This week’s readings alerted me to the importance of highlighting the difference Prof. Schechner highlights between make believe and make belief to citizens. It seems that as politics have been shaped over time, the conception of power has long been shaped in between the tensions that are held in the narrow moments that separate (or join) the make believe from the make belief. Power, as Machiavelli shows us, has become a key tool of the political leader. How to obtain it, maintain it, reproduce it, and expand it is the key concern of the leader figure Machiavelli speaks to. A prince who understands that manipulation, specifically the manipulation of love and fear, is one of his greatest allies: “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.” This prince, has unfortunately not changed much as in 2019 we still endure leaders who have constructed a fiction of themselves. A fiction so strong that it shapes unbreakable ideals. Elizabeth Kolbert wonders how can we open the eyes of people, when the line of fact and fiction is blurred when it comes to the way belief is shaped: “Providing people with accurate information doesn’t seem to help; they simply discount it. Appealing to their emotions may work better, but doing so is obviously antithetical to the goal of promoting sound science.” It is here where art must intervene. If “appealing to the emotions” may be better, and there is no better way of understanding emotion and affect than via art, then perhaps it is now more urgent than ever that we look to art as a political tool. Otherwise, I echo Charles M. Blow in wondering: “How does one fight a fiction, a fantasy?”