The Best Slaves by Far

The illusion of choice that forms the facade
       of the elaborate ritual  political charade
              that democracies (functional or not)
                            are wont to smugly flaunt
must be maintained irrespective of cost.

The serfs  after all   must never get a glimpse
of the big lie that lies behind the big glitzy wall
of sheer misdirection  that is electoral spectacle.


Principally serving
as the obligatory  legitimacy-conferring veneer
adhered to the surface of corrupted governance

elections   have always been employed
       as ploys to imply  undeniable consent;
as props   the gods of politics saw fit to invent
to shore up the fiction that is the benevolent state;

       as pillars to bolster
       the empirically risible notion that voters
       have — through their right to cast ballots —
                            been granted substantive say;

              as plinths   to underpin the myth
              of the state meaningfully heeding
              the people's feeble  ever-pleading voice.

Such being the case
the tawdry facade that projects
                            the assuasive illusion of choice

must  — as our most effectively deceptive rulers
have so much sooner than later learned —
                     be gussied up and reinforced
                                          at each and every turn.


As typified  by how they're only too willing
              to have themselves cheerfully thrown
                            into their very own digital prisons
for something as trivial as increased convenience

       believing they're free   the best slaves by far
       are always the ones who don't know they are

slaves     who by lavishing frank praise
upon those they fail to perceive as their masters
       evince utter ignorance of their virtual captivity
enamoured as they are of their mesmerizing captors.