Drain the Swamp

A lithograph issued in the first years of Soviet rule, showing Lenin sweeping crowned heads, priests and capitalists off the surface of the globe. It was distributed as celebration: the old order removed, the ground cleared for something better. The image is included here because the promise it makes has proven completely portable. Every political movement that has since promised to clear out a corrupt establishment has reused the same structure — a sweep, a clean surface, an unnamed category of filth. What the poster never contains is a definition of who qualifies. That vacancy is the mechanism, and it is refilled every election cycle.