We are Americans. Did we forget?
We were the ones who stepped in when others couldn’t. We stood up for the small and the voiceless. We gave hope when the world went dark. We didn’t always get it right— truth is, we messed up more than once. But falling short was never the goal. Our hearts were in the right place, even with all our missteps. We meant well. We tried. And in trying, we became something more than just a nation.
We became a promise.
We liberate. We build. We hold true and steady when the wind howls hardest, when the world starts to falter and uncertainty takes shape, we dig in our heels and face it head-on. That’s who we are. We come from, and we are folks who crossed oceans with nothing but hope in their pockets… from front porch storytellers, factory hands, dirt-under-the-nails farmers, soldiers who never came home, and dreamers who believed in something better, to former slaves who sacrificed blood, sweat and tears. That’s the blood in our veins. That’s the soil we were grown from. We don’t cower. We don’t give up. And we sure as hell don’t let fear do the driving.
But fear is in the air now. Thick like wildfire smoke—seeping into our lungs, into our thinking. And fear, it never comes alone. It drags uncertainty in one hand and hate in the other. First, you fear what you don’t understand. Then you start to hate it. And when hate takes root, people lash out. They forget who they are. They leave their better angels behind and listen instead to that quiet little devil whispering old lies with a new face.
And who suffers first? Always the most vulnerable. The ones with the least say, the least power, the least protection. They’re the barometer of any society’s soul. When they bleed first, when they’re the first to be silenced, pushed out, ignored—that’s when you know something’s gone wrong.
It happened before.
During World War II, when American soldiers liberated the concentration camps, they cried and wailed. Grown men—tough, battle-worn, broke down when they saw it revealed. They wept. Some dropped to their knees. It wasn’t just the piles of shoes or the hollow eyes staring back at them. It was the silence—thick and heavy— the remnants of crushed bodies and souls, after years of screaming. Evil wasn’t some idea anymore. It was there in the air, in the walls, in the ash. You could smell it. Feel it on your skin. It stuck in your throat.
Later, they went into the nearby villages. Asked the people, did you know?
And the villagers said, No. We didn’t know.
Aside from the six million Jews murdered, there were millions more—homosexuals, the disabled, Romani people, political dissidents, anyone deemed “other.” Men and women disappeared from neighborhoods, and their neighbors said they didn’t know.
Think about that.
Think about what it takes to not know something that big, that loud, that cruel. It takes looking away. It takes choosing silence over truth. It takes locking your doors not just at night, but against your own conscience.
And now—here, today—we have a choice.
When your neighbor starts looking like a stranger, when all you can see are the differences instead of the decades of common ground, that’s when it begins. That’s when the forgetting starts.
But we don’t have to go that way. There’s a better path.
There’s understanding. There’s tolerance. There’s kindness—not the soft kind, but the kind that takes courage. The kind that listens before judging. The kind that reaches across fences, across fears. The kind that destroys walls of division built by power hungry fear mongers and liars.
We are not cowards. We were never meant to be.
We are the masters of our destiny—not fear, not fate, not history repeating itself. Us. The people. Still capable of great courage, great decency, and great love.
That promise? It’s still ours to keep. Let’s not forget it.
If you feel the need to voice out your feelings and thoughts, say it, we’re listening. Just try to keep it respectful and leave room for calm. There’s enough anger in the world already— we don’t need to give it another seat at the table. Let’s leave the shouting at the door. There’s already enough noise out there, enough sharp edges slicing through what little peace we’ve got left.
I know emotions are running hot. It’s in the air like static before a storm. And I get it—people are tired, worried, worn thin in places they didn’t even know could tear.
But this piece… this isn’t here to stir the pot or poke at wounds. It’s just a quiet reminder. A hand on the shoulder. A little voice saying, “Hey, remember who we are.”
Because sometimes we forget.
So, if you speak or comment, do it from the heart. Not from hate. We’re all trying to find our way through the fog, same as you.
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A Kings 
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