Ohio Senate Bill 148 passed on a party line vote. Twenty three Republicans decided to restrict voters’ choices in future elections and ten Democrats voted against the bill for a variety of reasons…primarily because the early voting window was narrowed. Third party candidates must gather an extraordinary number of signatures to qualify for the Ohio ballot. Usually because most third party candidates and supporters have real jobs and are not full-time career politicians, outside professional petitioners must be hired to accumulate the necessary signatures. In the realm of hardball politics, time and money are precious commodities. If the third party candidates do manage to attain ballot access, they have already expended an inordinate amount of physical and financial capital. The mouse must scuff and scurry to get in the game because the cowardly elephant is afraid of the smaller creature. It should be noted that the elephant is typically a gelding until it is time to intimidate the mouse.
In past years I rode the elephant as it studiously looked after its own interests while stomping on the little folks as it made its way across the land. The elephant entered into a pact with the donkey whereby whenever either of them became too afraid of the little folk, they would band together to isolate the diminutive ones until the supremacy of the pachyderm and ass could be assured. The elephant and the ass direct themselves according to two prime principles: survival and power. For the two self-serving critters all other principles and values are mere baggage. Sometimes the donkey brazenly brays his misbegotten disdain for standards of constitutional conformity and simple liberty, but the elephant never fails to laud the ideals of freedom, frugality, and fundamental principles. The ass is stupid, and the elephant lies.
Now comes the mouse to claim his place among society’s critters. A modest creature the mouse desires to live in a land of principles and liberty. He wishes that the other critters would allow him to be what he is…a mouse, but they insist on making him conform to their preferences. The donkey and the elephant assume that because of their large sizes, they have the power to force the other animals to do it their way. So, the two grey beasts trumpet and bray to intimidate the others. They change the rules so frequently that the other creatures are constantly hustling to conform. They conspire to make life difficult for all the other creatures of the Creator’s world. In extreme cases when they feel threatened, the elephant and the donkey do not allow the others to roam the wildlife sanctuary. They force the other creatures to roam outside on the periphery of the society.
Whenever the mouse can find an opening into the center of it all, he is amazed at the elephant’s reaction. The massive animal cowers in the corner and refuses to engage the mouse in any meaningful way. The mouse is puzzled by the elephant’s over reactive, cowardly behavior. After all, the elephant professes to share many of the mouse’s values about how the wildlife area should be governed. Why is he so afraid? The donkey runs away when the mouse appears, and the mouse is mystified because the donkey claims to believe that the animal kingdom should not require everyone to behave the same.
It was a moment of epiphany for the tiny rodent. The legal and regulatory mistreatment that he suffered because of collusion between the donkey and the elephant (who was the primary abuser) was a mere symptom of their fear and inadequacy. They were afraid that the mouse would live according to his principles, and they could not tolerate the comparative scrutiny. If the mouse were to assume a role of leadership within the animal sanctuary, the elephant and the donkey would be exposed as dishonest frauds. It wasn’t really the mouse that the elephant feared. It was the little critter’s integrity that made the elephant tremble. The donkey is always stupid.
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