You've nearly nailed it, Elissa, in your analysis of these men and others beside. But you have missed the salient point. All men have a potentially fatal flaw that few men and increasing numbers of women can resist. If they have the personality to do what these men have done, then they almost certainly have that flaw in abundance. Ego. Ego and the need to be right and big and strong and better and loved by all, makes them pathetically vulnerable.

Almost all women know and exploit this weakness in men, to their own ends, so all women reading this will know exactly what I am talking about. If women can exploit it, so can anyone - or anything else - that chooses.

You make the mistake of presuming that these men have knowingly sold out. They have not. They are absolutely innocent. One of three things has happened to them. The first and most obvious is that they are being played and controlled by a "honey pot". This happens to a disturbing number of would-be leaders and may have happened to at least one of the men you have named. The second is that they have been taken over by a reptilian symbiote and are now unwittingly being managed by that symbiote. I have seen that a few times, but I won't name names. They are not on this list. The third is that they have resisted the other two but have come to grips with the enormity of the problem we are facing and have realised they have no bloody idea how to confront it. The honey pot and the symbiote artificially inflate a man. The realisation of impotence deflates a man. In all three cases they lose their "spark".

Being men, they only know one way to battle the foe, but this foe cannot be battled. This foe is bigger, stronger, and nastier than we can ever imagine. We cannot battle it using masculine strategies. Humans, if we irritate them too much, can be swatted like a fly. Once we realise how seriously outmatched we are we have to work on finding another way.

Has anyone else noticed that every disagreement these days turns into a vicious fight? Trivia is blown out of proportion, words are misrepresented, confusion and fear reign, egos are explosive. We have degenerated rapidly in recent times. We are thrashing around like a bug in a bottle, because that is what we are. They have put the lid on and we cannot escape any more. The pressure is becoming unbearable.

Our only way to defeat this monster that is consuming us, is to rediscover our trust in one another. We have to back away from ego, get back into community with like minds, share our knowings, and refuse point blank to dismiss the other person's knowing. We have to open our hearts to one another again, because it is human emotion and only human emotion that we have over this enemy. It is our strength and we must learn to trust it again and to use it when we need it. It can be our best friend or our worst enemy. At the moment we have lost control of it and it is destroying us. We have to regain control of the human emotional energy, not to repress it but to use its magic to free us from this enemy. Emotion is the "mercury" in the alchemical equation; very dangerous when mishandled, but with enormous potency when used correctly.

I am not talking new age love and light here. They deny the existence of this being and bask in the half light of their own shallow goodness. They are so anthropocentric that they foolishly believe we have created all negativity and we can destroy it. No, there is a negative life form that is invisible to us that we did not create and cannot destroy. It can and does influence us and play us like puppets. Our task is to resist that influence. Step 1, admit the truth, Step 2, tell the truth, Step 3, treat everyone with respect and refuse to be nasty to another living soul. That's a start.

And let us not take away from these men what they have achieved. It is no shame to face a much more powerful enemy and lose. We need to help them find their way back.