“Respect for the office” is the last prayer of a dying faith.
It’s the hollow loyalty of a people too scared to admit that titles are just costumes, that power is just choreography.
An office does not bleed. An office does not reason. It is not sacred. It is not owed reverence simply because others knelt before it.
To respect the office, regardless of who occupies it, is to bow to a ghost built by men who needed you to forget they were only men.
When you shake hands with a president and call it dignity, you betray yourself. You mistake proximity for meaning. You mistake the theatre of authority for virtue.
Respect must be earned by the individual, not inherited by the chair he slumps into. Otherwise, you’re just saluting the furniture.
There is no mystical virtue that descends when someone crosses a threshold into political power. There is no moral alchemy that turns liars into statesmen, warmongers into saviors, cowards into icons.
These are the same people who would step over you for a little more ceremony. To applaud the role is to applaud your own disposability.
There is no office so high that it absolves the failures of those who occupy it. There is no position so grand that it demands automatic reverence.
The world will not be saved by obedient applause. It will be rebuilt by those who recognize that respect is not a currency to be extracted. It is a gift, and it belongs to the sovereign alone.
Stop worshipping the architecture. Start seeing the architects.” – Free Prince
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