Voting for Your Favorite Sock Puppet (a false happy face with a fist inside)

The people have the power but we do not want it. We think we do, and we like our little power drips (not a typo) – like making a purchase we can not afford, manipulating lights and sounds on a screen with a joystick, or giving a hostile puerile one finger gesture to a rival – but we don’t want the real power; not the waterfall. That power must be passed over to those who can handle all the contempt we pour on them for exercising it; for disappointing us in their use of the power we handed over to them; the power we handed over to them because we did not want the responsibility that comes with wielding legitimate power instead of yielding it.

When we vote for someone, we hand our power over to someone else. And we also hand over any right to hold them accountable. Power and accountability go together. You have both or you have neither. You can have the burden of fully human functionality, or you can have someone to blame. We can not hand over our power, and then have the right to expect that power to be used in ways that we wish. We gave it up. It is no longer ours. We did not want the responsibility, the accountability of our own power. We wanted to feel right and righteous, to feel good about ourselves.

We want to ignore that shame hole that is hidden there right next to our faces, so we give others the power and then blame them. We prefer someone to blame, so we vote for someone.

And you may be certain that they fully intend to use it. They do not have to use it in a way that pleases us because it’s our power and we handed it over to them. And they will almost certainly not use it in a way that pleases us. Why should they? They have cultivated the mental sickness of burying all shame - their own shame plus the blame we will lay upon them - so why should they care how we want them to use the power we give to them?

We vote for candidates. Rather, we think we do. We do not really vote for candidates. Candidates are the brightly painted facades in front of those who control them. The puppeteers behind the facades present two candidates to us – sometimes more – so we can be made to feel we have power, the power to choose. And we do have the power to choose. We choose one finger on that one conniving hand. The one house has two facades, but there is still just one house, and everyone in it knows the game, embraces the game, manipulates the game, loves the game. The house is dark. The curtains are drawn. Any music that is playing is merely to keep us dancing.

They are welcomed into the house because they offer the most money, the best looking groupies, the purest cocaine, or the most desired treatment in the media. They have the most compromising blackmail pictures. They have cultivated the most loyalty, injected the most fear, enslaved others to the most useful moral weaknesses. They are the best at the rhetoric and the spin. They have the best rhetoric about making the world a good place. "Vote for me to make the world a good place." So say the ones in the dark house. And we believe them. Why? Because it helps us feel good about ourselves as we hand over the power.

Power: from us to the candidates to the puppeteers. But who are these puppeteers? And do they know that, beneath the spin and rhetoric, they are all in the same club? That they are all the same? And does the power transfer stop with them? Is it a conscious conspiracy, or are they merely deceived by an even higher level deceiver by which they are ultimately consumed? Do those with the most money spend that money on behalf of some ultimate source? Do the high level pimps and dealers work for a Number One Pimp and Dealer? Do the accomplished liars owe their position to an even better liar, lurking even deeper in the house? Are the fear mongers themselves terrified? Are the manipulators being manipulated? You may be certain of it.

So who sits back in the furthest, darkest place in the power room – pulling the strings of the puppeteers who pull the strings of the puppets? Who is there when you go back as far as you can go? How many are there? How many steps are there before you get to the ultimate source? It does not matter, because it is clear who that source is. The source is the devil. And who is the devil? The devil is you and I – giving up our power. The ultimate source is you and I – unwilling to wield the power that is legitimately our own, and in any case, unable to wield it in a way that makes the world a good place.