No Dictatorship

can ever be truly benign,
not even for a brief while.

Bureaucracies

are small collectives who set out to prove
their superiority over the masses
by tying up their lives in Gordian knots.
Bureaucrats make complex paradoxes
for others to live by,
from which they quietly exempt themselves
which make the hoisting of others
on their own petard,
through the application of these rules look simple.