Welcome to Fantasy Island

Awasiwi odenak: Far from the things of men.

In a matter of days, we will be touching down on paradise.  Can you feel the magic tinkling in the breeze? Can you the feel the enchantment?  Do you even know where we’re going?  It’s a wonderful place known only as Fantasy Island.  You’re familiar with the name, no? Let me tell you about it. Fantasy Island is where you go to see your greatest wishes and deepest desires come to life, untouched by the rigors of reality and reason. The Island is positively sublime, and if you go there with an open heart, you shall know nothing but joy and fulfillment, perhaps eternally.  However, if you go there in blindness or with ill-intent…Well, the possibilities are endless.   Thankfully, you are not the reason we’re here today.  However, the question of how we came to be on this journey remains. Let us begin with the story:

What feels like a lifetime ago, but was in fact, not so long, many people had a wish.  They scraped together their pennies, their dimes, and their stock options to make that wish come true.  The wish that these people shared was that they should make themselves a President.    The time had come to choose again and, this time, they would be wise in their decision.   Things were much harder now and so were the choices.  Where these people parted ways was in the determination of what sort of person that President should be.

One large group had a desperate need for one who would work, for one who would slave tirelessly to ensure that their lives improved today and that the lives of their children would be even better tomorrow.  This idea they had, though far from new, was treated as the bastard child of self-preservation, and mocked for its simplicity.  Still, those people carried on in their search. With their determined ballots, they prayed; what little spare time they had to give, they shared.  They who had the least gave the most.  That was the kind of President they wanted and the kind they deserved.  They found a candidate equal to the task and quietly took up their cause.

Another group of individuals, long and disastrous in power, wanted another kind of Chief Executive.  They wanted the status quo because it had been good to them.  They championed their champion, too.  Unfortunately, those voters and their prayers were not with their champ.  He went down and the politician they got was not the one they had in mind. This one was different, solemnly uttering a kind of rhetoric for change. They were not that sort of people; they did not want that sort of leader. They did not stand behind their candidate.  They did not take up their cause.

Finally, there was one last group.  A sneaky bunch, you probably caught them entering out of the corner of your eye.  They were in desperate need as well.  Not of a leader who would work, however, but of one who, especially, would not. What they wanted was a face and a voice.  What they wanted was a string puppet.  There was an agenda at work, things to do and buy and dismantle. They prayed with their attorneys and their accountants, their publicists and their very loose pocketbooks.    Failing that, they prayed with Facebook.  Like smoke, up rose their candidate, resplendent with strings.  They didn’t stand behind them; they stood behind the curtains.  Someone had to man the thing!  It was perfect deception.  It was their cause.

Their cause became the nation’s ideology.   That ideology was cruel, remains cruel, and its means are dark, but the fantasy has been achieved.  The stress-bitten fingernails of hard workers have been stamped and their sun-reddened neck whipped.  The mothers of movements have forgotten where they came from and the daughters of them told not to care since they had enlightened husbands to attend to—tea cozies to knit.  Ignore the shadow in the window; there’s nothing there.  They promise.  They lie.

Soon, my friends, we will be arriving at Fantasy Island, the place where fool s go to have their way—and the helpless are dragged along.  What those that brought you fail to see is that often what they crave most is the very thing they should never have.  This election, their selection, is no exception.  The illusion isn’t real; it cannot last.  It won’t.  In the end, as in every Island tale, they will learn a fundamental lesson: Be careful what you wish for. For the puppet you guide today may move tomorrow by someone else’s strings.

'My dear guests, I am Mr. Roarke, your host. Welcome to Fantasy Island.'

In loving memory of Ricardo Montalban (1920-2009), Mr. Roarke himself, the indomitable host.