National Tea PARTY
Fables & parables
The Bean Counter’s Lament
Once upon a time two brothers are at the State Fair. At one booth there are many different size jars of beans. The game is that the boys must guess the number of beans in each jar and the one who gets closest to the actual number in each instance receives a small prize. At the end a grand prize is awarded to the overall winner as determined by the Old Game Master, an ancient wizened character who looks as if he has seen everything there is to see at least once.
The older and bolder of the two boys sizes up the first jar and guesses wildly, 25,004. The second, younger boy, shrewder by half, because he imagines the number his brother chose to be far too high, nevertheless guesses just one bean less, 25,003. Being adjudged more right, the boy receives a cheap plastic dinosaur for his effort.
As the game progresses through many different size jars filled with beans the pattern repeats itself over and over. The older boy guesses first, shooting from the hip, erratically, never coming close, always aiming either way too high or way too low. The second boy, with a smirk, taking no chances, knowing he has to count just one bean better, only gauges whether his brother’s guess is high or low and then adopts his brother’s guess plus or minus one. Confident of this winning strategy, the younger boy smugly continues it until he has amassed a whole collection of nearly worthless toys as signal of his victories. However, at the end of the game when the second boy expects to get the grand prize, the Old Game Master instead disqualifies him and awards the far more valuable cash prize to his elder brother. The young boy is outraged, crying, he demands the Game Master explain to him how he could not have won.
“Because you didn’t play the game to win, only not to lose. It’s true that your brother has no skill at this game. He has no balance, fairness or judgment. Consumed with passion and prejudice all of his guesses were completely wide of the mark. But by not playing the game fairly, by playing it safe, your guesses were hardly any better. I admit it was a hard decision to decide which of you is less unworthy. I have been at this game many, many years and admit I have never been left feeling so unsatisfied. Between the two of you I have never had two players stay so far off center as the two of you are consistently.
“However, I have no choice. I must choose between a boy that is extremely biased in his beliefs and a boy that doesn’t believe in much of anything. On balance I chose to choose that it is better to try hard even if wrong and yet fail than to barely succeed in spite of barely trying at all. Therefore, I choose erroneous beliefs over cynical tactics and award the prize to your brother.”
Our two party political system today operates like me and my shadow, with the Republicans in the lead and the Democrats a shadow of their former selves. For decades the Democrats have been so afraid of being bullied and pilloried by the right that they have found sanctuary in half measure policies which please no one. On point after point polls show their policies are more approved of (but only marginally) than they are. They consistently wait for the Republicans to make an extreme political stand and then take a half step to the right or left and then claim that position, wholly based on the Republican model, as their own. This is how they manage to win more than their share of the battles, yet continue to lose all the wars and never seem to understand why.
A Middle East Western
The war in Iraq has played out like an old Hollywood western. In a little frontier town in the Wild West before law and order was officially established a heinous crime is committed. On the edge of town a kindly, well-liked old couple is murdered, their homestead burned to the ground and their cattle rustled by a ruthless outlaw band. The town is terrified and outraged all at the same time.
Having no established law and order to turn to, in time honored old west tradition the townspeople gather to form a posse or, as it might be called nowadays, a coalition of the willing. Passions are running high. There is no shortage of volunteers anxious to bring the blood soaked criminals to justice. Nor is there any dispute as to the identity of these criminals and in which direction they fled.
But before the posse can mount up and gallop off the town’s little fat mayor steps up to speak. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold yer horses a mite there fellas. You know, as long as we’re all gathered together here, I recollect that nobody much likes that old varmint who lives ta the other side of town. Maybe while we’re at it we should mosey on over there and settle up a little with him first off. Ya reckon? Besides he’s a whole lot closer.”
At first, nobody seems to think that’s such a good idea until the mayor’s greasy little sidekick stands up and swears on a stack of tiny bibles that he’s sure he saw the guy the mayor was referring to the night before in the saloon carousin’ with the outlaw band like they was old buddies. “Obviously this guy musta been in on it too from the gitmo, I mean, the get go,” he insists with far more vigor than veracity. Though a few in the crowd bravely attempt to take issue with the logic and truthfulness of these “facts” so vociferously advanced, they are easily drowned out by the turmoil of the mob and the bigger vocal chords of all the mayor’s cronies he has strategically placed in the crowd. This results in just proof and logic enough to persuade a frightened mob set to vengeance. So they all stampede loudly across town, find this guy, rough him up a bit before they burn his house and barn and then hang him from the nearest tree.
After a bit reality sinks in. Evidence and eye witnesses come forth which prove that their victim (unlikable fellow or not) had nothing whatsoever to do with the outlaw band that had cruelly murdered the old couple. Then it comes to light that the mayor who’d proposed the lynching happened to own all the ranchland adjacent to the dead man’s and had always had his eye on it having it for himself. Finally the sober realization dawns on the vengeful mob that while they were busy doing this the real outlaws and murderers were able to get clean away. To this day, years later, they still have not been brought to justice for their crimes.
After this event a curious psychological pall falls over the town. An unsavory sense of mutual culpability and a complicity of denial begins to emerge. No one wants to analyze too closely what occurred that day or their own sordid part in it. They even vote, almost as a way to continue the cover-up, to reelect the mayor even though many by then doubt both his judgment and his motives as the instigator of the whole business. Especially after he immediately proceeds to squat on the murdered man’s property and claim it as his own.
So the whole town falls into a torpor of guilt and silence and, with no one willing to blame anyone else or wanting to admit their own mistakes, the town slowly creates a fantasy of memory to cover up their real complicity in these unseemly events. Even those who originally spoke out against the lynch mob, to protect their friends who didn’t and to avoid bringing further discredit on the whole community, start to rationalize it among themselves.
Eventually, the whole affair is glorified. Spurred on by the mayor’s buddies who donate most the money, the town erects a commemorative statue of the mayor in the town square in order to honor the heroic part he played in the establishment of “law and order” in the town. And every year after the chamber of commerce sponsors a parade with a marching band and speeches by local politicians.
The moral of this story is that when people become more interested in not admitting their mistakes than they are in correcting them they envelope themselves in a groundhog’s day fog of forgetfulness where the lessons of history are never learned or rectified, just repeated over and over and over.
This is like the war in Iraq. Though Washington sold us out many are still willing to continue the policy and to engage in convolutions of excuses to justify a war which never had any real justification to begin with.
