Night Gets Later and the Conversations Get Louder.

There he was, in one of those corner bars that sells empty promises alongside the drink. He spoke loudly, as if the whole world wanted to hear, pontificating on “security” like it was a prayer. He was one of those figures you find everywhere, chest puffed with certainties and eyes lit up with his own rhetoric. He swore that everything would be fixed if everyone obeyed “the laws, the order, and of course, authority.” I don’t know if it was the tone or the way he held his glass, but for a second, he seemed to believe he was holding something greater, as if that notion of control was his personal religion. Security was his delusion, and he wanted us all to drink it down.

I sat there, watching, half-silent, swallowing the urge to laugh. Sometimes I wonder what these speeches do to us, we who listen to everything, almost without a reaction. The world is exhausted, fractured, and still some insist it’s better to contain than to release, to silence rather than listen. There’s something morbid in this thirst for order, a hidden violence, masquerading as good intentions. It’s not peace they want; it’s silence, the comfort of a population that won’t disturb, that will stay quiet while they decide what’s right. And this is how it always starts. A toast to security, another to the “duty to keep quiet.” Today, it’s just bar talk; tomorrow, it’s rule and law.

I watched him carefully, his fingers clasped around the glass, his words all lit up but hiding a deeper fear—maybe he couldn’t even see it himself, but it was there. Maybe he knew his vision was a well-crafted lie, a trick to conceal his fear of the chaos outside. And as I recognized that hidden fear, something inside me faltered, a shadow of doubt. Maybe, deep down, I envied that arrogant sense of security, that delusion of power. Who knows—maybe, despite my contempt, I wanted a taste of that same certainty.

Deep down, what’s really being sought with all this control? Those who need imposed peace don’t want security; they just want to hide their own fractures. It’s easy to demand silence when you’re the one holding the hammer, but the truth is, we’re a society of masks. The man preaching obedience lives, himself, on the edge of panic, terrified that the chaos will find him. And me? Who am I to judge? Isn’t it some of that same thirst that makes me sit here, swallowing every word of his like an alluring poison? Who am I fooling, listening to him as if it’s anything more than an excuse for my own cowardice?

The bar was crowded, the air heavy with talk and smoke. Every word seemed to echo, sticking to the silence like an invisible layer of dust. That scene was one of those small, everyday tragedies where no one dares to speak what they really think. How did we all end up here, in a place where silence’s echo is imposed by the noise? Who, in the end, is really listening? Me? Him? You? Does it even matter?

But even as I think this, I know that this scene is playing out elsewhere—right now, across the earth. In Washington, Jerusalem, Ankara, Berlin, Amsterdam. Across hundreds of cities and bars, the same ugly little truth is repeating itself, over and over, as the night gets later and the conversations get louder. That same security peddled and swallowed like cheap whiskey, that same silence exchanged for safety, the same empty comfort of obedience—until there’s nothing left but an entire world sitting quietly, cradling its fears, too drunk to remember what it lost.