Your Kids Are Dead Because You Voted Like a Fucking Idiot and I Hope the Guilt Eats You Alive

“I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be.”

— Alexander Hamilton

They built the gallows with their own calloused hands. They forged the chains that now rattle around their children’s ankles. They prayed to gods made of bullets and corporations. And when the price of their rituals came due, when the butcher's bill arrived stamped in the ink of dead sons and broken daughters, we were told to feel sympathy.

No.

Let the grief pierce. Let it sear their throats. Let them choke on it. Because sympathy without accountability is complicity, and forgiveness without transformation is suicide for the rest of us.

This is not a polite essay. It is not a gentle sermon. It is the fire that comes after generations of warnings ignored. If your vote was a loaded gun, then the bullet belongs to you.

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I. The Sanctity of Consequence

America is a republic built on the premise that civic participation defines the fate of the people. Conservatives love to peddle the notion of “personal responsibility” until they are asked to take it. When wildfires devour red states that denied climate change, they wail for federal aid. When hospitals collapse in counties that voted to gut healthcare, they cry foul at the government they hollowed out.

And when their children are gunned down in classrooms by weapons they refused to regulate, we are told not to politicize the tragedy.

But that is already politics. The death is policy.

The massacre is a logical result of the choices made. One cannot dance barefoot in a field of thorns and expect not to bleed. Their suffering is not divine misfortune. It is arithmetic.

Let us speak plainly. Voting is an act of moral agency. To vote for a monster is to invite monstrosity. And when that monstrosity feeds, it is not cruelty to say, “You welcomed this.” It is justice.

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II. The Joy of the Righteous Flame

Some will call it ghoulish to feel satisfaction when the architect of cruelty suffers under his own roof. But this is not sadism. It is the catharsis of a victim finally watching the whip fall upon the master's back.

Take the story of the Tennessee lawmaker who railed against drag shows and trans rights, only to have his own family ripped apart by the gun violence he championed through silence. The media begged us for compassion.

For what?

For his votes that stripped healthcare from queer youth? For his Sunday sermons about family values while orphans weep in courtrooms because of his legislation? For his denial of gun reform that lit the altar upon which his own child was slaughtered?

No. That is not tragedy. That is symmetry.

There is a sacred, aching joy in watching the dam finally burst upon those who damned us for decades. Joy in watching the viper coiled around their own wrists. Joy in knowing that even in this bloodstained land, the seeds they scattered finally returned in thorns.

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III. Christian Hypocrisy and the Theatre of Victimhood

The conservative evangelical right has long hidden behind the theatre of piety, the choir of hollow “thoughts and prayers” echoing louder than legislation ever could. They pass bills to ban books but not bullets. They cry for the unborn but ignore the bleeding. They label drag queens as threats while handing AR-15s to teenagers.

And when the reckoning comes, they demand to be seen as martyrs.

Martyrs? You are not martyrs. You are necromancers summoning violence and pretending to be shocked when it consumes the village.

Jesus flipped tables. We should flip ballots. And if that does not work, we flip the moral order.

Because their god seems to adore death. Their god blesses billionaires and bullies. Their god demands obedience, not compassion. Their god is a mirror reflecting their own brutality.

Do not tell me to pity them as they crawl through the ashes of policies they cheered. I will not pity a wolf when the trap closes.

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IV. Laugh, Loudly and Without Guilt

There is something profoundly healing in gallows humour. In memes that say “thoughts and prayers don’t plug bullet holes.” In TikToks that point to red states bleeding out while their governors pose with guns like erectile dysfunction props.

This is not petty mockery. It is spiritual resistance.

Laughter is the last weapon of the oppressed. We could not stop the bills. We could not stop the court. But we can point and howl when they finally feel the blade they sharpened for us.

When a governor who banned mask mandates ends up on a ventilator, that is not irony. That is divine comedy. When a congressman votes against disaster relief and watches his district drown, that is not coincidence. That is math.

Conservative pain is not sacred. It is earned.

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V. But What About the Children?

Yes, the children. Always the children. They will suffer for the sins of their fathers. That has always been true. That is not new. That is not our fault.

If your father builds a house of poison, and you drink from its well, the blame is his. And if he was warned, and laughed, and doubled down, the blame is his forever.

It is not our moral responsibility to shield their children from the policies their parents cheered. It is our moral responsibility to save our own.

There is no nobility in throwing ourselves into the fire just to keep theirs warm. Let them walk the path their ballots paved. Let them look their own vote in the eye and call it father.

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VI. When Is It Enough?

It is enough when they learn. It is enough when they repent with policy, not prayer. It is enough when they stop dragging the nation into the grave with them.

Until then, we do not owe them comfort. We owe them consequences.

If a man plants landmines in his yard and dances through the flowers, we are not monsters for refusing to weep when he explodes. We are survivors for warning others not to follow him.

Let the conservative states burn if they must. Let their tears flood the counties where books are banned and guns are gospel. Let the flames rise until even the heavens recoil.

And when the wind shifts and the smoke clears, we will still be standing. Laughing. Breathing. Living. Because we chose not the monster.

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VII. Final Words from the Fire

You are told to forgive them. You are told to comfort them. You are told to see their grief and reach across the aisle.

No.

Reach for the ballot. Reach for the pen. Reach for your own children and pull them away from the ledge that conservative voters built.

And when they fall, when the red tide drowns their own, when the policies they championed return to devour them whole, do not flinch.

Watch. Laugh. Remember.

Because they were warned.

They were warned.

And they chose this.

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Annotated Bibliography

1. Gersen, Jeannie Suk. “The Christian Legal Army Behind the Ban on Abortion.” The New Yorker, 2022.

Provides deep analysis of how conservative voting patterns translate into national suffering, particularly for women and children.

2. Serwer, Adam. “The Cruelty Is the Point.” The Atlantic, 2018.

A foundational piece in understanding how conservative politics are built on the performative infliction of suffering.

3. Schor, Elana. “Tennessee GOP Expels Democrats for Protesting Gun Violence.” Politico, 2023.

Highlights the absurdity of prioritising decorum over dead children. Describes how the Tennessee GOP punished those who dared to care.

4. Brennan Center for Justice. “Voting Laws Roundup.” BrennanCenter.org, multiple years.

Tracks the direct connection between conservative votes and legislative consequences.

5. Lind, Dara. “The Border Is a Manufactured Crisis.” Vox, 2019.

Demonstrates the cruelty of conservative immigration policies and how they backfired economically and socially.

6. Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). “The Politics of Vulnerability.” PRRI Reports, 2022.

Reveals how evangelical voters cling to narratives of persecution while enacting harm upon others.

7. Friedman, Uri. “How the Pandemic Defeated America.” The Atlantic, 2020.

Shows how red-state governors failed to protect their populations and begged for federal help after gutting their own infrastructure.

8. Zernike, Kate. The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science. Scribner, 2023.

Explores broader consequences of conservative anti-intellectualism and its damage to society.

9. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, 1991.

Vital for understanding how conservative policy compounds suffering for marginalised communities.

10. Stevens, Stuart. It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump. Knopf, 2020.

Written by a former Republican strategist, it shows exactly how deliberate the embrace of monstrous policy was.