression in America is far more insidious. It’s dressed in freedom’s finest suit, wrapped in the stars and stripes, and sold to us as choice, opportunity, and progress.

We’re told our voices matter, that our votes are our power, and that we live in the greatest democracy the world has ever known. But look closer. Who are we voting for? Candidates handpicked by a system designed to perpetuate itself. A system that limits our choices, narrows our vision, and forces us into false dichotomies. And when the vote is over, we celebrate the process as if it were an unassailable triumph of freedom.

We scream, “Look at our democracy!” while quietly ignoring the tightening grip of a system that chooses for us, convinces us we’ve chosen for ourselves, and leaves us in the same place we started.

This isn’t freedom. This is oppression under a new guise—an oppression that thrives not on force, but on apathy. Not on chains, but on the illusion of choice. It’s a system that preys on our hopes and turns them into justifications for its own existence. A system that tells us we’re free because we can complain about it on the internet, all the while ensuring that nothing really changes.

But here’s the truth: Freedom isn’t just voting. It’s having something real to vote for. It’s dismantling a structure that tells us we’re empowered while quietly keeping the strings in its own hands. Oppression doesn’t end by switching the players—it ends when we rewrite the rules of the game.

It’s time to see through the veil. It’s time to break free.