17/2/95

The Birth of Politics

‘So if I understand this,’ said Ra, “I rule the country, and you rule me.’ ‘Correct,’ said Der.

    Far away and long ago lived a man who had an idea. His name was Ra. He was a hut salesman on the Polynesian island of Fakarava, some time after the demise of the dinosaurs but not much before the birth of Rabbi Schach.
    Fakarava was the perfect place for a luminary like Ra to revolutionize the world. Four days by boat into the sunset were the Society Islands; three days the other way, the Disappointment Islands. (Now you know where Fakarava Island is.)
    Fakarava was a happy place. The Fakaravans got in the communal boat and caught fish in the morning, they ate the fish in the afternoon, napped, picked berries before sunset and ate the berries at night, prayed to their god Od and then called it a day. A simple life, a happy life.
    But Ra was restless. He wanted more. It was true that when Fakaravans needed a new hut, they came to him. But when they didn't need a new hut, he was chopped liver.
    One fateful night, when all the men were gathered at the prayer hut, Ra arose and said: "I am Ra. I have something to say." And Ne, who lived in the mud prefab downstream, said: "In the middle of davening you have to talk? Sha!" And Ra said: "Fools! You come to this farshtunkeneh hut every day to pray to Od. And then the next morning you wake up and it's still the same crappy Fakarava. I have been hutz la'aretz, you know; I have been to Anaa Island and Ahe and even as far as the East Disappointments, where every Disappointmentnik has a Ra hut. And you know what? Nobody but us has a cesspool in the middle of the island." Ra raised his voice an octave and pounded his fist. "I say the cesspool must go! I say we get off our duffs and make Fakarava a better place to live, for our children and our children's children! I say we build a bigger boat, to catch bigger fish! I say we expand the prayer hut, add a women's section, put in maybe a stained-glass window! And then, I say, then we send a delegation all the way to Tonga to buy a wheel! Say yes, men! Say yes for the glory of Fakarava, for the pursuit of happiness; I beseech you, give me your mandate and within four years we will be the envy of the known world!" And then he clasped his hands over his head.
    The men were thunderstruck: Ra had just invented politics.
    But Ne wasn't so sure. "We've got 120 people on a one-boat island with two berry bushes and a medium-sized volcano that could go any minute. I say Ra is wrong. I say we expand. First we annex Raraka Island. Then Raroia, Rangiroa, Pukapuka. Then we take over the world. What do you say to that, gentlemen? Give me your mandate, for a greater Fakarava!"
    Ra was outraged: Ne had just invented opposition politics.
    The islanders debated furiously. Ra? Or Ne? Some of them just wanted to go home, go to sleep and then catch a fish in the morning. Others wanted to stay and discuss these wild new ideas. Finally, the oldest of the men, Bengu, suggested they decide at prayers on the morrow.
    As the men made their way home, Ra stopped one of them. "Well, what do you say, Der? Should we develop -- or expand?"
    Der answered coyly. "It depends."
    "On what?"
    "On if I get a new hut. A big new hut."
    "No dice."
    "Then I'll decide with Ne. And so will Yak."
    Ra blanched. "No, wait. Tell Yak to decide with me and I'll -- I'll let him run the nightly prayers."
    Der smiled. "No problem. But Yo won't like that. And Por will want to go with Ne because he's jealous that I have the front seat in the boat. Unless..."
    "Unless?"
    "Build another prayer hut for Yo; Yo and his brother Lev will decide with you, and that'll isolate Por, who anyway thinks he owns Od, which really ticks off Sar, whose wife Alo will join him on your side because she's dying for that women's section. You win her, you win all the wives. But then you lose Por for sure because he's a misogynist. So you play him off against the Dark One, who can be bought for two fish. Then there's Wa. He's important, because he can clinch the Pal clan from the other side of the island. Mind you, if you stick it to the Pals, you can get Rafu. But you can't do all that by yourself. So what you do is, get the guys you  know are on your side -- like Per, Ram and Shee -- and tell them to talk to everyone else and promise them anything if they decide with you."
    "But -- but what can I promise?"
    "It doesn't matter. Promise the volcano won't blow."
    "But what if it does?"
    "It hasn't for 35,000 years, I think you can get away with it. It'll make you sound sort of Odly. You can even promise the blessings of Od for anyone who votes for you."
    "Hey, that's dishonest! Od is only a rock with eyes painted on it. Everyone knows that."
    "Yeah, but no one will admit it."
    "I can't deceive my own countrymen."
    "You want to be a settler on Pukapuka?"      
    Ra didn't. His head was spinning. Why did it have to be so complicated? He only wanted to do good for his island, to bring prosperity, to modernize. Heck, the 21st century BCE was fast approaching, and they didn't even have a social welfare program yet. "I am a man of my word," he said defiantly. "I will promise only what I can do, and do what I promise."
    Der laughed. "On a salary of one fish a day?"
    Ra hadn't thought of that. "I'll clean the cesspool myself. I'll --"
    "Wrong. You'll have to learn to delegate. The Pals will do it. For a fish."
    "I'll have to work through naptime to pay for it."
    "Not if you follow my plan. Here's what you do: at the prayer hut tomorrow, start a rumor that Ne will tax Fakaravans two fish to finance his plan. Then you announce, to the relief of all, that you will only take one fish per person."
    "Brilliant! And with the rest of the fish I go to Tonga to buy the wheels." 
    "Certainly not. The Tongans will give us the wheels because they'll get new flints which you'll get the Pukapukans to make by worrying them with Ne's plans."
    "So what'll I do with all those extra fishes?"
    "Give 'em to me."
    "Why should I do that?"
    "Because after you win I'm going to give them back to the people who gave them to you. Not everybody, of course, just the ones who promised me to vote for you after I promised them that if you won I would get you to promise they would get their fish back, which would leave me with enough fish to promise back to you if you give me what I want."
    Ra was dazzled by the train of thought. "And what do you want?"
    Der chuckled. "Every day I'll let you know."
    "So if I understand this, I rule Fakarava, and you rule me."
    "Correct."
    "And you devote yourself to my plans."
    "Loyally."
    Ra smiled warmly. "You're the best friend a ruler could have. It's a deal." They shook on it, embraced, and then Der said goodbye.
    "Where're you going?" Ra asked.
    "To Ne," he answered. "I want to hear what he has to offer."

