In Douglas Adams' So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, there is a scene where a spaceship lands on earth and a robot emerges from the craft, proclaiming that "I come in peace" and exhorting the earthlings to "take me to your Lizard." The story's protagonist, Arthur Dent, has this strange request explained to him by his friend, Ford Prefect, an experienced galactic hitchhiker:

"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…"

"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"

"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did," said ford. "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"

"What?"

"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"

"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."

Ford shrugged again.

"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."

If only this was a joke. But here we are, on the verge of a contest between the two least respected, most distrusted candidates to run for office in modern political history. And some people say these lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them.

If there is any solace at all in this year's selection cycle it is that, as The Corbett Report has been pointing out since the very day of its inception, there is absolutely nothing at stake here; the presidential figureheads are mere puppets, false fronts for the shadow government and deep state that commands and controls the military, economic and diplomatic machinery of the US-led world empire.

Do you really think the oligarchs put their entire system up on the chopping block every four years, hoping against hope that the public doesn't use the dreaded ballot box to vote them out of power, dashing decades (or centuries) of carefully cultivated enslavement with pencils and touchscreens? Just in case anyone dislikes rhetorical questions, let me answer that one for you: No. No they do not.

But don't take my word for it. Take Emma Goldman. As she's been reputed to have said (and if she didn't, feel free to tell other people that I said it): "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."