"Just Following Orders": The Short-Term Paycheck That Costs Our Future

There is a phrase that has echoed across history, one that is as dangerous as it is familiar: “I’m just following orders.” We heard it in the darkest chapters of the past, and now, in subtle and overt ways, we hear it again in our own time. It’s a phrase meant to absolve individuals of responsibility, to suggest that survival — a paycheck, a career, or simply the ability to put food on the table — is reason enough to turn away from the consequences of one’s actions. But let us ask the hard question: if your paycheck comes at the cost of destroying the very freedoms, resources, and dignity your family depends on, is it truly worth it?

We live in a nation where families are struggling to afford the basics — housing, food, healthcare, education — and yet, many of our own citizens have been turned into enforcers of policies that deepen that suffering. Some wear a uniform, some carry a badge, some sit behind a desk, but all are woven into the machinery of corporate capture. A government that was meant to protect its people has been reshaped into a pipeline for profit — detention centers, surveillance contracts, policing for dollars, and bureaucracies that treat people not as humans, but as commodities. And who carries it out? Ordinary people. Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters — people who convince themselves that the short-term paycheck they collect will somehow secure their children’s future, even as the very system they serve takes that future away.

So I ask you: how long can this illusion last? How long can we believe that we are “protecting” our families when the very structure of our work erodes their tomorrow? You may tell yourself, “I don’t have a choice — I need this job, I need to feed my children.” But at what cost? The truth is that the paycheck you depend on today could be the chain that binds your children tomorrow. When you enforce policies that strip others of rights, dignity, and resources, you are also stripping them from yourself and your descendants. Every detention, every eviction, every silenced voice — it echoes back into your own home, your own community, and your own bloodline.

History shows us what happens when obedience is placed above humanity. In 1933, men and women said the same words: “I’m not a monster, I’m just following orders.” But the world did not accept that as an excuse then, and it cannot be accepted now. The difference today is that the orders you are following are not simply born of ideology — they are born of money. Behind every action is a profit sheet, a shareholder demand, a corporate entity feeding on the machinery of enforcement. You may think you are serving your government, but in truth you are serving the capture of your nation by corporations who see both you and the people you police as tools to be exploited.

And here is the greatest tragedy: those who follow orders under this system are hurting their own families. The corporations and political elites who profit from your obedience will not protect your children when housing becomes unaffordable, when healthcare is denied, when wages stagnate, or when food is out of reach. They will not be there when the freedoms you sacrificed are no longer recoverable. You may think you are choosing between morality and survival, but the survival you cling to is only temporary — because this system was designed to make sure that in the end, you will have nothing.

So let us confront this together. Do you want to look back years from now and tell your children that you traded their future for a paycheck that vanished as quickly as it came? Do you want to say you stood by while your government and corporations stripped away everything that makes life worth living, all because you were “just following orders”? Or will you recognize the truth — that accountability belongs to all of us, that courage means refusing to participate in harm, and that our duty is not just to feed our families today, but to protect the world they will inherit tomorrow?

The time has come to choose. Not between work and starvation, as the system wants you to believe, but between complicity and humanity. Between obedience to a corporate order, and loyalty to the generations that will carry your name. The short-term paycheck may feel like survival — but in reality, it is the slow destruction of everything you hope to save. And only you, only us together, can decide if we will keep “just following orders,” or if we will finally rise to protect our families, our communities, and our future.