Those of you who aren’t familiar with the late humorist and writer Douglas Adams might find a passage from one of his books appropriate this week. The book is “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish,” the fourth book in Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” planned six-book “trilogy.”
The passage is a brief conversation between Arthur Dent, the last surviving man after Earth is demolished to make way for a space bypass, and Ford Prefect, an alien writer for a galactic travel guide, who rescues him. (I actually have a cousin who still drives an old Ford Prefect.)
In the conversation, Arthur asks Ford about an ancient democracy populated by people and lizards. The lizards are the leaders. The people hate the lizards, but the lizards rule the people. Arthur thinks that’s odd because Ford had told him that it was a democracy, so he asks the obvious question. Why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?
Ford answers him. “It honestly doesn’t occur to them. They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”
Arthur is surprised. “You mean they actually vote for the lizards.” Ford said, Oh yes, of course. Arthur then asks why. “Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in.”
Now, I’m not being partisan here, by which I mean that you can’t actually prove I’m being partisan because you can interpret that story either way, depending on whom you think the wrong lizard is. But if there was ever an election before which folks should be made familiar with that story, it is this one.
But no matter how we feel about the current slate of candidates, no amount of dissatisfaction should relieve us from our responsibility to vote. In each race, somebody is going to win, and we will be stuck with them for the duration of their term. Besides, some of them are actually pretty good.
Most of us don’t do much for the country that provides us with so much, and I have little patience with those who are constantly unhappy with our rate of growth, trade policy, wage growth and immigration. Those things are not primarily caused by elected officials.
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They’re caused by the same group of greedy billionaire gamblers who crashed our economy eight years ago, the big business types who refuse to reinvest in America, who move offshore in search of the last penny of profit, who refuse to pay their employees equitably, and who lobby our representatives not to pass bipartisan immigration reform. They’re powerful precisely because we don’t exercise our even greater power, the franchise.
What a week/looking ahead
Well, this has been a wild week. I’m a South Sider and a White Sox fan, but our oldest boy bleeds Cubbie blue and I’m happy for all the Cubs faithful. This team will be back for years. But by next weekend the thrill of victory and the agony on the election will both be behind us, for better or for worse.
So next week I’m going to be writing about puppies, at least the way they are raised and sold. For those who care about dogs as much as I do, I want to give advance notice of a film being screened at 5 p.m. Nov. 13 at Classic Cinemas Ogden 6, 1227 E. Ogden Ave., Naperville.
The film is “Dog By Dog,” a documentary examining the monetary and political support that allows puppy mills and the most irresponsible dog breeders to continue to thrive, despite evidence that shows what damage they do to man’s best friend. Tickets are $15, with proceeds benefiting the Naperville Area Humane Society. Until then, remember what was written on the cover of the Hitchhiker’s travel guide: Don’t Panic.