How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Oppression.

By Douglas Quaid

There are few things more humbling than waking up after a revolution, expecting confetti, and instead finding paperwork. Not the celebratory kind; no “Freedom Accomplished” banner or complimentary tote bag, but the drudgery of liberation’s aftermath: atmospheric recalibration requests, sewage flow disputes, and, inexplicably, a daily sausage count. Revolutions are sexy in theory. They come with slogans, cool jackets, and a soundtrack heavy on electric guitar. But after the air clears and the bodies are counted and the rebels start asking who’s in charge of the tax code, you realize: nobody actually planned for Tuesday.

Look, I'm smiling.

I thought we’d won. We toppled the regime. We unseated Vilos Cohaagen, the man who once tried to suffocate an entire sector just to make a point about executive authority. I watched him tumble into the Martian dust, arms flailing like a fascist rotisserie chicken.

And then we held an election.

Yes, a real, honest-to-God election. Ballots, debates, smear ads, “I Voted Against the Tyrant I Previously Overthrew” stickers. Democracy had finally come to Mars.

And somehow, with a voting population composed almost entirely of former miners and aspiring podcasters, they elected Cohaagen.

The same Cohaagen.

He’d rebranded, of course. Softer lighting, new PR team, slogans like “Order with Oxygen” and “Let’s Reboot Martian Greatness.” But it was still him. The jowls, the glare, the accent that might be Dutch, might be Latvian, or might just be that he's always at least a bit drunk, which might just mean he's Latvian. It's a little circular.

Within a week, he’d reinstated the old regime. Not just the rules, the entire vibe. Gray jumpsuits, surveillance bugs in the restrooms, and mandatory loyalty oaths for anyone waiting to use the public restrooms. Only now, it was worse. Curfews started at 3 p.m. You needed clearance to exhale dramatically.

At first, I was furious. Then I looked around and saw people were... fine with it. Not just fine, they were relieved. They liked the structure. The rules. The illusion of stability wrapped in totalitarian plastic wrap.

That’s when it hit me: I’m not risking my life again for people who want to be oppressed. Or worse, for people who just want to take turns being the oppressors.

And look, Cohaagen isn’t even running Mars well. He’s not. Infrastructure’s crumbling. The atmosphere tastes like wet Band-Aids. We’ve had rolling blackouts in Sector G for eight weeks, and no one seems to know if it’s a power issue or just Gary pedaling slower on the backup bike.

But nobody blames him. Cohaagen or Gary.

Instead, people mutter about how things went downhill when all these newcomers arrived. You know. “Those people.”

Which is rich, considering everyone here is an immigrant. It’s Mars. Nobody popped out of a crater fully formed. If you got here by shuttle, you don’t get to complain about someone else doing the same slightly after you.

And yet, it starts: whisper campaigns, dog whistles, “jokes” about how certain groups have “too much control” over the oxygen supply. You don’t have to squint hard to see where it’s going.

When a society starts fraying, people always look for someone to blame. The foreigner. The outsider. And, depressingly often, the Jews. Somehow, no matter where you are, Earth, Mars, the icy outskirts of Jupiter, it always ends up circling back there. It’s not just cruel; it’s lazy. A knee-jerk fallback for people too scared to admit the system failed because they voted for it.

I still see the resistance sometimes, near the edge of the dome, chanting slogans that used to stir something in me. I wave. They don’t wave back. Maybe because I’m wearing a tie with little rockets on it and drinking from a government-issued coffee tumbler from Cohaagen Industries. Or maybe because they know what I know: we gave them a choice, and they chose Cohaagen.

Me? I’ve stopped resisting the tide. I’ve got a desk. A window. Dental. My badge opens six doors and one drawer I’m afraid to open. Sometimes I think about tearing it all down again. But then I remember: we already did that. And they voted him back in. Let them suffocate in the smothering embrace of faux-security.

Cohaagen may be Dutch. Or Latvian. Or a ketamine-addled fever dream. But he knows how to look like he's in charge.

And the rest? They just want someone else to blame. I wonder how the colonization of Ganymede is going?