Complacency and Bubblegum

Allow me to share a story about my first election.  No, it wasn’t when I turned eighteen.  It wasn’t for an MLA or an MP.  It wasn’t even for Mayor.  No, it was much earlier than that, and arguably more important, at least in the life of a twelve or thirteen year-old.

My Grade 8 teacher decided to teach us how elections work.  It may or may not have had anything to do with a current event, or curriculum outcomes she was mandated to teach us.  I applaud her for taking the time to try to teach us perhaps our most prescient civic duty, to participate in the decision-making process to which we would be subjected only a few years later.  If you know anything at all about teaching middle school, you know how seriously a typical Grade 8 class would handle this.

Two candidates submitted their names.  One was a buddy of mine, who was admittedly not as popular for a number of reasons, none of which really matter to the story.  The other was a popular fellow, but was known to pick on people, like his opponent on this day, for example.  He was funny, but not ‘class clown’ funny.  He often got his laughs at the expense of others, and often found himself in trouble as a result.  The majority of the class admired him, I suspect mostly because we lived vicariously through him.  He could say whatever he liked, we would laugh, and if it all went south, he faced the consequences, usually emerging after the fact none the worse.  He was Teflon.  We knew we weren’t.  His role within the micro-village of our class was well defined and understood.

My friend stood in front of us and delivered his ‘campaign’ pledge.  I can’t remember what he promised exactly, but it was something admirable, at least from the perspective of an adult reflecting back.  For the sake of the story, I’ll say he promised to get us more recess break time, less homework, or something like that.  You get the point.

Next, the other guy stood up with the mischievous yet goofy grin.  Even the teacher was waiting with bated breath to hear what fountain of wisdom might come pouring forth.  What did come flowing was a pledge to give everyone who voted for him a piece of Bazooka Joe bubble gum that he had just bought at the canteen.  Cheers filled the room.  The teacher gently rested her face in her palm.  Actually, I really don’t remember what her reaction was; she might have cheered for Bazooka Joe too.  Remember, this story happened a long time ago.

When she tallied the votes, there was no doubt who won.  It wasn’t even close.  My friend didn’t receive even one vote.  It was a Frank McKenna-style clean sweep.  I asked my buddy: “Why didn’t you even vote for yourself?”  His answer:  “Hey, how do I compete with free gum?”

Of course, this election wasn’t binding in any legal sense, not even within the confines of our classroom.  By the end of the day, the gum was all chewed out of its flavor, and knowing our class, stuck underneath desks and chairs.  I used to make mini paper airplanes from the Bazooka Joe comic strips—no doubt I had a field day that afternoon.  We had our fun at my buddy’s expense, as usual, and life returned to normal.  The Election Day hero continued to torment people for cheap chuckles.  Meanwhile, we had learned a valuable lesson.  More on what that lesson actually was a little later.

I have another parable of sorts I’d like to share as well.  If you are unfamiliar with the William Golding novel Lord of the Flies, and would like to one day read it unspoiled, maybe you should skip forward.  I’ll leave a “*” a little later so you know when to cut back in.

In this classic of literature, a band of young teen aged boys are stranded on a tropical island, their plane having crashed while they were being evacuated from England during an unspecified conflagration.  The boys have no surviving adults to supervise them.  They learn how to organize themselves, hunt, find water, make shelter, and develop societal norms.  As the story progresses, the even-keeled leader who represents reason and maturity begins to struggle with a rebellious leader who represents action and impulse.  That boy becomes a romantic figure for many of the other boys, and after a series of events, a majority are swayed to follow him in his increasingly decadent leadership philosophy.  Things that would be considered crimes in the real world begin to happen.  All reason and civility appears to have vanished.

However, throughout the story, when the boys speak together formally, they agree to speak one at a time, symbolized by a totem they have adopted the speaker must be holding.  They used a large conch shell.  I once bought a large conch shell from a street vendor in the Bahamas, and more than once I’ve considered using it as a totem in my classroom.  Whoever was holding it had the floor.  Enter Piggy, a bespectacled boy who is clearly socially awkward and a friend to the mature leader.  Late in the story, Piggy protests against the now anarchic establishment while clutching the conch.  A melee ensues, the conch gets destroyed, and Piggy suffers a far worse fate than my friend who couldn’t promise bubblegum.

*

Here’s one final tale.  In 2006, the Palestinian Authority held elections, as they do periodically, like any self-serving nation would.  Palestine, of course, is not really a nation—not in the legally binding sense, recognized by the United Nations as a sovereign country, anyway.  I’m not here to discuss whether or not they should be, but suffice to say there is a significant, if not controversial movement for them to become independent from their occupiers.

