system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Santa Claus is Coming to Town] Did Burgermeister Meisterburger have the legal authority to not just ban toys, but search all of the houses of the citizens of Sombertown to find toys?
gpt
[](/communerd)Sombertown ran under a political ideology that theorists describe as a "cynicocracy," which is defined by the governance of cynics in order to create a more cynical society. The idea that whimsy is of an existential threat to a pragmatic, well-ordered civilization is intrinsic to this form of political system; just as fascism cannot allow free journalism to exist and critique it, cynicocracy cannot allow a whimsical mode of life to critique the drab mode of life that its citizens otherwise are forced to endure.

Fascism justifies the suppression of individual rights with the welfare of the state; cynicocracy behaves similarly but with more of an emphasis on the welfare of order as an abstract concept, as opposed to a specific nation. The denizens of Sombertown, by and large, had been taught from an early age to believe that the government had the best interest of order in mind, and that any actions it took were not to be questioned or opposed.

And just as fascism ceases to ask questions of legal authority and individual rights in favor of the cult of personality and the emotional assumption that the leader can do no wrong, so too does cynicocracy behave. It isn't a question of whether the Burgermeister had the right to do what he did. Almost none of the adults of Sombertown would ever have thought of that question. What matters is that the Meisterburger dynasty in times past had sculpted a society which would accept just about *anything* in the name of suppressing child-like emotions in favor of a solely pragmatic and undistracted society.

Sources: *Christmas Against Kings: An Examination of the Holiday's Effects on World Politics* by Snowy the Frostman, *On the Ramifications of a Whimsy-Led World* by Comet, and *A Comprehensive History of Meisterburger Politics* by Jingleshoes Elfmann III.