RA WON the vote, the first in the history of the world. The next morning, he got out of bed, put on his loincloth, kissed his wife, took out the garbage and hurried to the boat. "Come on, Ra, it's getting late," one of the men said.
    Ra said he couldn't go with them. "Too much to do. Gotta run the island, you know. In fact, I need some help." He took Per off the boat, and Ram, and Shee. The islanders were stunned.
    "How will you eat?" someone asked.
    "You will feed us," Ra said.
    A murmur rose up from the boat.
    The next day, Per and Ram and Shee took three other men off the boat to help them. The day after, their assistants claimed eight others to assist them. More murmurs. By the end of the week, only 59 murmuring men were left to catch fish for the entire island. They worked straight through naptime, then trudged to the berry bush to get supper going. Most of them were too exhausted to go to the prayer hut.
    Meanwhile, everyone working for a better future for Fakarava was busy planning and plotting and organizing. Ra took another nine men off the boat -- the loudest murmurers -- to build a huge government hut, and three more to build a special prayer hut for his burgeoning bureaucracy. He confiscated 12 wives to take care of the paperwork, and saved a beautiful young virgin from the monthly sacrifices to sit on a box at the big hut and say "Good morning" to whoever came in.
    In no time, Ra was able to show the islanders some progress. He gathered everyone together and announced that a study was already under way to consider the feasiblity of draining the cesspool with special equipment that unfortunately would have to be budgeted for with a new berry tax. An additional fish a week would be required to build a new boat to pick up the equipment from Fiji, and a special one-time-only half-fish tax to open a new department to make the travel arrangements. There was big news, too, regarding the prayer hut's women's section. A task-force was appointed to select a delegation to go to Norfolk and consult with experts there on the matter. The task-force only met on Thursday mornings, but already they made an appointment. As for the wheels from Tonga, be patient, Ra said, there was a flint-miner strike in Pukapuka which if it didn't end soon may push Fakarava into a temporary police action to protect its sovereign interests, which would necessitate the formation of a temporary police force presently under consideration by a committee appointed by a sub-committee created expressly for that purpose. All that required an increase in funding, which naturally was the impetus for the inauguration of a new tax-collection agency which, he was happy to report, had already begun operations. Ra wound up his speech by reminding his voters that, as promised, the volcano had not erupted since his election, thanks to a multidenominational delegation named by Ra himself that prayed to Od on behalf of each and every citizen of Fakarava.
    By the end of the first year of the realm of Ra, the island was transformed. Six people were fishing. Everyone else was hard at work keeping promises or making new ones. Other Polynesians came by the boatload to witness this curious civilization. They were called "tourists" by the locals and were charged a fish each to watch Ra's people in action.
    Then one day, three years after the vote, the volcano blew. All of the islanders came running to Ra, screaming that the volcano was blowing.
    Ra stood up and called for silence. "It is absolutely not true that the volcano is blowing. I made you a promise, and by Od I intend to keep it."
    Then a voice from the midst rose up. "Ha!" shouted Ne gleefully as the lava reached his ankles. "You should've listened to me, we'd be safe on Pukapuka now! But no, you wanted your cesspool drained."
    Der stood up and announced he'd lost confidence in Ra and would throw in his lot with Ne unless the volcano was stopped immediately.
    Then Ra, up to his knees in lava, said: "It may or may not be true that the volcano has blown. I promise a full investigation that I am confident will expose Ne as the perpetrator of any such eruption. But have no fear: I will take full responsibility."
     Oblivious to the turn of events, the three remaining Fakarava fisherman came ashore an hour later with their catch.
    "Gee," said one of them, "would you look at that. The cesspool's full again."
    "We'd better tell Ra," said the second.
    Then they noticed there was nobody else on the island. In fact, there was not much island left either. They were aghast.
    "Fakarava is wiped out and we're the last ones left," said the third fisherman. "What should we do?"
    "First things first," said the first. "We can't do anything without a government to tell us. So I say we start a new one. I say we vote."
    "And I say we don't vote."
    "Maybe we should vote to decide if we should vote."
    "Let's form a committee to settle it."
    "How do we select the committee?"
    "Each of us chooses one member."
    "No, two members."
    "All in favor say 'aye.'"
    "But I say we shouldn't vote!"
    "Then that's how you vote."
    It was the beginning of a bright new era in human history.