I am an old man, and have seen much. For decade upon decade, every year, I watch the barbarous hordes mill and march and chant their tribal sounds, do their ritual obeisances to pumpkin, turkey, dead leaders and assorted forebears. I have seen them burn the skies with loud explosions for the sake of jollity, pretending it is happiness. Year upon year the arcane symbols are resurrected and run aloft in every neighborhood--the pie tree, the evil pumpkin, the happy sacrificial bird, the virginal Mom, the sturdy Father, the pagan bouquets. The minds of the nation, year upon year, are soaked in fumes of cheap alcohol, their human potential sacrificed on the dull-pated altar of ritual and repetition.

Those who cater to the mindless wheel grow wealthy, and their wealth reported as part of the ritual in turn, forming a gruesome self-feeding, frenzied loop.

Thus the dream of democracy is devitiated and suborned, becoming a dance for the shorn and bleating celebrating less the virtues of courage and genius which they recite, but the sadder virtues of compliance, ritual and a sort of patriotic self-abnegation.

This I have seen.