Ozymandias

When I think of our current era and all of its dictators and would-be dictators, there is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley that rings as true now as it did when he wrote it:

    I met a traveller from an antique land,
    Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
    Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
    Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
    And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
    Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
    The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
    And on the pedestal, these words appear:
    My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
    Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
    Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
    Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
    The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

His poem was a stark warning. Follow these men (they are almost always men) to your ruin and grave, or perhaps a ditch or nearby river. For your suffering their legacies will be entirely meaningless and ultimately forgotten. Rethink your fealty while you still can. Even though doing so will also be ultimately forgotten, you will rest at night with a clean conscience for the remainder of your existence. The alternative is considerably more bleak. The "King of Kings" you worship will turn out to be another coward in a bunker, or maybe on a private jet to a nation without an extradition treaty, his promises merely empty words. Your labors? Dust in the wind. As is his legacy.