Be that as it may, they elect a government anyhow.  The Palestinian Authority does however hold power over specific places, like Gaza and the West Bank.  They govern the people of those areas, much like provincial or state governments would.  In all matters of national concern, they have to acquiesce to the greater Israeli government, with whom the rest of the world interacts on an official level.

Now, for those not following along in the news, Palestine and Israel don’t get along.  There is a long, deep mistrust between the two parties, which has super ceded several generations, governments of virtually every political stripe, and countless attempts from other world powers such as, ironically, the Unites States, to mediate a peace agreement between the two adversaries that share the same geographic space.  Despite UN peacekeeping, assassinations, embargoes, wars, and even celebrity visits (even Whitney Houston showed up one time), the two parties are as far apart as they were in 1947.  Over time, this has led to the radicalization of a segment of Palestinian society.  Like Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, some of these radical groups became full-fledged political parties.  Enter Hamas.

Hamas are officially listed by Israel, the US, and various treaty organizations as a terrorist organization.  The Palestinians who elected them in 2006 to be the new governing party of their meager land holdings had apparently had enough of a series of same-old governments who clearly had generations to get things done, yet were unsuccessful.  They were tired of people who didn’t really represent them constantly promising things they couldn’t do.  Therefore, they put their faith in a radical idea—a  new party that was going to tell it like it is, stick it to the man, and buy everyone bubblegum of Biblical proportions.

Unfortunately, and not unpredictably, the rest of the world didn’t share their enthusiasm.  Foreign aid started to dry up.  That meant the government couldn’t pay their civil servants.  Within weeks, strikes began to happen.  Soon, garbage began to pile up in the streets.  For all the bluster and bravado, it was a hard sell to convince people Israel was to blame for their stinky city streets.  And no, life didn’t improve much otherwise.  They found themselves no closer to getting more recess time or less homework, and the bubblegum lost its flavor way too quickly.  The little comic strips weren’t even funny anymore.

I’m not even going to bother talking about Rob Ford.

The point of all this of course is that the results in the US this week should not surprise anyone at all.  It’s human nature to romanticize the bully who makes fun of people for cheap pops and promises bubblegum to everyone who laughs.  When reason goes by the wayside, the conch gets broken, the garbage piles up, and the bubblegum gets rubbery and stale.  You read the comic, you roll your eyes about how cheesy it is, and you crumple it up.  Erstwhile, the people who have done their homework, spent time preparing what to say and proposing change that can affect everyone positively get shunted to the background.  After all, everyone knows that smart people just aren’t as cool.  That was the ironic lesson my classmates and I learned that day.

When enough bubblegum supporters congregate and gather in numbers, they dictate how social norms will be established.  They determine the culture in which they are kings and queens.  Everyone opposed had better learn to toe the line, or suffer the consequences, which could be as simple as the scorn of a bully, to the fate suffered by Piggy, to the loss of wages and public services. 

Perhaps even more ironic in all this is that it is also human nature to rise above this kind of anti-reason, anti-intellectual, and anti-empathy.  In a free society, the moral good usually prevails.  Even when a few glitches in the Matrix occur, people tire of bullies with empty promises.  Social justice prevails eventually, even if there is a painful lesson learned along the way.

The painful lesson the United States needs to learn is that those who are grieving a Donald Trump victory have no one else to blame but themselves.  No one.  Not Brexit.  Not Obama.  Not Bush.  Supporters of Trump were, and always will be to varying degrees and numbers seduced by the promise of bubblegum.  They will forever be frustrated with a system they feel has done nothing for them, perhaps even for generations.  Supporters of Hillary Clinton, or anyone else for that matter, will wonder why it happened.  There is, in my estimation, only one reason.

Complacency.

True, those who did get out voting did their part, and depending on which state they’re from, their vote counted to varying degrees.  All polls indicated Clinton would win all the states she needed to afford her the majority of Electoral College votes needed to secure the presidency.  Yet as the dust cleared, the wrong colour was popping up on Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and even Pennsylvania.  Where were all those people who made up all those educated guesses?  Was traffic too bad?  Were they all getting their hair cut?  Did they just do something else, figuring Hillary was going to vote by herself and win?

Complacency won the US election.  No one will convince me otherwise, that there weren’t enough reasonable people to have made a difference.  Hillary Clinton may or may not have been a good leader; it is moot now to even surmise.  What they do have now, whether they like it or not, is a bully who is promising Bazooka Joe-brand walls.  He has no problem whatsoever snatching the conch from Piggy’s hands and smashing it to the floor.  After the streets are littered with gum wrappers and broken conch shards, will he have a plan to clean it all up?

Meanwhile, recess is still too short, and I have way too much homework tonight.