Chapter Thirteen: Moderate Extremists

“The world’s greatest and most confused political guru has arrived,” Toby said. “So what now?”

Bruce’s living room looked like it had gone through the ravages of one too many political campaigns. Flyers and buttons were strewn about along with ping-pong balls on the floor, as if in the aftermath of a hurricane. A poster of Albert Einstein looked down from the wall, white hair flying, with the caption, “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” Toby found the lumpy sofa comfortable, even if he did have to share it with Bruce’s iguana, Stupid, who nibbled quietly on processed algae pressed into a reasonable facsimile of a lettuce leaf.

Bruce leaned forward on his squeaky lounge chair. As always, he wore a warm-up suit, this time a faded yellow one with black stripes on the side, covered with equally faded sponsor logos.

“Three options, obviously.” Bruce tossed a ping-pong ball back and forth between his hands as he spoke.

“Okay, you’ve lost me already, and we haven’t even gotten past ‘obviously.’”

“Option one. You go back to Dubois, grovel, get your old job back, and continue inflicting pain and suffering on the world.”

“With your support all the way, no doubt.”

“I’m not sure if I’d call it support,” Bruce said, still tossing the ping-pong ball back and forth. “I was thinking I’d lead the assassination squad. Wonder what would happen if the director of a political campaign were hit in the back with a ping-pong ball traveling three hundred miles per hour?” He suddenly threw the ball at Toby. Knowing Bruce all these years, Toby was ready and caught it.

He tossed the ball toward the iguana. It dropped the lettuce it was chewing on and looked over the ball. Then it batted the ball back and forth between its front legs. Toby and Bruce watched for a moment. It had a black blotch over its right eye.

“Pretty neat, having a brain that’s half cat,” Bruce said of his pet. “If only they could genetically enhance humans.”

“They could, but it’s against the law.”

“And it’s the people who made it against the law that need the genetic enhancing.” Stupid tired of the ball and went back to eating the last of the fake lettuce. Bruce leaned back in his chair, which gave out a drawn-out squeak. Toby grimaced, trying to ignore it.

“I’m leaning toward an option other than assassination by ping-pong ball,” Toby said. The poster of Einstein had changed to a picture of Wayne Wallace, the first world president, with the caption, “Why do I always think I’m right? Why would I argue something if I thought I was wrong?”

“Option two. You go back to Ajala, really grovel, and maybe he has an opening for a receptionist. Perhaps in the Himalayas.”

“I’ll need a bigger scarf,” Toby said.

“Or you could stop being an idiot, and take option three.”

“Which is?”

“Hey, Stupid!” Toby and the iguana both looked up sharply. Bruce reached into a bag, grabbed another piece of artificial lettuce, and tossed it to the iguana. Stupid stood over it for a moment, licked it several times, then began to eat again.

“Option three,” Bruce said. He leaned forward, causing another drawn-out squeak, and Toby almost missed what he said next. “We start a third party, take on the Roosters and Donkeys, and carve them up into entrées for the Australians.”

The poster on the wall switched to Winston Churchill, with the caption, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

“That’s a rather big move,” Toby said. “You do know the history of third-party challenges?” He tried to ignore the erratic squeaking. Next time he came over he’d bring some oil for Bruce’s chair before it drove him crazy.

“Hasn’t been a successful one in the fifty years since world government began.” Bruce had found another ping-pong ball to toss back and forth. “But before that, where do you think the Roosters came from? They came out of nowhere, and look at them now.”

“There’s a difference,” Toby said. “The Roosters didn’t challenge anyone; they just filled a vacuum when the U.S. Republicans fell apart.”

When the Republican Party collapsed, they had been taken over by a small group that had long ago followed a minor third-party challenger named Ross Perot. Someone had to fill the political vacuum, and while small in number, they were activists with savvy political leaders. At first they called themselves “Rossters,” but that quickly became “Roosters.” When the Republican Party was reborn as the Conservative Party and spread worldwide, it took the rooster nickname. Similarly, when the Liberal Party went worldwide, it inherited the donkey symbol from the U.S. Democratic Party.

“Isn’t there a vacuum of leadership now?” Bruce asked.

“Not according to the opinion polls,” Toby said. “TC, latest polls on presidential race?” He recited the figures the TC showed, which had Dubois ahead worldwide, 46-40%, with 14% undecided. Dubois had dropped about three points due to the alien shootout fiasco, but that was likely temporary.

“That’s because voters aren’t offered a choice,” Bruce said. “Think about it. If you average everyone’s political beliefs together, where would they be, conservative or liberal?”

“Neither—they’d be somewhere in between.”

“That’s called moderate—it was a trick question.” Bruce stood and began pacing. “A moderate is a fringe candidate in either party. And that’s bubble-brained. Think about it—isn’t it surreal that in our current politics, voters tell their leaders that if they compromise too much, they’ll vote them out of office, but they’ll also vote them out of office if they don’t get things done. Maybe we need to teach voters that there’s such a thing as compromise?”

The poster had changed to a picture of Thomas Clarke, the world’s third president, with the caption, “Just because you’re a politician doesn’t mean you have to be stupid.”

