Somebody said truth and victory are interchangeable. He said it like it was obvious. Like he was reading a street sign. But that is a sentence that took me seventy-five years to understand. Truth and victory are the same word if you wait long enough.

Every cop who arrested me is retired or dead. Every law they enforced got repealed. Every judge who signed the warrant is buried. I am still talking. Not because I won. Because I was right. And being right long enough looks exactly like winning.

On the corner you do not win arguments. You outlast them. The guy who tells you to move along goes home at the end of his shift. You are still there in the morning. That is not stubbornness. That is truth with its shoes on. Truth does not need to convince anybody. It just needs to not leave.

They legalized the weed. They tore down the laws. They put the music in everybody's pocket. Everything I sang about came true. Not because I was a prophet. Because I was patient. The truth is the victory. The victory is the truth. Same word. Different shoes. You just have to wait long enough to see them standing next to each other.

See also: The Vocabulary — the words caught up to the experience. The Three Words — Sinclair on Liberty, Unity, Victory. Forty Pages — bureaucracy outlasting the busker. The Arrest — every cop who arrested him is retired or dead. Ten for Two — Sinclair's sentence, truth outlasting the law. The Proof — Sun Ra on what stands up when everything else falls.