The Stress Is Real Even if the Bullies Are Nothing More than Bluster and Empty Threats

Everything helps friends! I appreciate you all so much!Thanks for your support: 30% off 💙 40% off 💙 50% off 💙 60% offMy daughters are in high school and grade school. They’re brilliant and beautiful. They’re also what the monsters and predators that work for the corrupt, incel, Republican regime deeply wish to oppress, exploit, torture and traffic.We need to be clear about a few things. It’s not just the regime that’s corrupt, it’s the entire party. The entire party is guilty of violating the Epstein files transparency act. They were supposed to release all the files in December of 2025. They’ve been obstructing this lawful action for more than half a year. They’re complicit. They’re guilty. The entire party is protecting child rapists.The untrained paramilitary forces they’ve been funding with our stolen tax dollars are also corrupt. Consider the inept vetting they perform when they determine which candidates to run. In election after election, the GOP puts forth criminals and sex offenders. That’s the corruption they allow us to see. Imagine what must go on behind closed doors. Imagine the contents of closed files that even an organization without any shame or decency is afraid to release.I can’t help but imagine these things. The images become my daily sleeping and waking nightmares. No matter where I go or what I do, I feel the enormous weight of tension in every muscle in my body.We cannot relax. We haven’t been able to relax since November of 2024. That’s when the knot was tied and it’s only gotten tighter and tighter ever since.Throughout 2025, my family and I sought security in our home. We didn’t travel. How could we? Every time you turned on the news, there were videos of more raids. Innocent people were getting gunned down in the street by anonymous men wearing masks. Conservative media cheered it on with their predictable, dishonest justifications. “They should have complied.”The tension builds. With every lie, with every insult, with every threat, the knot grows tighter and tighter. I’ve been working hard for the past twenty months. I’ve been out interviewing congressional and gubernatorial candidates. I started doing this simply to inject my fears into the mainstream media.You see, the news hasn’t been addressing the stress of the people. You don’t see interviews of mothers who have lost their children to unregulated, out-of-control law enforcement. You don’t see the pain of children who were brought to this country as refugees and then attacked by the population for not speaking English. The media doesn’t cover our pain.So, I sought out candidates to make sure they heard the truth. I gave them my talking points with the hope that those talking points would end up on a debate stage and then make their way into the newspapers.Little by little, it’s started to happen.In March, I had a serious conversation with my wife. She has family in South America. Her mother and her father ache to see their grandchildren. We didn’t get to see them last year. That’s something that’s been taken from her parents that they’ll never get back. Children grow up so fast. Every hour is precious, every minute, every second. So, we decided that we had to travel. We couldn’t let the GOP take any more from us than they’d taken already.The moment we bought the tickets, the threats became more overwhelming. The illegal war intensified, and we were reminded that this administration has removed competent air traffic controllers. Then there was the threat to close down airports in sanctuary cities. Everywhere you looked, you saw some blustering conservative with his thumbs hooked into his belt loops smirking and leering and bragging about his plans to scoop up and torture the innocent.But we went anyway.Getting out of the country wasn’t the concern, you don’t pass through immigration, but I was worried about getting back. Ever since I bought the tickets I was worried. I tried not to think about it, but the pressure builds and builds and builds. The knot grows ever tighter.The talking heads on conservative media make jokes about rape and they laugh and spit on themselves and their eyes flash.I’m a father. I find their antics repulsive.When the plane landed in Chicago, all my nightmares came rushing back at once. All the horrible scenarios I tried to prepare for overwhelmed my thoughts.What if we encountered masked men in body armor? What if they tried to separate me from my children? What if they demanded a cavity search? Would I be able to insist that a woman perform the search rather than one of the horrific male hires with a history of domestic violence? What if... what if... what if?A secondary concern was myself. If they took me, would they allow my wife and children to leave? Could they go home and call up our allies and come and find me?The plane door opened. We walked down the long, shadowed hallway. Our footsteps echoed in eerie silence. Coming back into the country is like entering a fortress. You go through hallway after hallway. It’s a concrete bunker. The walls are gray. There are no pictures or advertising. There are no signs saying, “Welcome.”There were also no men in masks or body armor.It’s silent as you go through the labyrinth of lines marked out by retractable belts. They make you walk ten times farther than necessary. It’s a petty power play to show who is in control.At the end of the line there was a single immigration officer standing next to a camera. I took off my hat before he told me to. I half expected the screen to flash red when it detected my face and for a horde of combatants to rush and tackle me from a secret door in the wall.I looked at the screen. It flashed green. The agent gave me a card and we went through. He didn’t even ask to look at my passport.After we retrieved our bags, we handed the card to another agent and walked through a heavy set of doors. On the other side there were advertisements and color and all the signs of life. “Is that it?” my wife said. “Are we back in?” There were tears in her eyes. She carried the same knot of tension that I did, probably worse.“We’re through,” I said. “It’s done.”In that moment, I recognized the difference between fear and fact. In the end, there had been no threat. In the end, it had been easy. The agents had barely talked to us. There had been no patting down, or questions, or demands to access my smartphone. All of the lies and the bluster and the threats of the GOP had been nothing but a foul wind.But the stress was real. I felt the stress. My wife felt the stress. My kids felt the stress. The stress has been lingering over us since we decided we had to go and see grandma. The stress has been building since the election.The stress is real. The torment of my nightmares is real. The agony of all the horrible, hateful things conservatives say has been something we’ve had to endure for all these awful months.The pain of that is real. The long-term toll on your health and your emotions is real. We’ve had to endure the consequences of conservative cruelty. I’ll never forgive conservatives for that. When the time comes for us to reclaim our country, I will lift my voice and demand that conservatives are held accountable for all the pain they’ve inflicted on the innocent.We made it home without further harassment. I’m glad I made the trip. We traveled based on the hypothesis that the regime was weak. We believed they lied. We believed they were nothing more than disgusting language and crude boasts. Even so, the trip was terrifying.But now we’ve had proof of concept. We know you can still walk through airports and cross borders. We know they are incompetent and inept. We suspected that before we went abroad, but now we’ve walked through the fire and we know.We know.The days are numbered for this incompetent, horrific, anti-humanity movement. It has infected not just our nation, but the entire world. They kept us huddling in fear for a year, but a bully cannot rattle his saber forever and expect to keep the masses cowed.We are rising. We have pierced the veil of their illusion. Their control is slipping and they know it. They’re desperate and afraid. Unlike us, they deserve to be.We will not forget. We will never allow this to happen again. The survivors deserve justice, as do I. As do my wife and children. Innocent people should never feel afraid in a free state.Corrupt people should be afraid. Justice is coming for them.Thanks for your support: 30% off 💙 40% off 💙 50% off 💙 60% offI'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe