Eldricht, Bulero, and The Simulacra

While reading The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldricht, I kept on thinking Eldricht and Bulero was similar to the power structure. There is the political intrigue practiced by Eldricht and Bulero and how they operate in the shadows directly competing for the people's will with their drugs. I thought this was similar to The Simulacra's power struggle between Nicole, the council, and the rebels and how each side in this story and that story had their pros and cons.

With Bulero, it seems like you know what you're going to get. You're going to get a heartless businessman who doesn't have the best interests of the people at heart, with him seeing people as vehicles for profit in exchange for the Can-D he's peddling. But on the other hand, he hasn't done anything so drastic as something like a mass killing. Here, he seems similar to Nicole and the council, where they may have oppressed people, but they haven't gone completely off the deep end.

In contrast, Eldricht presents himself as kind of a savior for the people against Bulero, but his forcible drugging of Bulero with Chew-Z signals that Eldricht has a dark side that Bulero does not possess. This is similar to the Rebels in The Simulacra, where they were presented as saviors throughout most of that novel but it turns out they may be worse than the established government should they get power. Eldricht also seems to hold the political sway that the Rebels lacked, bribing the UN to be allowed to peddle his product even though it is directly competing with the illegal Can-D. No doubt I will have a clearer picture of these two characters when I finish the novel by this time next week.