An assignment I once gave my students entailed rewriting an episode of their lives as a fable. There are aspects of the genre that shed light on what’s important in an event, even if it’s “real life.” And it occurred to me that this election may suffer from an overabundance of preconceived notions about the words “Democrat” and “Republican,” “Clinton” and “Trump.”
So here I offer, in serial form, the first entry of my fable, “The Orange-Haired Prince.”
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Once upon a time, there was a Grand Country. Its lands were spacious, and full of fertile soil. Rivers flowed down mighty mountain peaks and through golden plains, giving the land’s earliest inhabitants ample water ways for travel and trading transport.
As time passed, the peoples of the Grand Country also progressed. In lieu of rivers, they built roads and then highways. Men and women, later regaled in lore and legend, cut through wild forests to chart heretofore unknown miles of Grand Country territory. They constructed homes, and towns, then cities, and their propensity for building made them powerful and revered the world over.
Once upon a time, there was a Grand Country. Its lands were spacious, and full of fertile soil. Rivers flowed down mountain peaks and through golden plains, giving the land’s earliest inhabitants ample water ways for travel and trading transport. As time passed, the peoples of the Grand Country also progressed.
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Who were the Grand Country people?
They were an industrious lot, full of good will. And though they proudly called themselves united, they were united in a way unique upon the earth.
They were not bound by ethnic loyalty or a nationalist duty to country.
They were united by their ideas.
Grand Country people believed in equality. They believed all humans were the same before the law. Grand Country people believed in government that was held accountable for its actions, and thus held elections to choose their leaders, and they settled disputes through words and debate in the public square and courtrooms.
One of their greatest Leaders said government should be “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Grand Country people agreed.
They were famous worldwide also, for their hospitality and welcoming spirit. They were seen as friendly, optimistic, brave. A famous statue rising from the waters of their largest harbor had been thus inscribed: “Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses longing to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed, to me.”
Over many generations, Grand Country people did indeed open their good lands to those less fortunate. To those who starved from famine, and those who fled from tyranny. These newcomers became, over time, Grand Country people themselves.
Grand Country people were happy. In general.
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There were Some who were not.
There were Some, in the beginning, who disputed the idea of equality before the law. They did not think certain people deserved to be called “people.” They believed shades of skin pigment were indicative of “human” and “not human.”
And there were Some amongst them who made slaves of darker-skinned people, even travelling over oceans to find and capture them.
A great war was fought over this evil. The unhappy Some lost, and were made to free all slaves. The Grand Country tried to move on.
And it did. Mostly.
But Some remained… unsatisfied.
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Two and a half centuries of the Grand Country passed. There were more wars, in far off lands, and as time hurtled ever faster into the future, many Grand Country people began to wonder if they would ever be free from foreign fights.
For there were other peoples who did not admire the ideas of the Grand Country. And in truth, there were places the Grand Country had gone, sometimes, where it did not belong. And so these distant ones began to attack the Grand Country people, on their own soil, in new and frightening ways.
They flew airplanes into buildings.
They parked cars with bombs in city squares.
They fired guns at schools and airports.
Their goal was to terrify Grand Country people, by making any place public a place of possible violence.
For these enemies knew that, in fear, humans are prone to make mistakes.
And though Grand Country people were united in a way unique upon the earth, they were still humans.
Their goal was to terrify Grand Country people, by making any place public a place of possible violence. For these enemies knew that, in fear, humans are prone to make mistakes. And though Grand Country people were united in a way unique upon the earth, they were still humans.
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And so Grand Country people grew frustrated. They became angry. Year in, year out, as the foreign wars to stop these attacks dragged on without victory, as money that should have gone to schools and the needy was swept up in military spending, as their peaceful way of life came under regular attack, the Grand Country people grew… irate.
They looked at their government and saw it had become bloated and inept, filled with men and women who did not care what was best for its people.
At that time, the Grand Country had only two major political parties: The Blue and The Red.
And politicians in both The Blue and The Red had concerned themselves, it seemed, only with what would keep them in power.
Which meant getting reelected.
Getting reelected meant beating the other side.
Beating the other side meant bashing their opponents.
And so The Blue said: “Look at The Red! They are stupid. They are hateful. They are evil.”
And so The Red said: “Look at The Blue! They are lazy. They are lying. They are evil.”
Meanwhile, Grand Country people perished overseas and at home. Their schools stagnated, then broke down. Their small towns decayed, many shuttered entirely from the plodding despair of job loss. Their major cities grew big and busy, but became mean with competition.
So that Grand Country people were made to feel their value lived only in how much money they could produce. Or how famous they could be.
The Grand Country became a place where a person’s level of influence mattered more than other things. Character, for one, stopped counting for much. Love and goodness were fine, but secondary.
The Grand Country became a place ruled by Media Clicks and Bank Benjamins.
The Grand Country had changed.
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There were Some who had been left out. They did not live in big cities, and they did not make lots of Bank Benjamins, and they could not get or give enough Media Clicks to warrant any of the city people’s real attention.
Many of the Some were descendants of those who, in that terrible earlier time, thought dark-skinned humans were not humans. And certain of these Some descendants did not always like how many new people had been allowed to come into the Grand Country, and they did not wish for anyone else to be given the status of a Grand Country person.
The Grand Country became a place where a person’s level of influence mattered more than other things. Character, for one, stopped counting for much. Love and goodness were fine, but secondary. The Grand Country became a place ruled by Media Clicks and Bank Benjamins… The Grand Country had changed.
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The Some knew that The Blue party thought they were stupid, and The Red party thought they were backwards. And they knew too that the powerful people with the most Bank Benjamins and Media Clicks – the people who made all the Grand Country entertainment – also did not like them.
The Some did not feel the Grand Country accepted them, and they did not think they had a place in its future.
There were others, the Protestors, who were blinded by disgust. The Red and The Blue had failed and lied, and lied and failed, and the Protestors thought that surely anyone would be better than another Red or Blue politician.
The Some and the Protestors, disenfranchised and disenchanted, languished and imagined they would grow old and die in obscurity. They were unhappy about this, but did not anticipate a different possibility.
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And then, in the year 2016, an Orange-Haired Prince came along.
*To be continued: Chapter Two will be published next Wednesday
Photo: Flickr/Tony Webster
A terrific narrative Jessicah!. I cannot wait for chapter two..
Thank you very much! Will be out next Wednesday. 🙂