The Parable of the Dictator and the Rain

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”Teacher, how tiresome must it be for politicians to have to spend so much time gerrymandering and rigging election laws, just so they can continue to not listen to the people, and how tiresome are the people?”

Josh spoke thus:

A dictator was watching the rain.  The dictator hated the rain.

The dictator did not hate that the ground was close to saturation.  The dictator knew the consequences of saturated ground.  There was a strong possibility of flooding.  When the ground was saturated, the water had no place to go.  When the ground was saturated, fields became lakes.  Streets became rivers.  Hills became cascades.  Riverfront property became driftwood.

The dictator did not hate that the harvest was in jeopardy.  Rain and sunshine combined made for rapid growth and voluminous harvests.  But rain and rain combined waterlogged the crops.  Apples and pears rotted on the branch.  Potatoes drowned in the dirt.  Cabbage and lettuce liquified in the fields.  Wheat wilted.  Corn keeled over.  Beans swelled to bursting.

The dictator did not hate that the rain meant no parades.  The dictator was fond of parades.  Parades displayed the dictator’s sizable military--a military mostly bought with money from the crops that were now drowning in the constant rain--which was the source of prestige for the dictator among the dictator’s dictator friends.  What was the point of a sizable military if one could not show it off to one’s peers in a glorious parade?

The dictator did not hate that the rain meant no rallies.  Next to parades, what the dictator loved most were rallies.  Gigantic rallies with gigantic crowds, with gigantic banners, with gigantic loudspeakers through which the dictator gave marathon speeches extolling the evils of colonial nations, corporate internationalism and the Ford Motor Company.  The dictator had nothing against the Ford Motor Company, but the dictator had seen the Daytona 500 and decided that Chevys were best, because the dictator had liked a particularly red Chevrolet.  The dictator didn’t even hate that rain meant no stock car races, since there were no stock car races in the dictator’s country.

Actually, given the effect the rain was bound to have on the nation’s economy, the dictator thought that large crowds were best discouraged.  The army could patrol.  That would be marshal enough.

No, the dictator did not hate the rain because the ground was nearly saturated.  The dictator did not hate the rain because the harvest was in jeopardy.  The dictator did not hate the rain because there were no parades, and the dictator did not hate the rain because there were no rallies.  The dictator hated the rain for one reason and one reason only:

No matter what the dictator did, the rain did what the rain did.  The dictator had no control over the rain.  And what the dictator could not control, others could see that the dictator did not control.  That was why the dictator kept no cats.

“No, you may not keep it,” the dictator said to the dictator’s child, who held a kitten up to show to the dictator.  The dictator knew, however, that the child would keep the kitten, and that the dictator would end up feeding the kitten and changing the litter box.

Rain, cats and the dictator’s children.  They did what they did.