If one has to campaign for respect...

I scroll through these messages and feel a familiar tiredness settle in my bones. The same conversations, the same doubts, cycling through our phones and our tea shops. When someone has to campaign for respect, what does that say about the respect they’ve actually earned? We’re not fools here. We know the difference between a genuine leader and a well-produced show. We talk about advance payments and suspicious circumstances, shaking our heads. Thirty million here, a questionable deal there. It’s not just about the money—it’s about the feeling that we’re being managed, not represented. They focus on the ends, the outcomes they can put in a press release, while we’re left wondering about the means. How things actually get done. What gets broken along the way. And then there’s the performance of it all. The official campaign songs, the creators invited to showcase talent. It feels like we’re watching a stage play where the actors keep forgetting their lines. We’re asked to applaud the spectacle, but the plot doesn’t make sense. We see the PR stunts from miles away, like recognizing a storm on the horizon before the first drop of rain. Even the police, the way they handle protests—it’s all part of the same careful choreography. Minimal force, controlled reactions. It’s not necessarily kindness; it’s calculation. They know how it would look if they did more. They know we’re watching. And we are. We’re always watching, even when we’re smiling, even when we’re quiet. Maybe that’s the real power we have left—the ability to see through the performance. To save our reactions, to hold our answers until we’re ready. To let them have their Cinderella moments while we remember that midnight always comes. The truth doesn’t need a campaign. It just is. And somewhere, beneath all the noise, we still know what that feels like.