All of the above, above all, the fetish (and "thanks" for all the fish).

Myths play a basic role in human existence, even for people who claim to live life wholly “rationally”. Indeed, the myth for such people is that it is both good and possible to be an unemotional intellect that controls everything.

– Peter Hannes

That which appears before the community, appears as a stable field of projected significances.

Is the third aspect of the commodity nameable? Can we identify the secret about humanity that the commodity holds within itself? Can we say it is the unconscious? Or the unrealised surplus of any given moment? Or is it the past? A residue, a wound? Futility? Or, merely a half-life trace? Is it impossibilism? Is it proximity? Is it duration? Either one abyss or another? Slime? The Law? Is it the mortified flesh of an other’s relinquished existence? Magnetism, surface tension, an unblinking gaze? Is it crime? Could it be nothing? Or materiality? Grit, dregs, sediment? A bacillus? Is it fascination? Is it community? Is it the alien set before itself? Decomposition? A rusted portal? Is it excess? Contamination? A maggot?

– Dupont

The offending aspect of the pretensions of democracy is not that in the name of what the majority supposedly thinks: we are supposed to be pleased and happy to be ruled by a clique for our good. Far from it, since, in truth, but few of us are ruled at all. It is merely our little foible to pretend we are. We give our rulers to understand they rule us because it pleases them so greatly to think they do: and then there is the consideration that a docile demeanour serves to divert their too too kind attention; probably the most servile-seeming member of a state the most bent upon fulfilling the role of step-grandmother fundamentally is untouched by rule.

The obedient attitude is a very convenient garb for the perverse to wear: and if the mere doing of it does not jar the temper too much, appearing to submit will define the line of least resistance to doing what, under the circumstances is what we please. Thus under the shelter of the servile demeanour there forms a residue of mulish waywardness, especially in those who appear to present their parts to receive the kicks which keep them going between gutter and cesspool: a waywardness which even more than temper succeeds in making them into a kind of clay unmeet to the hand which would govern.

The great unwashed will accept the infliction of the bath which cuts a slice off the space of their limited premises with resignation and reflect that it will indeed have a use as a wardrobe and coal-place. Though they are cast down by such things they are not defeated. Rule slides from them, as water slides from a duck. Rule has effect only on those who are indoctrinated with the Dogma: those who are under the spell of the Word. Even these – these intellectuals – are not placed in bondage by the rulers: theirs is a voluntary bondage – true freedom, according to the Word – and if they act as automata it is that they subscribe to the dogma that it is their duty to be as automata. They submit themselves to the law: because they approve not always indeed of the law, but of the attitude which submits to law.

– Dora Marsden

And that's the fetish of democracy.

– The Piss Test

In German, synonyms of fetish (fetisch) include in gereral:

Amulett

Talisman

Glücksbringer/charm (anmut 'encourage')

and superstitiously (Aberglaube, lit. 'mere belief'):

mascot (Maskottchen)

Fetish might then be understood as the relationship between a dog and its boy. Or merely, the relation itself, the association which is the enduring and like gravity, endearing magical synergy of the social allowing two in symbiosis to do what one cannot. Fetish is a metaphor as it discovers durative relations independent of their attachments, hence the common truism, "rockers come and go but rock 'n roll is here forever". Like rock,almost every noun can be said to be a nominalisation of a verb – an action or process – set in stone – we have "The Word". When not provisional, the noun itself is the fetish when such is considered a mystification. The metaphor is not, despite its etymological history, a suggestion of structural isomorphism, but the mere suggestion that everything is poetically – if not mathematically – commensurate: it's just comparison regardless of value or measurement, and that's not always useful; sometimes it's just fun. Esteem and not dimension brings things together; function may be handy but hardly ever tastes as well. If it is the case that magnetism persists no matter the number of slices, then it is more than mere abstraction. Matter, not the symbol, is what's ephemeral and focuses us toward death, the loss of density (hence reactionary Dada overwhelmingly related to flatulating gas rather than particles of dust).

I'd have to agree there's no getting around without the fetish, and that's no more derogatory than any mystification, the acknowledgment of a mystery, except when it revolves around commodities and democracy, the agreement making dogma every alien involved calls "the truth".

Impossible's the closing of a circle thought to counterpoise a line, but that's no post-modern oppositional opthalmology, it's just some suction to produce tautology. Only when the line is free to spiral outside control (we're talking spontaneity as well as wobble and careen) can free association generate diversity that's more than just a variation on a theme (the eternal return will never come around to the same spot notwithstanding).

But when addiction's thought impossible to rupture or destroy, one can keep the nouns within "quotes" or in (parentheses) and tale along behind each answer curvy symbols calling all to question marx? Another way to say a sense of humour's indispensable (even when contagious) to approaching mystery and generate some wonder. Sometimes sin and crime are just synonyms for wandering off persistently tread-routes warn by obsessively compelled commodity pushers like wagon-wheel ruts across the prairie.