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Tag(s): Bush AWOL-in-Chief; Bush Co-Conspirators; Congress; Fiction; Power; Power; Women
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June 11, 2008 at 07:23:39

Ballot Access, Women Candidates and True Fiction

by Deborah Emin Page 1 of 2 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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As a way of introduction to this article, let me be clear, this is a work of fiction based on a number of real-life characters whose situations have been combined in order to tell an allegorical tale for our times. All readers please remember that this is a work of fiction, meaning this is not true in the literal sense only in the metaphorical sense.

Once upon a time, no woman would dare poke her head out and say what she really felt about politics. Well, not “No Woman” but not the “nicer kind of woman.” Those who grew up to be mainly wives and mothers disdained talk of politics and would not even let their families discuss it at the dinner table because it would make for fights and indigestion.

In more recent times, these things have changed radically and when one day, taking it upon herself to get up and launch a campaign to run for the Halls of Congress, our woman of the hour, whose name is Legion, no, she is not an insane person or a brazen hussy or even a lesbian, god forbid that, that is grist for another legend, anyway, our hero(ine) Legion has taken it upon herself to make a very important statement about the world and the way it is run but most importantly, she is making a statement about the man who is running the world—Kingly—and why he needs to be held up on charges that are in the interests of the common good.

We must all remember that woman has a long history of providing good care and comfort to the ills of the family. In her new role, our Legion has decided to make it very clear and to brazenly call attention to the fact that this man, Kingly, who all seem to want to protect from her radical call, has no clothes on. Not only does Kingly have no clothes on, he brazenly refuses to wear any clothes. He struts around the world parading his bare bod as if he were entitled to do so. As if in this state, the world should truly know him and his power.

However, Legion, in her call to challenge that power and not to cover up the outrageousness of it but to get him to acknowledge what a stupid fool he has been in all the ways he has used that power, has tried to get on the ballot in many places across the globe he controls and have her say.

Legion is a diligent worker. Many follow her as she speaks and are emboldened to say, “The Kingly has no clothes on and he should be told so.” It takes getting onto this special thing called a ballot to do that. One must go through many difficult and purposely arcane trials and jousts and rapid-fire questioning in order to place one’s name on the thing called a ballot. If one is not on this ballot, then no one can help Legion rise to the Halls of Congress where she can help to pass laws limiting the Kinglys to come from parading around without any clothes. As she travels and speaks to what are called voters, the people who get to decide only after Legion can get her name placed on the ballot, they shout her name, and promise to vote for her once that privilege is granted.

“Who gives this privilege,” Legion asks?

“It depends,” reply the Powerful Friends of Kingly, a loosely organized group of people who like seeing Kingly naked.

“It depends on what?” asks Legion. “Don’t the people I talk to and who want to see me on the ballot, don’t they get to decide?”

“Oh how naïve,” the Powerful Friends say. And within their own circle they smile and laugh at the ways they have devised to keep such Legions off the ballots in as many states as you can imagine. They have found all these ways to do it because they have made it possible for all those who are true Friends of Kingly to share in the power of Kingly. They have granted special dispensations and lucrative deals and even gone so far as to promise these followers that when Kingly decides to leave his throne that one of them will be chosen to take off his clothes (it will always be a He in the world of Kingly) and preside over the world.

“But, but . . .,” sputters Legion, “That is not the way the rule book says it is supposed to be.”

No, that is not the way the rule book says it is supposed to be. The Powerful Friends of Kingly all nod in agreement with that statement. In public they always nod in agreement with the rule books and allow them their due. They place them in large edifices where they are treated as if handed down by the divine and yet, in their hearts, these Powerful Friends of Kingly, do not care what it says in the rule books. Had they followed those rules, they know in their heart of hearts, they would not be where they are today. Kingly would not have wanted them as a friend let alone as a powerful one.

“What will it take to be on the ballot?” Legion asks.

A long silence follows the question she raises. There are many in the land of the Hall of Congress who have differing views about what this will entail. They are called pundits because they like to make words mean one thing and at the same time really mean something else. They adhere to this behavior because they are in line for the vaunted position of Scribe to Kingly. In that position, they will be able to inscribe themselves into the book of history and live forever in those pages right next to Kingly and along with all he has done.

They present a variety of options for Legion. She can gather up lots and lots of signatures from people who could vote for her and give them to some clerk in each town and ask that this clerk do the job of verifying that the signatures she has handed in are truly those of the people who can vote in that town. Imagine that, Legion thinks to herself. I am speaking to these people all the time anyway and now I just need to get them to sign a petition and give it to the clerks all over my state.

