Here is a little cautionary tale. Entirely fictional. Any resemblance to existing persons unintentional. I just woke up with this dream and I quickly jotted it down.

I win. As a matter of fact, I told you that already: I told you I have won. I always tell you what is happening. Because I know how your minds work. I know that you can not see the real me, since I am masterminding you by controlling your emotions, by blinding you through your own fear, resentments, and hate, and your own hypocritical belief that you understand me. As if any non-sociopath would really be able to fully understand me. Well, there are some. I can’t bullshit other bullshitters.

It is so simple: (1) If I make you hate me, I have won over you. (2) If I make you hate those I want you to hate, I have won over you. I am a sociopath. I am an expert in this game, and most of you are my pawns. Some of you are helpful (Lenin named you guys the “useful idiots”), but as soon as you are not useful any longer, I will spit you out. By the way, I truly enjoy seeing you, along the ride, ripping your own spine out of your own body, and realizing too late how this has destroyed your lifes, and the lifes of those who love you. Because I am a sadist, too. And those who are my adversaries: I will smash you. Everyone else is entirely irrelevant for me. Just stay out of my way, except you have something I want. I am prepared to make a deal with you, but preferably I will take it away from you.

What I don’t want you to realize is that I give a damn about how you think a win is looking like. For me, winning is about getting the max of what is in for me. Because it is about me, not about democracy.

That is why things are simple for me, right now: I Just have to continue with what I have done all the time: Mounting more pressure, dumping more lies, firing more people, sowing more confusion and fear, answering any threat with just more escalation, never ever giving in, always responding to facts with yelling “Fake”. Making my adversaries feeling exasperated and their guts filled with the excruciating pain of helpless fury and anger.

Because, may be it works and I win and stay in office. But if I can’t, I will have made so many people angry with the mess I will have created that more and more people will blame my adversary (you know, the one who says he has won the elections). It is really easy! I smash and let people blame him. I just say “I fight for the will of the people”, whilst I really do nothing else than smashing things. I told you already, I am a sadist.

It will force my adversaries to make a deal with me. Do they really want to see 71 million voters being angry when prosecutors try to arrest me? And if I am lucky, I am going to be a double-winner: I am getting my deal, and I see my adversary being morally discredited because he had to give me the deal I forced him to hand over to me. Sadists love humiliating other people.

I will win by forcing people to make a deal with me. And until I get my deal, I will make 74 million people walk blind in their fear and hate, and I will make 71 million people walk blind in their triumph and hate.

So, I am doubling down. I fire people. I stack the levels underneath the top of departments with loyalists. I make sure that my adversary feels more and more pressure by wondering whether, and how much, of my doing can be undone. I don’t care about how much can be undone. I only care about my pokerface: Creating fear and anxiety, resentment, and hate on one side, and drunken triumph and hate on the other side. And by golly: There are so many things I can make difficult and smash. I don’t even need to plan it, they will come along my way and I just pick them, between twittlering, watching TV, flying on fancy aircrafts, having burgers, and playing golf.

So, I will push things to the melting point. And my adversary knows this already. Because he knows, he does something pretty smart. He deploys the best current weapon possible: Calmness, and showing he has a plan. I guess he knows that this weapon might loose it’s cutting edge soon. He might desperately need a cavalry coming in not too far from now.

But don’t forget, here is my secret, plain out in the open: In my world, I am better at smashing things than The Hulk is. I will never concede. And if you decide to smash me, chances are that this will turn against you. I will have divided you, and I will have conquered you. Because I incite your hate, instill your fears, make you blind with nervosity, so that I can feed off from your hate. It’s the oldest trick in the world.

I told you, I win. If only the nagging feeling would disappear that my adversaries understand this, that there are enough smart people understanding this as well, that they manage to keep things together, and that they have found my Achilles’ Heel.