I'm finally putting the pieces together about this reigning insanity and I don't like what I see.

[tblue37]

18. I think most people who run for high office have a naive notion

about how much freedom they will have to assert their will once in office. I believe they drastically underestimate the power of the oligarchs and their minions in the "shadow" government.

I also think that, as shown in the Alan Alda/Meryl Streep film "The Seduction of Joe Tynan," in the process of getting into high office, the candidate ends up giving in on a myriad of seemingly inconsequential issues and situations, only to find that in the aggregate they box him in once he achieves office.

Nor do I discount the possibility that those in office are subjected sometimes, as you say, to " offers they can't refuse." Where great power and/or great wealth is at stake, many who are wealthy and powerful feel no qualms about committing astonishing evil. In fact, many who are wealthy and powerful got that way specifically because they are sociopaths who have no qualms about anything, no matter how heinous normal human beings might find it.