Here at Eunomia the upcoming midterms have been the main topic of discussion for the past several weeks, and young Larison has offered a great many comments on the likely outcome of the election and why it is desirable and fitting that the incumbent party loses its hold on power in the legislature that you colonials call Congress.  While we understand what Larison means by all of this, and we think he means no harm, this has caused the rest of us a great deal of consternation, since we were all agreed that there was very little good to be said in favour of democracy and we were of one mind that elections were massive frauds perpetrated on the supposed masters of the system, the voters.  Could you imagine anything like the spectacle of an election with its parade of self-serving sycophants seeking sinecures of state, its disputes more vain than Philoponos’ mad trio of gods and its promises as transitory as a structure made of ice in the Kalahari?  Is it not clear that the Phthartocracy, for so we have named it, reaches deeply into every crevace and nook of the ruling class, and that virtually none is free–and none of us is really free–from the grasp of the moneyed interest? 

As the Phthartocracy grows ever stronger, its grip ever tighter on every aspect of our lives, we perform the august, duly appointed ritual of squabbling over which of the factions will be less likely to rob and cheat us this year, while the Phthartocrats make sure that we will be continually robbed and cheated more and more.  The factions have their loyal followers, as does every superstitious cult, but in their division not only saw the commonwealth in two but distract us from the overarching purposes of the Phthartocracy, which is to concentrate wealth and power more and more into but a few hands relative to the whole of the people and keep the people busy cheering on their respective factions like the mobs of old as they fought and bled for the colours of the charioteers.  Woe to the nation beset by faction!  Doomed is the polity that cares for its factions more than for the res publica!  The Phthartocracy feeds on division and exults in the scattered, confused and fragmented people who lack devotion to a common good; the factions are its lifeblood, the contrived battles between them its oxygen, the mutual fear they generate the source of its perpetual rule.  Buying control of high places, the Phthartocracy then buys the people with their own money and ensures that their servants are never truly out of power.  Only a national party transcending factions could hope to combat the thousand thousand tentacles of the Phthartocracy.  Only a turn to eunomia and an end to the delusions of strange contractarian notions can break out of their crushing squeeze.  We are certain that young Larison would agree.  ~Caleb d’Anvers, The New Craftsman