The truth was, there was no opposition.
Not really. Not in the way people had believed.
Cora and Alex had watched it unfold, seen it with their own eyes, but the realization didn’t come all at once. It was a slow, sickening revelation, like peeling back the layers of rot beneath fresh paint.
It should have been obvious when the outgoing president pardoned his entire family and entourage. Not just the usual string of political allies and insiders, but every single one of them—his brother, his son, his chief of staff, the billionaires who had funded his campaigns, the ones who had been laundering money, the ones who had been quietly profiting off government contracts. They walked away with clean records, as if none of it had ever happened.
His last speech should have been a warning. He talked about the dangers of authoritarianism, about the fragility of democracy, about how the country needed to be vigilant. And then, he ran for the door.
Within a month, he wasn’t just silent—he was laughing. A media personality now, an actor playing the role of the wise old statesman, giving interviews on the same networks that had once pretended to hold power accountable. He spoke in vague warnings, but never named names, never pointed fingers, never said anything that might truly threaten the new order.
And the worst part? On his final day in office, he had sat down for high tea with the Chairman. Smiling. Toasting. Passing the torch with barely a fight.
The so-called opposition whined, shouted, held press conferences where they pounded their fists on podiums and demanded action. But that’s all they ever did. Talk.
Because behind closed doors, they weren’t enemies. They were business partners.
They pretended to fight for their constituents, but they were all getting rich off the same system.
The same dark money flooded both sides. The same billionaires donated to both parties. And, when it really came down to it, they all took care of each other.
They had spent decades making sure the system worked for them and only for them. They played the same game—buying stocks before passing laws that would make them skyrocket, selling shares just before regulations were announced, positioning themselves in boardrooms where the real power was held.
It was a racket. A casino where the rules only applied to the people outside.
And yet, every election, they promised change. They told the people they would fight for them. They would fix the broken healthcare system. They would rein in Wall Street. They would finally put a stop to insider trading.
But they never did.
Because why would they?
They were Wall Street. They were the ones getting rich off insider trading. They were the ones making millions off of policies that left the working class with nothing.
And so, behind closed doors, they laughed.
They congratulated each other on their new homes, their expanding portfolios, their well-placed investments. They swapped tips about which stocks to buy, which industries were about to boom, which bills were just distractions for the public.
And then, they turned on the cameras and pretended to fight.
It was all a show.
A grand performance, a play staged for the uneducated masses, for the Chairman’s favorite children. They cheered the loudest. They waved the biggest flags. They never questioned why their lives never got better. Why every promise made to them was always just out of reach.
And they loved him for it.
The opposition played their role too. They had to. The system required it. Without them, the illusion would shatter. There needed to be an enemy, a villain to blame for every failure, a shadowy force working against the people, working against the Chairman. It was Goldstein. It was Oceania’s eternal enemy. An opponent that could never truly win, but could never truly be defeated either.
Cora had watched it unfold, sick with the realization.
The opposition was never meant to succeed. They were there to be hated. To be the foil. To absorb the rage of the people so that it never turned toward the real architects of their suffering.
Every few years, they would step onto the stage, raise their fists, call the Chairman a danger to democracy, a criminal, a tyrant. They would warn of the collapse of the Republic, of rising inequality, of a country slipping into dictatorship.
And then they would lose.
They always lost. Because losing was their job.
When they controlled the government, they were weak.
When they controlled the courts, they were ineffective.
When they controlled the presidency, they were useless.
And that was by design.
Because they didn’t want to fix the system. They were the system.
They were not the resistance.
They were part of the con.
The Chairman understood this better than anyone. He had always understood the power of theatre. He had built his entire life around it, his entire persona. He knew that truth didn’t matter, that facts didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the performance. And no one could play the villain better than the opposition.
They would get up on stage and scream, but they never fought back where it mattered.
They never closed the loopholes that made them rich.
They never pushed reforms that would hold the Chairman accountable.
They never banned the dark money that flowed into both their pockets.
Instead, they let the cycle continue.
Alex had seen it long before Cora did. He had refused to take a side, even when it mattered most. He always said they were two heads of the same snake, that the real game wasn’t about left or right, but about who got to stay at the top.
And in the end, he had been right.
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