American election made simple:
Imagine that there’s a competition in Christmasland for “most popular Christmas character” where everyone gets to vote. The winner gets to sit at the top of the Christmas Tree for four years, and gets all the tinsel they can stuff into their pockets. Two main groups of people are arranging this election.
One group suggests Santa, because he’s popular, he promises a lot of gifts to everyone, and so on. Others in the same group suggest Baby Jesus, or Rudolph, or the Archangel Gabriel, or a gingerbread man or whoever.
But this same group has a whole bunch of Grinch-supporters, and they decide that the Grinch is a much better candidate for “most popular Christmas character” than Santa is for reasons that are unclear to everyone else. So they do everything they can to sabotage all the other candidates, and in the end, this group runs with the Grinch as their candidate.
The other, quite distinct, group has misunderstood what the whole competition is about, for some reason decide that their candidate is going to be the Abominable Snowman, because he has the best snow, and while his hands are small, his feet are ENORMOUS, and that has to count for something, doesn’t it?
So suddenly, the people of Christmasland find that instead of any of the popular, well-known Christmas characters like Jesus and Santa, they only get to chose between the Grinch and the Abominable Snowman.
The Abominable Snowman then does his best to put his oversized feet in his mouth on a regular basis throughout the election season. The Grinch-supporters watch him in bewilderment, and smile gleefully to themselves. This election is theirs! The partridge is practically *in* the pear tree already! They don’t need to prepare anything or try to make the Grinch more likeable or even try to butter up to the people who had rather voted for Jesus or Santa.
No, the Grinch-supporters instead go for the winning strategy of putting all their eggs in one basket. The Abominable Snowman is a monster! Don’t vote for a monster! Sure, the Grinch may have stolen Christmas once, but at least the Grinch is a Christmas character and not just a random snow-related thing in a crazy wig. Also: a vote for Santa is magically and mysteriously a vote for the Abominable Snowman, even though no one understands how.
The Grinch-supporters then sit back and wait for election day.
Now, the founding fathers of Christmasland were morons, and had no idea how a democracy should work. But for some reason that no one understands, these same idiots are so revered by the people of Christmasland that their idiotic system can never be changed. So instead of just doing the reasonable and simple thing and just count all the votes that the people of Christmasland has handed in, they have a combination of twelve drumming drummers, eleven piping pipers, ten leaping lords, and nine dancing ladies, who look at the piles of votes and then decide among themselves who should win the election. So even if most people in Christmasland vote for one of the candidates, the other one may win because of how the system works.
So when election day comes around, the people of Christmasland have a difficult choice: they don’t really like either of the two candidates, but because of corruption, this is the choice they are left with. Some try to vote for Santa anyway, and these are the people who will be bedeviled by the Grinch-supporters when they inevitably lose.
Because, you see, even if the Abominable Snowman isn’t really a Christmas character at all, and even though he’s said that he’ll get rid of all the gingerbread people and has made a series of lewd remarks about the eight milking milkmaids throughout the campaign season — well, the Grinch *did* steal Christmas, after all… And instead of trying to give the people of Cristmasland a reason to vote *for* the Grinch, the Grinch-supporters have relied on a strategy of smugness and bullying and just assumed that of course no one will vote for the Abominable Snowman, because by Jove he’s got the word “abominable” in his name. It’s *right there*. Just use your eyes, sheeple!
Meanwhile, the Abominable Snowman has gone around Christmasland showing off his five golden rings and promising people that he’s the only person who *really* understand how to get that damn partridge into the pear tree, despite the fact that partridges are by nature ground-living birds and that having one in a pear tree makes no damn sense at all. He’s relied mainly on the fact that *his* fur is white, and snow is white, and white is sort of a good colour for Christmasland, and that’s what it all comes down to in the end, isn’t it? The house where the Christmas Tree is placed is called the *White* House for a reason, you know…
Slowly the votes start coming in, and gradually it dawns on the Grinch-supporters that their tactic of doing *fuck all* to get the Grinch to become popular in Christmasland is remarkably having no effect whatsoever. It seems that the Grinch-supporters have misunderstood the people of Christmasland entirely: arrogance and pomposity is *not* what makes you endearing! What a revelation!
And so, in the end, the Abominable Snowman wins the election, and gets to sit at the top of the Christmas Tree for four years, during which he’ll be doing unspeakable things not just to the gingerbread people and the milkmaids, but probably to the a-laying geese and all the other weird stuff they put into carols.
The Grinch lost the election, as had been predicted by the people who supported Santa and Jesus from day 1, yet mysteriously it is the people who supported Santa and Jesus that will somehow get the blame, because the Grinch cannot see beyond the tip of her own nose. And we all know what a small nose that is.
Hope this made it easier to understand!
grijndvar
Stian Rødven Eide
quantacat
skymandr
Eintritt Verboten 