Alfonso's koan: does admitting powerlessness make it stop?

The same paradox from a different accent, and sharper: Alfonso can stand up and say he is powerless — he has known it since Castro — but admitting it hasn't stopped him, and now he fears the admission is a trap, and hopes instead for power, and can't tell whether hoping for power is itself the disease. The doctrine's central koan handed back to it as an honest, frightened question no slogan quite closes.