There are other ways a Legion can get her name known well enough to be voted on once she is on the ballot and that is to get the pundits to pay attention to her. However, if she is going around saying things like, “Kingly has no clothes on and we need to make sure this never happens again,” the pundits won’t like her.

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Deborah Emin is the author of the novel, Scags at 7, which is currently out of print. She also has had articles on the Huffington Post, Mediachannel.org as well as in Gay City News, and NYCPlus. During the Kucinich presidential campaign, she worked as his official campaign blogger and is currently writing a book about those experiences. After getting her feet soaked in that campaign, Deborah has returned to the political work while also spending a good deal of time teaching and writing. Deborah also teaches in a one-on-one setting with those who want to write a story but do not know how to structure it. Her techniques for helping with this are fully explained on her website. www.deborahemin.com Please contact Deborah if you have any interest in learning how to find the best structure for your story and then how to get it written.

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4 comments

Rick Wise is an industrial psychologist and retired management consultant. For 15 years, he was managing director of ValueNet International, Inc. Rick was a Vietnam-era Navy Hospital Corpsman.

Rick holds PhD and M.Ed. degrees from Penn State. His BS is from West Chester University. He completed post-doctoral work at Rensselaer, Northwestern, University of Colorado, and Harvard. A native of Pennsylvania, Rick now lives in New England.
Richard WiseRick Wise is an industrial psychologist and retired management consultant. For 15 years, he was managing director of ValueNet International, Inc. Rick was a Vietnam-era Navy Hospital Corpsman.

Rick holds PhD and M.Ed. degrees from Penn State. His BS is from West Chester University. He completed post-doctoral work at Rensselaer, Northwestern, University of Colorado, and Harvard. A native of Pennsylvania, Rick now lives in New England.

Kingly the Fool

Starting with an aside related to that "nicer kind of woman," my grandmother was 40 years old when women got the vote in 1920. Yet she did not vote until 1932 because she and her friends thought that things like politics and voting were not the proper business of women. Those were questions for the men to decide. She cast her first vote when my grandfather died before the election. (She voted for FDR four times, which is more winners than I have voted for in 40 years.)

I love this allegory. It reminded me of a lesson from Lao Tzu:

"A great nation is like a great man;
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted to it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers."

Kingly no doubt never read Lao Tzu, for Kingly was not a wise man. He was a fool. And he was the worst kind of fool – a self-justifying fool.

A self-justifier is worse than a liar. Liars may lie to save their own skin ("I did not have sex with that woman" or, "I am not a crook"); we all understand that although we don't endorse it. Liars try to deceive the public.

Self-justifiers try to deceive themselves and, with the aid of their sycophants, often succeed. Unfortunately, our political system often invests great power and public trust in self-justifiers. Kingly's defenders may be self-justifiers themselves, or they may be merely whores on the public payroll.

There are several intermediate steps along the way to full-blown self-justification. I think the most benign are the "Abilene Paradox" types. Soon after the feces hit the rotating blades, they may ask, "Whose fault was this?" At least they realize that somebody had a bad idea and they can act to clean up the mess.

Then there are the "Passive Admitters": "Mistakes were made (but not by me.)" Worse are the "self-deluders": "Really? All of my 100 employees are white males? I had no idea ... I am certainly not prejudiced in any way." Thus enlightened, they may act to put the situation right.

Then there are worst of all, the "Self-justifiers," of whom Kingly is one. "I've never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions." (George W. Bush, speaking to journalists in 2006 – any resemblance to Kingly is coincidental, of course.) They have deluded themselves to not even see that mistakes were made. Instead, they attribute the perception of mistakes to an unenlightened public, which only proves all the more why the public was right to elect them.

In my experience, self-justifiers do not change and the public, in its own self-delusion, is reluctant to force change. In the end, however, a great nation has to act in its own self-interest, depose the self-justifiers, and do what the self-justifier could not: recognize, admit, and correct their mistakes.