“The strange thing,” Bruce continued, “is that when a candidate moves to the center politically, it’s news. It should be news when someone moves away from the center, where most people should be.”

“And yet,” Toby said, “most people identify themselves as conservatives or liberals. TC, what are the latest figures on party identification?” The numbers came up on hit TC. “Thirty-five percent conservative, 30% liberal.”

“People believe what they’ve been brainwashed to believe,” Bruce said, sitting down again. “And that leaves 35% in between, plus anyone we can counter-brainwash.”

“And we’re good at that, aren’t we?”

“We’re the best!” Bruce said. “You know the difference between a lemming and a voter?”

“Voters avoid cliffs?”

“A lemming doesn’t think it has a mind of its own. Which is why you can convince voters of almost anything, and they’ll think it was their idea. Politics is all about telling people what they want to hear, or convincing them that what you’re telling them is what they want to hear.” Bruce raised a fist. “Let the brainwashing begin!”

“So what are we supposed to brainwash them to believe?” Toby asked. “To join our merry band of unknown moderates?”

Bruce laughed.

“Didn’t know I was a comedian,” Toby said.

“You’re no moderate. I’m a moderate. You’re a liberal who tried so hard to be a moderate that you went conservative. And then you joined Dubois’s merry band!”

“Maybe my heart’s a liberal, but my head’s a moderate. And you were part of the Dubois campaign too.”

“Yeah, but I left when I realized he was a brain-damaged maggot who lied about moving to the center, who has no idealism beyond getting elected, who instead of solving problems uses them for political points. That’s the short version; want the long version?”

“That’s okay,” Toby said. “You saw the truth before I did.”

The poster had changed to that of former U.S. president John F. Kennedy, with the caption, “Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.”

“I didn’t see the truth before you did,” Bruce said. “I admitted the truth to myself before you did. You knew what he was like, and what he believed in, when you took over his campaign. You rationalized it, thinking you could lead him to the center, that you could influence Dubois into being a better person, but tell the truth: why did you really run his campaign?”

The very question Toby had asked himself over and over for years, with increasing frequency. He had learned from Vinny to grab the political center in the campaigns he ran. Originally, that meant working for the Donkeys, and going as close to the center as he could while still holding on to the left. Then one day he agreed to run a campaign for a moderate Rooster, a candidate for governor of Brazil. They’d won—but afterwards, he’d been blackballed by the Donkeys. And so he began running campaigns for the Roosters. He gained worldwide fame as the main strategist for the winning campaign of David Baxter, now in his second term as the reclusive and ineffective U.S. governor. Then came that fateful call from Dubois…

There was no point lying to Bruce. “I wanted to run and win a worldwide campaign.”

“And now you have the chance to make up for it.”

“What about you?” Toby asked. “You’ve been hiding at school and playing ping-pong. Why are you so into this suddenly? Something happen at the Nationals?”

“I lost,” Bruce said.

“Of course you lost,” Toby said. “Look at all the other athletes, and look at yourself! You’re like a pebble trying to compete with mountains! Just take the steroids; all pro athletes do. They’re perfectly safe.”

“Nah, I don’t want to put those things in my body,” Bruce said, smacking a ball extra hard into his hand. “Let’s stick to the subject. Right now we’ve got a system where the two extremes are loyal to their party instead of what’s best for the people in the given situation. Don’t you think it’s undemocratic for liberals and conservatives to try to force their minority views on the majority?”

“Those are just labels.”

“Pretty damn good labels! But what we have are extremists and ideologues forcing their views on the rest of us.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Extremists start with an idea and take it to a crazy extreme. Ideologues start with the crazy extreme and then rationalize it. Most political party leaders are one or the other.”

“Sounds about right.” Toby wondered if he was guilty of either.

“We’ve got a president running for re-election who’s perfected the art of ignorance for the masses; we’ve got a far-left zealot who’s a political carcass in a suit running against him; and we’ve got a galactic civilization out there, watching to see what we do. What do you want to do, Toby?”

The poster changed to Dubois’s predecessor, Jing Xu, the man Toby had so successfully dethroned. “Extremists always have a lot more to say than normal folk because they have a lot more to explain.”

“Will you at least turn off that stupid poster?” Toby asked, wondering if the subject of Xu’s quote was a coincidence or if Bruce was controlling which posters and quotes came up. Bruce smiled and leaned back in his chair, which gave out a gut-wrenching squeak.

Jing Xu had been a hard and, at times, nasty campaigner, but he had been a pretty good president. He was a liberal, but a moderate and open-minded one, who actually thought things through rather than mouth campaign dogma. He hadn’t deserved to lose.

“Okay, God damn it, I’m in!” Toby said, a flutter of excitement rising inside him. “Now that our merry band of moderates—”

“Not just moderates. Moderate extremists!”

“Okay, now that our merry band of moderate extremists is up to two, what now? We have no staff, no organization, no money, no name recognition, and oh yeah, who do we recruit to run for president? What idiot shall become our human sacrifice, with no chance of winning?”

Bruce pushed his thumb through his ping-pong ball, and tossed aside the broken piece of celluloid. “You.”