Closure. A Tale About a President.

CLOSURE
A Tale About A President. 

An Adaptation of
Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

This story is based on real events,
events that surely will be told and retold for generations to come.
In fact, not much of the following fairytale is made up at all.

Not so long ago there lived a president in a not-so-united country, who liked himself so much that he spent most of his time and money convincing others just how special he was. He strutted himself as smarter, more popular and more powerful than anyone else. He tried to teach science new tricks, and prided himself of his limited vocabulary, which he declared larger than anyone’s before him.

He didn’t care for his officials very much, he didn’t see the need for them, so no one got to stay very long as he fired them if they didn’t agree with him. He also didn’t spend much time with his wife if it didn’t serve the purpose of him looking good.

But his hair was his ultimate pride and joy. Many hours were spent in front of the mirror maintaining the special shade of yellow and practicing getting that sweep of his bangs just right looking like a dangerous ski jump.

In the big city where he lived, a lot was going on. Every day a lot of foreigners came through. The President liked that a lot. The more people who saw his might, the better he felt.

After a few years as president, the usual time for an election in the not-so-united country arrived. The President, who thought so highly of himself, did not regard the election as anything other than the people jubilantly celebrating him and his obvious re-election. Opponents didn’t count. He had more people at his inauguration than the previous president, after all.

Shockingly, the election didn’t go as smooth as he had planned. Someone else won. But in his world, he always won. He did not like losing. So, the president just ignored the election and the winner.

Half of the people thought him more peculiar and weaker than ever before, not as smart as he claimed to be, and behaving like a child who is having a temper tantrum because another little boy took his toy fire engine.

The other half of the people found him indeed powerful and wanted him to be right.

So, a few of the people close to him, who were lucky enough to still have important jobs in his court (he liked to think of himself as a King), told him that they could spin stories better than anyone, and they could help him make everyone believe whatever he said. They even made up a special incentive to make the President like them more – they said that their strategy had the amazing ability to show the President who was either disloyal to him or unbelievably stupid by how closely and enthusiastically they could recite his story.

Oooh, the president liked that very much. He would be able to see right away who to keep and who not, and could just change them out as much as he wanted. The President gave his special people a lot of money and some rare words of praise to get started right away.

The people close to the President with their special-strategy went to work right away. They sat in front of the windows in the big building where everyone could watch them hard at work. They secretly chose the code name for their strategy to be Gaslighting. They had heard it in a movie.

Everyone in the city knew that the President had a special story and everyone followed the news of the President and his special-strategy people every day.
The people also knew how powerful the strategy and the story were, and
everyone was eager to discover who was disloyal or stupid.

“I wonder how the strategy is going,” thought the President, who himself was very good at carrying the story convincingly and enthusiastically. He believed in it after all, because he was not a loser and the smartest man anywhere. He wanted to check with the special-strategy people, but he was a little uneasy about those who were not loyal or incredibly stupid being revealed by it.
It wasn’t that he needed to worry about himself, he was smarter than the smartest scientists after all, and even able to take tests with five questions and get all of them right the first time. But he decided to send someone else nevertheless.

“I will send my old dull, but honest Vice-President,” the President thought.
“He will be able to evaluate the special-strategy, because no one is more loyal than him and he knows a thing or two!”

Now the old proper minister entered the room where the strategy was brewing. He was disturbed to find himself having difficulty retelling the story completely in his mind.
“Oh my God,” thought the old minister. “I am not disloyal!” Am I stupid?”
The dull Vice-President decided he certainly was not going to tell anyone he had trouble with the story to not risk being thought of as stupid.

The story was spreading at a brisk speed in the not-so-united partial Idiocracy, and many declared their support of the President’s story. Many had trouble keeping the story straight in their minds, but they all kept their secret to not be revealed as stupid or disloyal.

One of the President’s closest re-tellers, a guy with a name nearly matching the color of the Presidents special long tie, was so good at retelling that the President kept him even though he kept making a fool of himself, which of course didn’t reflect so good on the President. This guy with the reddish name had some trouble himself making sense of it all, but he in particular was not going to be caught as disloyal or stupid. He liked the money and the glamor of being next to the President, so the President - being cunning himself – simply took his money away.

The guy who claimed to have won the election just barged on and behaved as if he was going to take over.

Now, as we know, this President didn’t like to lose, and he was so pleased with the spread of his story that he decided to show the whole world just how powerful he was. He would prove the magic of his story with the help of the people who told it and believed it. He planned a gathering for his trained storytellers to show up on a special day when they were counting votes for the last time to prove that he had won. He was very pleased with himself for this planning, so excited indeed, that he couldn’t keep it a secret, but let out little hints here and there ahead of time.
But since no one could fathom the magnitude of his planning, no one took notice.

His loyal people prepared themselves for the event. They convinced fellow storytellers inside the big building to show them the most efficient route to reach those who did not believe the President’s story and therefore made him look like a loser. Those people needed to be removed like the dust on the President’s extraordinarily special long and red tie. His people dressed up and painted their faces to emphasize how important the President’s story was, and how special they were to be the ones to show the world the attitude and the intent the President and his storytellers told them to show.

They looked for the President who said he was going to be there, but he was nowhere to be found.

“He won,” the screamed.
“The throne is his,” they said as they invaded the big building as they had been shown how to, and they found the throne and the best offices, and they claimed them on behalf of the missing President.

Unfortunately, things got out of hand a bit, but the people who believed everything the President and his storytellers said had not been trained to think for themselves and therefore went a little too far, smashing windows and carrying threatening weapons and messages.

This made the people who had been elected to run the not-so-united country along with a President very upset. It also made most of the people upset, in fact, some of the storytellers changed their story. Even the old, dull and trusted Vice-President was upset at the President for saying bad things about him. He, who had been the most loyal after all, abandoned the President’s story.

“It’s a lie,” said someone in the crowd.
No one knows if it was a Retrumplican or a Dedemoclat.

“The President’s story is a lie. The other guy won.”

Shock and silence went through the crowd, but soon people started whispering and soon it could be heard loudly from everywhere, inside and outside the big building:
 
“It’s a lie. No one stole the election. The other guy is the winner.”
It went from mouth to mouth faster than the meanest forest fire:

“The President’s story is a lie.”

 The President felt a crawling sensation inside, because he too was tempted to agree, but then he thought as only he would:

“I must maintain the story.”

And his trusted officials, like the one with the name nearly matching his Ruby tie, continued to tell the story and to say that the election was stolen from the President as if it was something he could own, and the President straightened up and looked even prouder than before.
He didn’t want to look stupid, after all.

                                                         _______________

And a new day dawned, and the guy who won the Presidency for real arrived in the big city and started presidenting another way. And the ex-President, the one who thought so highly of himself, was never thought of or talked about again.

                                                              THE END