They came not with fire,
But with silence.
Not with bombs,
But with budget cuts and broken contracts.
They unplugged the towers,
tore out the voice wires,
and called it freedom.
The last tower blinked its red light
into the fog,
a heartbeat still pulsing
for children who wake in the dark
and farmers who chase storms
and elders who still trust
The voices that came through the static.
They said it was the cost.
They meant control.
They pulled the plug
on puppets and planets,
on poems read aloud at midnight,
on the dusty vaults of old operas
that made old fathers weep
without knowing why.
No more Mr. Rogers.
No more Reading Rainbow.
Just reruns of rage
and talking heads in echo chambers
spitting polished propaganda
to sell fear as if it were gospel.
They don’t want news.
They want noise.
And they want to own the noise.
They didn’t want to hear
The laughter of children
Singing along with puppets
before the school bus came.
They didn’t want the hum
of a mother wiping counters,
tapping her foot to the melody
of some long-loved musical
she half-remembers
from the days before grief.
They didn’t want families
curled together on threadbare sofas,
a dog between them,
learning about elephants—
their 40,000 muscles
and how they remember
Every watering hole.
They didn’t want memory.
Or wonder.
Or joy without a price tag.
They called it waste.
They called it excess.
They called it unnecessary.
But it was ours.
It was for all of us.
It was the campfire
We gathered around
to learn and laugh and listen.
Now?
Now the towers stand hollowed,
This is not a natural decay,
but a deliberate destruction of our means of communication.
Their bones stripped by raiders who peddle truth-for-hire.
The signal is scavenged,
the broadcasts drowned in static made by design.
The weather reports
that once saved lives
They are sold for scrap.
The kids’ shows
That sparked the first questions
replaced by rage reels and
streaming noise,
designed to distract.
The storytellers are hunted.
The singers were silenced.
Even the garden shows
have been paved over
by ads for lawn chemicals
and fear.
And still, they say—
“This is what you voted for.”
But we didn’t.
Not all of us.
Not most of us.
We paid into this pot
With hope in our hearts
that our children
would grow up singing,
asking questions,
Watching antelopes leap
across the savannah at sunset.
We wanted rain forecasts
for the farmers,
Poetry for the Dreamers,
and science for the seekers.
They gave us…
gutted stations,
cancelled shows,
and flags wrapped
around silence.
They called it propaganda—
The lessons on consent,
The songs about planets,
The segments on civil rights
and public defenders
And how trees talk to each other
through root systems beneath our feet.
They called it indoctrination—
When a child asked
Why everyone deserves to be fed,
Why do wars start?
Why do some people live in tents
outside city buildings
With locked doors.
They said it was dangerous—
to teach empathy,
to show love,
to question power.
But that’s the oldest trick,
The dictator’s dagger is hidden
In a velvet speech.
It’s the playbook.
They’ve only ever had one.
And still, we are not fooled.
And still, the signal hums—
in pixelated puppet clips
whispered through group chats,
in stolen moments of wonder
found on classroom smartboards,
in Tiny Desk concerts
played from stickered laptops
between shifts,
in every child who still asks
“why?”
before the algorithm answers.
We will broadcast from the rooftops
If we must.
From lantern-lit porches
and foldout tables at book fairs.
From low-budget stages
and sticker-covered laptops
In overcrowded cafés.
We will broadcast in chalk and song,
In zines and footnotes,
In bedtime stories and ballot boxes.
We will not let the signal die.
The towers may fall—
But the stories still move.
Through us.
And we remember.
We will never forget.
This is not something we will ever forget.
But do not be distracted.
This—this is a distraction.
An important one. A devastating one.
But still, a distraction.
They want you chasing falling towers
So you forget the buried bones.
We name it. We remember. We keep watch.
And we never stop.
We resist, we persist, we rebuild.
What’s your signal?
Tell me what media shaped you,
what stories lit your fuse.
Let’s name the towers worth rebuilding.