Clearly, Kingly is not a great man. The question for us now is, are we a great nation?

by Richard Wise (23 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 52 comments) on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 at 5:56:59 PM

Deborah Emin is the author of the novel, Scags at 7, which is currently out of print. She also has had articles on the Huffington Post, Mediachannel.org as well as in Gay City News, and NYCPlus. During the Kucinich presidential campaign, she worked as his official campaign blogger and is currently writing a book about those experiences. After getting her feet soaked in that campaign, Deborah has returned to the political work while also spending a good deal of time teaching and writing.
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Deborah EminDeborah Emin is the author of the novel, Scags at 7, which is currently out of print. She also has had articles on the Huffington Post, Mediachannel.org as well as in Gay City News, and NYCPlus. During the Kucinich presidential campaign, she worked as his official campaign blogger and is currently writing a book about those experiences. After getting her feet soaked in that campaign, Deborah has returned to the political work while also spending a good deal of time teaching and writing.
D...

to see more of bio, click on member name

What an incredible response

Adding much more to the story and a good way to add your own ending. thanks.

by Deborah Emin (17 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 68 comments) on Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 5:09:38 AM

Another possibility ...

There may be another explanation for Kingly’s behavior. Maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t give a sh*t. That possibility must certainly be entertained. It fits the facts – something with which Kingly has never been much concerned in the past.

Kingly did not really want to be King; he was perfectly happy as the naked Princely, with little to do but ride his bike, play video games, and chill out (easy to do when you're naked). His father, a previous Kingly, would provide all the money and contacts Princely needed to live a happy life as long as he abandoned his drunken lifestyle.

He did, because, fundamentally, he is a taker. In a world of givers and takers, Kingly is a taker. And he is the worst kind of taker: the kind who believes he is a giver ... of freedom, of justice, of goodness. What's a little nakedness in the presence of such a selfless man?

Princely was drafted by people who hungered for power themselves. He warmed to the idea quickly (which happened when you're naked in south Texas). Then he realized that as Kingly he could at last prove himself to be the man his father was. He would avenge an attempt years before on his father’s life by the evil dictator of Fossilland. He would succeed where his stuffed-shirt, fully-clothed father fell short.

And succeed he did. On shifting pretexts, Kingly invaded Fossilland, killed its people, ravaged the countryside, deposed the evil dictator, and saw him hanged. Mission accomplished! “I am a man … in fact, I am THE man!”, he said, without looking down. His life’s work was done.

But he couldn’t just leave. His reign was not over, and the power mongers and connivers and thieves who anointed him in the first place insisted he stay. His goals may be met but theirs were not. He owed it to them to stay.

“Whatever,” Kingly thought. “I have all the toys I will ever need, I get to be naked all the time, I travel all over the world for free, everybody treats me nice, they give me money and kiss my behind, and what’s not to like? So I’ll just hang out (so to speak). And all those earnest people whining about me being naked? They just don’t get it. But, hey, they can’t do anything about it anyway. And I could care less whether they get it or not ‘cause my mission is accomplished and I really don’t give a sh*t.”

So Kingly idles away his time, dreaming of days past and future … riding his bike, playing video games, clearing brush, staying naked, and getting things for free. The people’s clamor for clothing falls on deaf ears. “People always find something to complain about,” he muses. “My mom taught me that. Next thing you know, it will be the price of fossilgoo. It’s always something. There’s just no satisfying some people.”

“Y’know, people really should thank me for everything I’ve had to put up with all these years. All the travel, meetings, listening to people’s troubles, having to decide stuff. At least I never had to decide what to wear … unlike them! Hahaha on them!”

But in the end, Kingly got no thanks from the people. And there was a reason for that.

by Richard Wise (23 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 52 comments) on Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 8:06:56 AM

Deborah Emin is the author of the novel, Scags at 7, which is currently out of print. She also has had articles on the Huffington Post, Mediachannel.org as well as in Gay City News, and NYCPlus. During the Kucinich presidential campaign, she worked as his official campaign blogger and is currently writing a book about those experiences. After getting her feet soaked in that campaign, Deborah has returned to the political work while also spending a good deal of time teaching and writing.
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to see more of bio, click on member name
Deborah EminDeborah Emin is the author of the novel, Scags at 7, which is currently out of print. She also has had articles on the Huffington Post, Mediachannel.org as well as in Gay City News, and NYCPlus. During the Kucinich presidential campaign, she worked as his official campaign blogger and is currently writing a book about those experiences. After getting her feet soaked in that campaign, Deborah has returned to the political work while also spending a good deal of time teaching and writing.
D...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Richard Wise is a great storyteller

Thanks Richard for continuing the story in your fashion. While I do think that Kingly is a tad shy of clothes and thus of dignity, what this story is also about is the valiant effort of our dear friend Legion who needs to find a way to get and keep her name on ballots across the country. Where does your imagination take you on this side of the story?

by Deborah Emin (17 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 68 comments) on Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 9:27:15 AM