>>507965873At some point, disillusionment turns into something else. Not anger, not even resistance—but cold detachment. Many now feel no duty to a state that no longer serves them, and no moral obligation to uphold the very structures that erased their voice. The bitter irony is that, in destroying the foundations of the nation, the architects of this new order may have also destroyed the willingness of its people to contribute to it.
In this vacuum, a new instinct emerges—not to fight for what is lost, but to return the favor. If the state no longer belongs to them, why protect it? If they were made strangers in their own land, why not ensure that everyone feels the same dislocation?
This isn’t noble. It isn’t productive. But it is understandable. When a people feel dispossessed without a shot fired—when their culture is dismantled, their institutions captured, and their future outsourced—they don’t always organize. Sometimes, they simply withdraw. Other times, they find dark satisfaction in watching the system that betrayed them erode from within.
There is no easy answer. The bonds that made nations possible were never just economic. They were built on memory, sacrifice, and trust. Once broken, these bonds are almost impossible to restore. You can’t import cohesion. You can’t legislate belonging.
What’s left, then, is not a nation, but a marketplace. And in a marketplace, there is no loyalty—only transaction. For those who once loved their country, this is not liberation. It is exile.