reformists be like "I'll climb the barbed ladder to power in order to change the system from within" and don't realize once they've summited they'll be drained just as bloodless as the rest of em
they don't know that they've been ensnared by the One Ring
was writing an effort post about the contrapoints image macro, as a sleepless come-down from raging at the DNC, about the reality of power and reform, but midway through I lost the hot rage. 's one of the bits I conjured.
snippet here. keep in mind I was operating 36 hours of wakefulness writing it
I find myself disagreeing that the well-worn cliche that 'power corrupts' is the sole reason for this. It's more so that every rung of the ladder is barbed, and a starry-eyed reformist is eager to scale it rung-after-rung so they can finally effect real change, until they finally make it to the top and are faced with the fact that they've been drained dry–a bloodless husk like all the other suits.