In which I reject the glamour of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin

I hereby declare the monkey off my back:

If democracy is a religion (and it is -- "the worship of jackals by jackasses," as Mencken so indelicately phrased it), elections are its principal sacrament. Voting is communion, complete with miraculous Transubstantiation of the Most, in which a plurality or majority of ballots cast are magically transformed into the "consent of the governed."

Upon this rock the entire church of state is built. Every nuance of the perpetual Black Mass we call “government” -- every act of theft, extortion, brutality, murder, war read in solemn tone from the Liturgy of Realpolitik -- justifies itself on the basis of this alleged “consent,” in turn symbolized by the stickers handed out across America to those leaving the polling place: "I Voted!"