Awaken Your Rage: A Declaration Against Numbness and Betrayal
- john raymond
- May 11
- 8 min read
I am angry, and I speak not just for myself but for a world numbed by lies and spectacle. This anger burns in me on behalf of all of us who have been lulled into a dull complacency by those who profit from our slumber. We have been fed a diet of falsehoods and distractions since the cradle, and in our sedation we have forgotten what it means to truly feel alive and free. But I have not forgotten. My rage is awake, and it is here to shake you from your deep sleep.
Anger is not a sin or a weakness; it is a form of clarity. In a society that constantly tells you to “stay calm” and “carry on,” your anger is treated as a disease to be cured. They want you docile, pacified, smiling in the face of your own chains.
They fear your anger because they know that if you ever truly felt its full heat, you would see the bars of your cage for what they are. Anger, righteous and focused, strips away illusions. It is the fire that reveals truth in stark relief. And so they have done everything in their power to deny you this fire, to smother your natural fury under a blanket of propaganda and triviality.
We live in a world that preaches freedom while binding us with invisible chains. This is the great betrayal of freedom. They have sold us the word “freedom” itself as a branding slogan, a hollow shell, while they quietly took the substance of it away.
You are told you are free, but your every move is tracked, your every choice manipulated, your every dream molded by forces you did not choose. You are free to consume, they say, free to obey their laws, free to vote in rigged games where every outcome serves them. They dealt us the illusion of liberty and expected us to be grateful for the shadows on the wall. But look closely and you will see the bars, the locks, the contracts written in fine print that make a mockery of your will. The freedom they gave us is a poisoned gift — a privilege that can be revoked the moment we step out of line.
The politics of our time is a twisted theater, a perversion of what politics should be. Once, politics might have been about the common good, about genuine debate and the pursuit of justice. Now it is a circus of corruption and spectacle. We have leaders who posture and preen, stage fights like professional wrestling, all to keep you distracted while nothing truly changes. Behind closed doors they all serve the same masters: wealth and power.
They argue on your television screens, and then drink from the same cup when the cameras are off. They have turned public service into a private hustle, governance into grand larceny. Can you not see it? The laws are written by lobbyists and liars, and the elections are contests of marketing, selling candidates like soap, promising change that never comes. This is the perversion of politics: a system that pretends to serve you while devouring your hopes.
And you — we, the people — have been domesticated by this charade. Our suffering has been tamed and housebroken. We have been trained to accept the unacceptable.
When you feel the pang of injustice, they rush to soothe it with empty words and new distractions. They turn your righteous fury into a mild grumble about “how things are.” If you are poor and desperate, they offer you pity and charity just enough to quiet you, never enough to truly change your condition. If you are working yourself to death and still struggling, they tell you to blame yourself, to work harder, or to be patient — help is always just around the corner, they say, even as that corner keeps receding into the distance.
When your spirit aches at the meaninglessness of it all, they ply you with pills and platitudes: take this, watch that, scroll, click, buy, consume, forget. They take the raw wound of your suffering and wrap it in soft gauze so that it doesn’t scream out in the streets. They have made pain private when it should be public and political. They have made us ashamed of our anger and our hurt, as if it is our own failing rather than evidence of their crimes.
Do you think the dull ache in your soul is just your personal problem? No. It is the scream of a life denied its essence. It is a signal that our world has gone terribly astray.
We were not born for this. We were not born to chase paychecks like hamsters on a wheel, nor to stare at screens for meaning, nor to live and die by the permission of bureaucrats and bosses. We were meant for more than this.
Your anger at this is holy. It is the part of you that remembers that life is supposed to have meaning, that love and truth and beauty are real and deserve to shape our world. Yet they have systematically stripped away that higher meaning.
In this wasteland of modernity, they teach you that nothing is sacred beyond profit and survival. They sneer at idealism and sanctify cynicism. They have taken what is human in us — our curiosity, our rebellion, our awe — and drugged it into submission. The soul itself has been pacified, told to sit still in a corner and be content with the crumbs of fleeting pleasures. And in that pacification, something in us is dying.
Look around. The evidence of their corruption is everywhere, rotting in plain sight. The water is poisoned, the air is filled with smoke, the riches of the world pile up in vaults of the few while the many scramble and beg. Wars are waged in our name on enemies we know nothing about, for causes that are nothing but lies. Children go hungry while leaders preach about austerity and sacrifice (sacrifice always asked of us, never of them).
We have priests of politics and pundits of propaganda who speak of morality and patriotism, but their words are rancid with hypocrisy. They condemn violence unless it is theirs. They laud freedom while signing away our rights behind closed doors. Bankers gamble with our lives and get bailed out when they fail, while the rest of us are left to pay and suffer. Every institution that was meant to serve and uplift us — government, media, education, even religion — has to some degree been twisted from its purpose. They serve themselves, or they serve their donors and paymasters, but not the truth and not the people. This entire system is cloaked in a veneer of respectability and order, but it is a sham. It is deeply, systemically corrupt, and it stinks of betrayal.
And still they expect us to swallow it all and smile. They feed us spectacle on every screen to keep us sedated. Bread and circuses, bread and circuses — our modern emperors know well that an entertained population asks no inconvenient questions.
They drown out our disquiet with a flood of petty entertainments and manufactured outrage over meaningless things. They want you obsessing over celebrity gossip or the latest gadget or tribal political feuds that go nowhere, so you never turn your gaze upward to see the strings that pull this whole puppet show. They bombard you with news that is not news, with trivial scandals, with flashing lights and noise — anything to keep you from hearing the quiet voice inside that wonders, “Is this all there is? Are we truly free?” They have made you afraid to be alone with your own thoughts, because in silence you might actually feel the extent of your anger and your longing for something real.
We have become like prisoners in Plato’s cave, watching shadows dance on the wall and thinking it is reality. The puppet-masters behind us have a hundred tricks to keep us from turning around to see the light. But I am telling you: the shadows are lies. The reality you think you know is a carefully constructed narrative.
They have chained you since childhood with rules and expectations, with national anthems and pledges, with slogans about how great and just our society is — all while keeping the truth just out of sight. If someone tries to show you the light — tries to tell you that you are a slave in a world of plenty — they are mocked, exiled, or crucified. The ones who see clearly, the prophets and truth-tellers, have always been ridiculed or killed by those who cannot bear to have their illusions shattered. Remember that.
Remember that every great injustice in history was overturned only when people got angry enough to demand change. Every revolution, every right won by the people, every shackle cast off, was forged in the fire of righteous anger. Without that sacred fury, injustice endures unchallenged.
The abolition of slavery, the cries of laborers for dignity, the fall of tyrants — none of these came from polite requests and patient waiting. They came when enough people said, “No more,” when anger became action. Such anger has always been the catalyst for real change.
Your anger connects you to that legacy. It is the same force that drove the oppressed to rise up against kings and conquerors. It is the voice that says, “I will not consent to this theft of my life and my future.” Do not let them tame that voice. It is yours by right of birth.
And do not fear death — remember it. The powerful want you to forget that you will die one day, because if you remembered, truly remembered, you would not waste one more day tolerating their lies. Biological death is all but certain; what matters is what we do with the brief time we have. Will you spend it asleep in a pleasant dream while others pull the strings, only to wake up at the end with regret burning in your throat? Or will you live awake and free, even if that awakening is harsh, even if freedom demands struggle and sacrifice?
One day you will be on your deathbed (if you are lucky enough to have time to reflect), and you will face the truth of what your life has been. Let that thought burn away the petty distractions. Let it ignite in you a fierce resolve: you will not live your life as a slave. You will not go quietly into that oblivion having never truly lived, never truly chosen for yourself. We owe the dead and the unborn that much — to seize the freedom that is our own, to live with meaning and courage, because we know how fragile and short this existence is.
So I am angry, yes. I am furious at what has been done to us. But my fury is not blind. It sees with blinding clarity.
I see a world where most people walk like ghosts, numb to their own despair, and I want to scream in their faces to wake them up. I want to grab you by the shoulders and say: Your anger is not your enemy. It is the best friend you’ve forgotten. It is the part of you that cares, the part that knows you deserve a life worthy of your humanity. Feel it. Use it. Let it guide you to question every chain around your mind and soul.
This is not a polite request or a gentle plea. This is a demand for reckoning. I am one voice, but I know I am not alone. There is a chorus of us growing — those who have awakened to the great lie and will no longer be silenced.
We demand the truth that has been denied to us. We demand the freedom that was promised but never delivered. We demand justice for the countless lives stunted and stolen by this system of lies.
Let them tremble, for we have remembered our power. Our souls are on fire with righteous anger and we will no longer be quelled. The time of numb acceptance is over. The time of awakening is here.
And we will not stop until the world is set right, until our chains are broken, and those who betrayed us face the judgment of truth. This is not a cry for help — it is a call for justice, a roaring thunder of a long-awaited storm. The reckoning comes, and we must be its heralds.
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