Vote Against The Illuminati

Tomorrow is Election Day. I'll get back to that in a minute.
 
But first . . . Once upon a time I did not believe in conspiracy theories. That's why I enjoyed creating Illuminati and INWO. They showed the world through the eyes of a few complete nutballs, and it was a fun place to visit.
 
Things have changed, and not in a good way. The Internet made it easy for the nutballs to find each other and set up an echo chamber, and a tragic number of people found the simplicity of a Great Evil Conspiracy to be very attractive, compared to the messy complexities of the real world.
 
Also, some people REALLY ARE awful, and the net let THEM get together, too.
 
So now I really do believe in one conspiracy theory. If we were to diagram it as an INWO card layout, it would look like this . . .
 
At the center we have the Illuminati, of course. If we have to pick an analog from the game the Gnomes of Zurich are closest, though the power-mad Bavarians run a close second. At any rate, the real Illuminati here are a loose, but busy, cabal of billionaires who range from "very conservative" through "extremist," plus more than a few of those complete nutballs we were talking about. Between them, they have trillions of dollars to buy everything from individual votes to Supreme Court decisions. And they do.
 
Surrounding the billionaires are their high-level puppets. I'd assign those slots to:
 
• Donald Trump. He, in turn, controls the (Fanatic, Violent, Criminal, zero Power but high Transferrable Power) MAGAs. He thinks he controls the Republicans, but they are only paying lip service to him; they are clients of the billionaires.
 
• The Republican Party. The once-patriotic GOP has become a creature of the billionaires' whims. Yes, there are some decent Republicans left, but just by accepting the party's label they owe their positions to corruption. The Republicans, in turn, control the House of Representatives (still narrowly).
 
• The Supreme Court. You read the newspapers, right? Enough said. This pickup took decades for the Gnomes to achieve, and it's been worth every penny.
 
• Russia. Putin himself is part of the billionaire's club. The country, nukes and all, is his personal fiefdom.
 
We could extend this out to another level of extremists (hello NRA! Hello Cycle Gangs!) and puppets who won't admit who pulls their strings (hello, hello, Big Media!) but you get the idea.
 
Yep, I believe in one conspiracy now, and that's the one. No flat earth. No faked moon landings. Just a few people with a sizeable proportion of the world's wealth and the conviction that it makes them superior to the masses. And a lot of useful idiots, permitted to think they are free right up until they stop being useful.
 
After this election, you could be their property. It's the Golden Rule . . . When you have all the gold, you make all the rules.
 
So, getting back to the election. It's very important that you vote. You can't vote against the Illuminati who are trying to suck America dry. All you can do is vote against their tools. At this stage of the game that is ALL you can do, but it's a start.
 
Please vote for Kamala Harris. Please vote for the Democratic candidates for state and national offices. Even if you feel that the Democratic platform is terrible. Because if the Democrats win, you'll at least be guaranteed another vote in four years. If the Illuminati win, it's game over.
   
-- Steve Jackson