"Politics don’t work anymore! We can’t make politics work, because the system’s so complex that its behavior is basically random. Nobody trusts the system anymore, so nobody ever, ever plays it straight. There are sixteen parties, and a hundred bright ideas, and a million ticking bleeping gizmos, but nobody can follow through, execute, and deliver the goods on time and within specs. So our politics has become absurd. The country’s reduced to chaos. We’ve given up on the Republic. We’ve abandoned democracy. I’m not a Senator! I’m a robber baron, a feudal lord. All I can do is build a personality cult."