The Game

The election had been a joke, a 1.3-billion-dollar joke.  During the last few days of the farcical show The Leader had danced on stage and rambled about personal vindictiveness and paranoia.  There was no sense to any of it.  He knew that he was going to “win”.  He knew that he was just biding time.  The billionaires had told him this and so when he simply ran out of things to say he bided his time in public as a flabbergasted public looked on.

Some of his minions were worried.  The Leader was not.

“Sir!”  they would say.  “You have to have an agenda.  You have to something, at least pretend…”

“I tell the truth and my followers want the truth.”  He would interject.

“I tell them the truth.  And you know what they want to know?!”

The Leader paused.

“Um, yessir.  What do they want to know?  The truth?”

The Leader smirked.  He could smell the fear and confusion.

“Yeessss.”  He said slowly.

“They want to know that they are right.  They want to know that they will be vindicated.  I know what they want.  They want to win.  The problem is that everybody thinks this is serious.  It’s a rigged game.  Not just this, but the system.  And so you have to know how to play the system.  And you have to know how to play people.  I am the best at both.  I am a master.  So don’t come and tell me what I need to do.  I’ll tell you what I need to do!”

The minion stood silently.  Then, The Leader laughed.

“It’s a game.  It’s a game!”

The minion was confused.

“It’s all just a game.”