Fable

This article was first published on January 28, 2017

Late last night, while cruising my Facebook timeline, I was bombarded by article after article describing the bizarre situation in the land of Fable.?Frankly, I struggled to discern whether I was a victim of fake news.

Fable is inhabited by two types of people, Tors and Tees.

Tees are a diverse group of citizens who inhabit cities and towns, on the coasts and in the interior of Fable.?They are bound to each other by their identification with a tribe or a way of worship.?

Tors run Fable.?They are the CEOs and the politicians; they design buildings and write business plans.?The most famous Tors play sports and music and make millions by giving Tees and Tors a common language to share their passions with one another.?

But Tors are outnumbered by Tees, by at least ten to one.

Tees make stuff, often with their hands, and they frequently work in companies run by Tors.?They are mostly content with their place in society, as long as they still believe that their dreams might come true.?

As the systems operators of Fable, Tors argue a lot and have encamped into two factions-- RepTors and DemTors-- and every cycle they organize local contests to measure who is more popular with the Tees.?

During so-called “leap years” the Demtors and Reptors increase their focus on the contests and spend billions trying to win the “Big One”.?The winner of the Big One gets to deploy trillions on behalf of the Tees, so most of them pay attention and care who wins.

The Reptors long to return to the days of the Gipper, when Fable was great, and they would literally do anything for the opportunity to deploy the trillions per their own rules and customs.?Anything goes, including using Fable’s court system or breaking into the Demtors offices and spying on them.?They’ve even resorted to dancing with the deviltors to attract more Tees.

Inevitably, the Reptors do lose a few, and it drives them batty.?Recently, when they lost two Big One contests in a row they executed a “starve the beast” strategy and got close to shutting down the government a few times.?This strategy backfired and caused the Tees to mistrust and disapprove of all Tors, regardless of faction.???

In last year’s Big One contest the Demtors assumed that the Tees would support their anointed candidate, despite the fact that she rarely inspired, and most Tees distrusted her.?She came from a family of Ubertors, and it was her turn to lead the Demtors because she spent her life in the service of the faction.

But the Tees didn’t care about her loyalty at all.?In fact, lots of Tees resented her and the entire idea of loyalty to the faction.?In their arrogance, the Demtors made lots of rules and bloated the size of the government and put it in charge of more activities.?They even tried to control how Tees behave in their churches and universities, which really ticked off everyone.

Friedrich Nietzsche never went to Fable, but he was speaking on behalf of the Tees when he said, “Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.”

The winner of 2016’s Big One contest understands Nietzsche’s words better than anyone.?He spent most of his life as a Demtor and only entered politics recently as a Reptor upon realizing that an anti-merit campaign could only work inside that faction.?

While not a mathematician, he understood intuitively that to win the Big One he only needed to appeal to Tees.?He also discovered that Tees love it when he bullies and makes fun of Tors.?They want a superhero to do what they cannot do themselves, namely stick it to the Tors.?First, he ridiculed his Reptor rivals into submission, and then he focused his message to the Tees on the arrogance of the Demtors.??

During the campaign, he donned an orange costume and flew around the country in jets and copters that bear his name.?Everywhere he goes the Tees pack stadiums and theaters to hear him tell them how great they are and how Tors are losers.?He speaks in small words and repeats himself constantly to make sure Tees understand that he is fighting for them.?They chant his name and exalt him as their savior.?He tells the Tees that he alone can redeem them from Tor-dominance and fix the problems of Fable.

Fixing time is upon us, now that he has officially become the Big One.?Like a magician, his trick will be to maintain his anti-Tor message without the Tees thinking he’s a dictator-- the worst kind of Tor.