I won a splendid palomino pony, with a flaxen tail and spindrift mane, soft brown eyes and an elegant stride. It’s the best pony ever!
And it shall be mine… as soon as the lady who thinks she won it in the holiday White Elephant gift exchange hands it over to me. Because, really, I did win the pony!
Or I would have won it… if the Elephant organizer had been paying attention when I waved my arms around and yelled it was my turn to draw. He said my raffle-ticket number was too high, and the next number to draw was held by this crazy lady, not me. If he didn’t insist on going by dopey Elephant rules, I would have won the pony outright.
I did explain it was really truly my pony, didn’t I?
White Elephants are such fun in the holidays! There’s the fretting over what to put in the lucky dip. (“Is a scented candle too cheesy?” “If it’s a work event, can I put in a bottle of wine?”) Then the drama of choosing a gift from the pile. Half the room is chuckling at the extreme wackiness of their contributions. (Say, a foot-high, plastic Tyrannosaurus rex piggy bank; a round blanket printed to look like a tortilla.) The other half is hoping you don’t choose the tall, slim bag with a twist of tissue-paper poking out, which could conceivably be a nice bottle of Merlot. (But might also be a set of six pumpkin-spice-scented taper candles.)
Why am I on this hobby-horse?
The topic is on my mind for two reasons. First, because I’ve been cudgeling my brains to think of how to pull off a semi-secret-Santa version over Zoom. (One strategy involved double-blind bluff-the-players score sheets and easily mailed gift cards.) Second, because — when played by small children at the nursery school version of the game — whining and grumbling about who actually won the best toy pony seems to be standard.
I wouldn’t be a kindergarten teacher for love nor money. Nor would I be an election official in a county where Joe Biden won the presidential election.
If I say “I won the pony” often enough, does it make it less real that Susan from Accounting actually won the animal? If I claim repeatedly that Susan must have falsified her ticket number, will colleagues hanging around the buffet believe me? In fact, believe me even if Sue lets them examine her ticket, and they agree that it bears no marks of Sharpie? If I just storm over to Susan, grab the pony’s bridle and head for the door, will the Elephant organizer try to stop me? Or will he be so bewildered by my dazzling arguments that he lets me stroll off with my palomino prize?
At what point would the average party-goer decide I must indeed have won the pony because I’ve said it so many times, with such conviction? Especially because they never really liked anyone in the Accounting department anyway…
The current president claims the pony
It grieves me to say that a hefty minority of my fellow Americans believe I have the pony just because I said so. They accept my lie that Susan fudged her ticket with a Sharpie. They agree with my lie that the White Elephant organizer must have been biased against me from the outset. Furthermore, he should not be trusted with managing any Elephants, of any color, in the future. To ensure this, they arm themselves with gun and bullhorn, then march up to his house to terrorize the children.
A solid majority of Americans trust that the results of the 2020 presidential election are accurate, but only about a quarter of Republicans do, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey.
Sixty-one percent say they trust the results, including two-thirds of independents, but just 24% of Republican respondents say they accept the results.
Poll: Just A Quarter Of Republicans Accept Election Outcome (page 45 of poll PDF)
I have to admit, this news bewilders me. I was pretty sure fiction authors had cornered the market on parallel universes and alternative realities… (Oh wait, I’d forgotten about Kellyanne’s “alternative facts.“) In what universe are actual votes, cast by real humans, perforce false simply because they went to the other guy?
The party of the elephant plays ‘steal the prize’
In many versions of the White Elephant exchange, the next player can ‘steal’ a gift instead of taking a gamble on the pile. That’s always an option for those who ended up with the bag of pumpkin-spice-scented candles instead of the Merlot. It absolutely should not be permitted in an election conducted in America. Begging Elephant organizers you believe you can sway to intervene and take the pony away from Susan is disgraceful, nursery-school behavior.
Yet here we are. Not only are Republican-voting citizens confused about how elections work, but the officials they have elected are confused. Or perhaps “confused” is too generous. Perhaps they are actually venal. As columnist Paul Waldman wrote today in the Washington Post:
“The foundation of [our electoral] system is that the people vote, we count the votes, and the winner takes office. The GOP is now saying, “No. We win, no matter what. And if the people vote for a Democrat, then they must simply be overruled.”
For my part, I shall mount my new pony and ride off into the sunset, triumphant in the knowledge that a lie, repeated often enough, can convince some people it is the truth.
Banner photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels