There’s a type of silence that creeps in during authoritarian moments—the silence of the library that just lost its funding, of a parent who doesn’t turn on PBS anymore because the signal’s gone, of the craft circle disbanded because ICE showed up at the community center last week.

This is the erosion of the everyday.

While MAGA chants about freedom, it’s stripping the threads that actually hold people together. Quilting programs. Senior lunches. After-school workshops. These things don’t survive when the budget is a weapon.