Apocalypto came to me in a dream—no words, just noise. Cold and catchy, mechanical and suffocating. It didn’t feel like a vision or a prophecy. It felt like a memory from a future that already gave up on us. The next morning, I saw headlines about another executive order, this one titled Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship. I didn’t feel angry. I didn’t feel shocked. I just felt… tired. Like I was watching the slow erasure of something I never really believed was safe to begin with.
I think a lot of us—rational people, empathetic people—have stopped pretending there’s a way out. Every week, there's some new law, some new rollback, some new cruelty masked as policy. Civil liberties are dissolving quietly, efficiently. Protests met with riot gear. Books pulled from shelves. Rights treated like bargaining chips. It doesn’t matter who’s in office—the machine keeps grinding forward. Louder during Trump, maybe slicker now, but the outcome feels the same.
Equal rights? It's a phrase people chant in courtrooms and classrooms while the actual structures rot beneath them. Queer and trans kids are being hunted by legislation. Black and brown lives still hang in the balance. Reproductive freedom is gone for millions. And even the people who say they care seem more focused on optics than outcomes. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is safe.
And the planet—the only one we have—is choking while everyone smiles and signs energy deals. Every speech about green futures is followed by another pipeline, another oil lease, another betrayal. The climate doesn’t care about rhetoric. It just burns.
There was a time I believed in change. I thought music, art, protest, presence—something—could shift the weight. But now? It feels like we’re just documenting the collapse. Capturing the flicker before the dark.
That’s what Apocalypto is. It’s not an anthem. It’s not a protest song. It’s a soundtrack for the end. For the numbness. For the days when the news makes your stomach turn, but you scroll past it anyway. Because you’ve already cried enough. Because rage has limits. Because hope, at some point, feels delusional.
The only word in the dream was Apocalypto. It stayed with me. A final transmission. A name for the quiet war happening all around us. A lasting joke for the true masters of the planet. Let the hyenas have it. This song isn’t here to comfort anyone. It’s here to echo the dread. To sit with it. To admit that maybe we’ve already lost.