The Parable of the Bonfire

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”Teacher, might not having an election on Guy Fawkes Night put ideas into people’s heads that the candidates might not want in the people’s heads?”

Josh spoke thus:

A crowd was burning the president.

The crowd had burned the governor.  The crowd had burned a senator, two congresspeople, a mayor and an ombudsman.  They were unsure of burning the ombudsman--nobody was quite sure what an ombudsman was--but they burned the ombudsman anyway.  The ombudsman was there to be burned, so the crowd burned him.

The crowd had wanted to burn the sheriff, but the sheriff was the one with the gasoline and the matches, so burning the sheriff was not an option.

Someone had suggested that burning an immigrant or two might be in order, until somebody pointed out that the entire community was composed of immigrants or children of immigrants, or children of immigrants’ children.  Once one immigrant was burned, all the other immigrants would have to be burned, just to keep it fair, and nobody wanted to burn all the immigrants.

A number of races were suggested as worthy of burning, but the only race that burned well had been burned so many times before that it generated no excitement to burn that particular race.  The other races smoldered a little, maybe smoked a little, but didn’t really burn the way the crowd wanted them to burn.  This was attributed to the various races’ having not been moved for quite a while, having settled and become too compact for a good burn.  Some were a bit moldy.

The president, by contrast, had been fresh.  The president had burst into spectacular flame at the first touch of a match.  The sheriff didn’t even need any gasoline.  The president was a good president, in that sense.  Nobody could find the vice president, or else, it was believed, the president and the vice president would have made a once-in-a-generation torch.

Politicians always burned best, someone noted, the higher the office the brighter they burned.  That was why everyone was so surprised that the ombudsman had put on such a good show.

“It’s a wonder anyone runs for election,” the ombudsman noted just before the ombudsman had been ignited, “The way we treat our public figures.  Who wants to go through this kind of abuse?”

“You love the abuse,” a member of the crowd replied, “You love the attention.”

“I for one could use a little less attention,” the ombudsman said, “I’m not sure I like being burned.”

“Be a good sport,” the sheriff said, “It’s all in good fun.  Here, I’ll even let you light the flame.”

The ombudsman really was a good sport, so the ombudsman took a match from the sheriff and struck it.

“Here?” the ombudsman asked, holding the match near his effigy’s foot.  The flame took instantly, and the ombudsman threw the effigy onto the fire.

“There I go,” the ombudsman said with a smile, “It’s a pity to see me go.”

“You’ll be back next year,” a member of the crowd said to cheer the ombudsman up, “Perhaps as the mayor.”

The ombudsman looked forward to the day when he would burn as the mayor.