Jaci Turner

Let the walls remember us.
Let them remember the ones
who still know the difference
between honor
and glitter.

And I am standing in these halls,
even from far away,
and I feel the weight of the second one.

This house was built
for the people.
The humble.
The tired.
The hopeful.
The broken.
The rebuilding.

Not for the man who wants the world
to know his hands have touched gold.

will say —
“He has earned his gold”?

No.

There is a kind of wealth
that makes a room warmer
because it is shared.
There is another
that makes the air heavy
because it demands to be seen.

Do you think this makes you king?

Do you think the mother
counting the cost of bread in the aisle
will look up at her phone
and whisper —
“Oh, look at him.
He is shining for us.”

Do you think the fathers
who have set aside their own hungers
to feed small mouths

But now —
there is gold where there should be oak.
Gleam where there should be grace.
A mirror held up not to the people,
but to the man who believes
his reflection is the nation.

I want to ask him,
quietly,
the way one asks a child who has broken something sacred:

The House Was Never Meant to Shine Like This
by Jaci Turner

I walk through rooms I’ve never been in,
but I know them.

I know the hush of the walls,
the portraits that watch
with the slow patience of history,
the way light falls differently
on places meant for service
instead of spectacle.

someone finally remembers
what loyalty was supposed to mean.

Every time they rise without merit,
the rest of us fall a little further—
into cynicism, exhaustion,
and the quiet fear
that integrity might never matter again.

But here’s the truth they can’t erase:
Every empire of loyalty
crumbles the moment

We used to ask what someone knew—
now we just ask who they’ll kneel to.

Their résumés are short,
but their loyalty is long.
And somehow,
that’s enough to lead a nation.

They say critics “hate America.”
No—
we love it too much
to hand it to people
who can’t even spell decency.

#TheWeekend Democracy depends on truth, but also on conscience. What happens when a nation begins to confuse cruelty for strength and apathy for freedom? Can democracy survive if moral courage becomes optional?

So I will rise with voice and flame,
Refusing silence, fear, or shame.
Not just for me, but all who see,
This fight is for our liberty.

They dream a world that looks the same,
Then brand that sameness with God’s name.

But I was born to walk with all,
Not raise a flag to build a wall.
Not sell my soul for power’s grin,
Or guard a past soaked deep in sin.

Voice and Flame
by Jaci Turner

I will not bow to walls of hate,
Nor let fear dictate our fate.
A land once rich in voice and skin,
Now fenced to keep the “other” in.

They speak of pride, but veil their dread,
Of cultures vast and truths they’ve shed.

🧵

Every generation has a moment when silence breaks. This might be ours — a chorus of voices reminding power who it truly serves.

I just added, “Trump turns on his most trusted loyalists to blame for what can no longer be spun” to my Trump bingo card.

But now we watch the structures fall—
A kingdom pixel-thin, after all.

For governing isn’t score or fame,
It’s bearing weight, not chasing blame.
And those who play at power’s art
Can’t heal a land they’ve torn apart.

And fed the crowd its favorite fears.
They built their castles out of noise,
And crowned themselves as clever boys.

They claimed that experts blocked their view,
That facts were lies, and lies were true.

The Gamers Took the Throne
by Jaci Turner

They mistook the world for a game to play,
Where truth could bend and rules decay.
They pressed their keys and pulled their strings,
And called their chaos “governing things.”

They mocked the minds who’d studied years,

🧵

And yet—
you are not alone.
Even if government locks its doors,
your work,
your worth,
your humanity
will not shut down

You deserve more than to be pawns
in someone else’s game of power.
You chart storms,
you study skies,
you serve because service matters.

Across the country,
families like ours sit waiting,
anger burning steady—
a coal of betrayal at leaders
who gamble with your lives.

To Those Who Serve
by Jaci Turner for Dave

Tonight the nation holds its breath,
and you hold the weight of not knowing.
Will tomorrow bring work,
or silence,
or a notice that says you are no longer needed?

🧵

We rush forward blind,
pretending the mirror of history
is only decoration,
not instruction.

And still we rise,
hand in hand with the echoes,
saying what they once said:
not again,
not this time,
not without a fight.

The past is not past.
It circles,
like an old song on a scratched record,
asking whether we’ve learned
or only endured.

But we have not learned,
because we refuse to look—
we do not study the fractures,
we do not sit with the scars.

But here it is again,
not as memory
but as headline,
as law,
as threat whispered loud.

My generation feels the weight twice—
once in the living,
once in the remembering.
We carry their voices in our bones,
and now add our own.

Echoes
by Jaci Turner

My parents spoke of it—
how fear could slip into the cracks
of a country’s voice,
how leaders could twist
what was sacred
into something sharp.

I thought their stories were warnings,
chapters safely pressed
between the pages of history.

🧵

The archives betrayed a congresswoman—
her unredacted life released
into rival hands,
her service, her secrets,
scattered like torn pages
in a wind of backlash.
Exposed in the name of
political gain.

Still, beyond the headlines,
there are quiet rooms
where care is given,
laws are studied,
and voices rise—
insisting on steadiness,
on fact,
on hope that will not bend
to the spectacle.

I read these stories,
one stacked on another,
like sandbags against a flood.
And I wonder
when we traded
the sober weight of truth
for the clamor of performance,
when we accepted
theatrics as governance,
or if we ever had a choice.

The slip is replayed
while mothers and doctors
scramble to steady
what fear and rumor
threaten to unravel.

Behind the noise,
a government shakes,
its workers bracing for furloughs,
its families for silence
in paychecks that may never arrive.