In the smog-choked labyrinth of Washington, D.C.—that sacred urinal of American authority—another curtain of theater has been pulled back to reveal the grotesque stagehands behind the illusion of order. The Metropolitan Police Department, once again, has been caught falsifying crime statistics, padding their decline in violence with the same gleeful enthusiasm a televangelist reserves for fake healings. At the exact moment the White House wheezed out martial proclamations about taking over D.C.’s policing—citing lawlessness and “urban decay”—internal emails, whistleblowers, and forensic reports showed the police were cooking the books like greasy grifters on a last-ditch con. One precinct commander had allegedly instructed officers to downgrade felonies into misdemeanors, and shootings into paperwork errors, feeding the public a numerical lullaby while the city’s wounds festered unacknowledged.
All this might seem scandalous, if not for the dull fact that it’s happened before—and will happen again. The police, the federal government, the mayors, the pundits: all arms of the same crooked organism. When power lies, it doesn’t do so from behind a curtain—it screeches its delusions into a gold-plated microphone. The President himself, frothing with performative rage and blubbering nationalism, announced the deployment of 800 National Guard troops. His press secretary, lips trembling with a cocktail of ignorance and indignation, screeched that “it’s about safety,” while actual safety—defined by dignity, shelter, and fairness—lay rotting in city gutters. The National Guard marched in not to serve, but to symbolize the state’s divine right to coerce.
And what, really, is that divine right? The President invokes laws; the police invoke procedure; the clergy invoke God. But beneath the velvet robes of constitutional democracy and institutional religion is the same naked truth: authority is imposed, never chosen. Power is not granted by consent of the governed—it is inherited through coercion, mythology, and well-groomed lies. Representative democracy was never a pact between equals, but a performance for the audience in the cheap seats—a centuries-old scheme by which the few hold the many in place through the illusion of participation.
The numbers were never meant to reflect reality. They were meant to control perception. The city’s forensic lab was exposed for falsifying hundreds of arrival times to crime scenes, manufacturing competency where only negligence bloomed. The Office of Inspector General called the manipulation “deeply troubling.” That phrase, so polite, so insufficient, echoes like a whisper in a collapsing cathedral. There is no room for polite horror anymore. The system isn’t broken. It was always built to be this.
Residents of D.C.—people with actual skin in the game, whose lives do not float on pensions and private security—watched the whole charade unfold like a carnival run by sadistic clowns. They knew that crime doesn’t fall just because numbers do. They live the reality while officials sell the illusion. They watch as police chiefs shriek about “rising threats,” their tongues flicking like market analysts—hedging bets, moving narratives, securing funding. In backroom offices, administrators scribble out public safety reports like accountants on amphetamines, not to tell the truth, but to frame it for profit.
In committee rooms, on press podiums, and in corporate boardrooms, the great con continues. From clergy to Congress, from think tanks to pulpits, the same ancient dance plays out: fear sells, obedience comforts, and those who question the script are branded as threats. The goal of power has never been order—it has always been compliance. Not harmony, but hierarchy. What began in empires and monarchies now breathes through parliaments and parishes. The costumes change. The con remains.
Even Mayor Bowser, who has rightly condemned the federal takeover as “unsettling,” plays a role in the pantomime. Her office boasted about falling crime statistics while the police beneath her quietly reclassified victims out of existence. The entire architecture of representative governance is a ventriloquist act, where every voice of dissent is still routed through the institutions of control. Whether blue-tied or red-hatted, politicians serve not their constituents, but the abstract machinery of authority itself.
In churches, temples, and campaign rallies, the faithful are promised redemption or reform, always tomorrow, never today. These are the hymns of every con: “Be patient.” “Vote harder.” “Believe in the process.” Meanwhile, the reality beneath the script is unchanged: one class governs, one class serves. One class dictates law, the other obeys it. The ballot box and the confessional are mirrors, reflecting back the fantasy that authority can be moral if only the right person holds it.
And still, it is the people—the citizens, the workers, the children, the elders—who carry this collapsing house on their backs. They are the quiet antidote to the violent imposition of order. They resist not with rifles but with meals shared, with gardens planted, with laughter that cannot be policed. Their revolution is soft-spoken and radical: they do not seek to become power, but to dissolve its myth entirely.
They gather in community centers, in basements, in parks—teaching children to think critically, to live without fear, to question everything, even their teachers. They speak not of policy, but of peace. Not of reform, but of refusal. Theirs is a philosophy that mirrors the Tao, the Dharma, the wind through an old pine: nothing imposed, everything in relation. They do not seek leaders. They do not seek saviors. They seek each other.
And this terrifies those in power.
The President howls about “taking back our streets.” Police chiefs oink about “restoring trust.” Senators bellow about “the rule of law.” But these are the cries of cornered illusionists, desperate to keep the trick going. They cannot offer real safety, because their institutions feed on the very instability they claim to oppose. They cannot offer truth, because truth would raze their golden thrones to ash.
The media, mostly captive, plays along. Headlines frame the debate in terms of “strategy” and “policy,” as if power were a technical problem, not a moral disease. CNN gives airtime to generals. MSNBC promotes electoral saviors. The New York Times ponders the effectiveness of data-driven policing as if the data itself weren’t carved from human manipulation.
But in the cracks of the empire’s marble walls, the real world pulses. Real people speak not in slogans but in stories—of loss, of love, of refusal to be governed by lies. They share what they have, and ask little in return. They dismantle power by denying it their attention. And in that quiet rebellion, there is more democracy than a thousand elections could ever provide.
It becomes obvious, then, that democracy—true democracy—cannot be represented. It cannot be institutionalized. It cannot be commanded or codified. It lives only in direct relation, in mutual respect, in the conscious refusal to rule or be ruled. No law, no congress, no pastor can bestow it. It must be lived, daily, fiercely, with eyes open and fists unclenched.
We do not need better leaders. We need no leaders at all. We do not need reform—we need to abandon the rigged casino entirely. What we call “government” is merely the performance of control, dressed up in ritual and bureaucracy. What we call “faith” is too often a franchise of obedience. The truth? Nobody is coming to save you. But your neighbor might help you plant a garden. Your community might cook you dinner. And in that act, sacred and simple, is everything the system fears.
The takeover of Washington’s police force was never about safety. It was never about order. It was just the latest mask on an ancient face. That face grins from pulpits, campaigns, and courtroom benches. It whispers: “Obey.” It shouts: “Trust me.” And it lies every time it opens its mouth.
So let us no longer argue about whether this system can be fixed. Let us no longer waste energy voting for different masks. The con only works if we believe in it. Let us stop believing.
Conclusion
All authority, in its essence, is a lie wrapped in ritual. It is imposed, never invited. It demands obedience, cloaked as consent. Whether through religious decree or democratic procedure, it sells the same old myth: that salvation comes from the top. But salvation—if it exists—can only come from within, and from one another.
There is no reforming the con. It must be walked away from, eyes wide open, heart unbound. Let there be no rulers, no masters, no middlemen of morality. Only people, relating to people. Only truth, when spoken without fear. Only peace, when no one demands it at gunpoint.
Footnotes
- Allegations of the MPD commander directing officers to reclassify crimes to manipulate crime statistics.
- Police union criticism that reported violent crime drops are implausibly large.
- Inspector General’s finding that forensic lab personnel falsified arrival times to crime scenes.
- Federal takeover of DC police and National Guard deployment amid claims of declining