Georgy Porgy was deeply ashamed of his hometown, Crestfalls. The Recession-lite had taken many a neighbor’s home and then many neighbors. The latest suicide had seen the Rhand fellow going messily in front of his kids. A tragedy even if they were awful online. Someone made a comment at the wake, an innuendo about his missus being “at the store”. Porgy watched sadly as one neighbor stomped another into the ground. It made an already tacky service worse.
The last straw was (incorrectly referred to as) the Hot Mic. The mayor knew that what he was saying was being heard, but he lacked whatever it was – class, empathy – to care.
He talked about how soon the “lazy element” would be priced out of town. They didn’t deserve to be there, he said, because they didn’t want it bad enough.
The crowd grumbled and groaned, but they also knew that he wasn’t talking about them specifically. He was talking about the person next to them.
Porgy wasn’t an idiot, even thought of himself as a bit of a sophisticate. His town was suffering was for sure. It pled and bled for relief with none in sight. These were dark times, but they were also bright and new. There wasn’t nothing wrong with trying to bring a little shine, bit of glory, to one’s home. He knew that locales as far flung as Estonia and Taiwan had made gains on data privacy, places like Scotland and Portugal had brave new ideas about poverty, the smallest towns dotting India and Syria had serious ideas about protecting the environment and making fair societies. What about Porgy’s town? There had to be something here that the rest of the world could use, Porgy thought. Porgy just had to think about what there was a surplus of.
Crestfalls was rife with distrust. Crestfalls had been Porgy’s town since before he’d been born. His parents could trace their roots far back enough in that town, but the town didn’t like each other so much anymore.
When you sat Morning Diner, you drank your mud trading barbs with the partisan one table over. At any given time, a classroom was half virtual so parents could watch, interrupting as they did with “alternate histories.” In the conflicts of the past, entire cities had been carved up, neighborhoods were besieged and held ground. In the new era, the city might be left intact but every public space was territory. Trips to the market, getting a driver’s license, filing taxes – all of it had descended into pettiness and cronyism.
The mayor had no solutions and suggested the Ultimate Debate, which he claimed would settle it all. Reflecting how little he’d thought this out, the mayor solicited suggestions from the public on how to make the debate “more real.” Porgy had an idea.
He told everyone he could. To his surprise, every person he told thought it was a good idea regardless of how they voted or who they harassed. During the Pre-Ultimate Debate Referendum, they all voted for it. Had the suggestions not been made public on livestream, it’s doubtful they would’ve gone ahead, but this one was and did. Porgy had suggested that the two debaters be chained to their lecterns and wear shock collars connected to lie detectors. They would be shocked whenever it appeared that they were lying. They would also be shocked if they overtalked or interrupted.
The mayor tried to reel it in. His office had asked for suggestions, “not a whole goddamn plan”. This wasn’t what he’d meant. But everybody wanted it. The mayor saw that this was out of his hands. He had once been a deeply stupid man who rose to power on a populist wave of blank but colorful rhetoric. While he was still rather stupid, he had learned enough to understand that he was faced with his own personal comeuppance. Few could know that this taste of kismet was deeply tormenting the mayor, which only added to the paranoia. Now the death threats that had so often been launched at journalists and labor activists – which he’d often dismissed and occasionally ordered – had convinced him that the debate would not be stopped. At least, he thought, “It’s not me doing it.”
No, the media circus had brought in two bigger names: a capital city lawyer and a pillar of the community from opposite sides, ready to duke it out for a state seat. They hyped it like a fight match. Both men were establishment picks. They could scarcely go off script. And then, the question section of the debate came.
It was a shock show.
Lie detectors had come a long way since developments in empathetic AI and sentiment detection had upped their lobbying game, but the two debaters’ bluffing had been unrelenting. They didn’t just lie about things they knew were false, many if not most of the lies were positing that they knew something when they didn’t actually. It was truly enlightening. By the end of it, the two men had inadvertently undertaken electroshock therapy.
Seeing in real time how brittle the debaters’ resolves were, how rote their arguments, it was hard to un-see, vinier still to un-think. For the first time in a long time, the distrustful, hateful people of Crestfalls knew that spinning this on the other wouldn’t help. It didn’t feel good. They could still play the game, but they couldn’t ignore that it was a game. They couldn’t get high on outrage anymore. It didn’t hit.
The town insisted on another. The mayor refused until it was agreed that he was exempt from debating. One side fielded a varsity politician, the other a local schoolteacher. The Senator didn’t have to be institutionalized, but he did take leave and lose the next primary. Had he won, he’d’ve squared off with the schoolteacher again, who did get shocked but was spared much suffering by her humility. The activist bouts came next and weren’t particularly enlightening, but the townsfolk did goad a fascist into getting electrocuted to death on stage while the fascist’s opponent’s remarks led the organizers to add going off-topic as a shockable offense. Crestfalls, Where the Glib Go to Die became the slogan.
This naturally brought in the soothsayers, scammers, chancers, and sociopaths who couldn’t resist beating an ol’ smell test. It’s true that they escaped some shocks, maybe more than the average bear, but they got theirs. Everybody, it turns out, gets it in the end. Some of these characters weren’t seen much after leaving the town. Rumors said they’d pay a pound of flesh to leave. Records on this aren’t clear.
Neighboring towns caught the fever as well. Summer became known as Debate Season, but Crestfalls had debates year-round whenever an issue needed debating. It was public participation at its finest, truly representative democracy. Towns that hosted debates for commerce or tourism were quickly found out.
Crestfalls’ debate system had gone from viral joke to media curiosity to best practice. With each debate, there were more out-of-towners eager to see and learn. Within weeks, the practice would spread, each time more debates becoming entrenched in territories further afield. Crestfalls was on the map, and Porgy was too.
***
He had assumed a central role as the idea took off, and he took his work seriously. He was always searching for ways to make the debates better, but he wasn’t above indulging in his local celebrity. He and the mayor had since gone from foes, one flippantly in power and the other an agent of earnest curiosity, to shoulder rubbers and then begrudging confidants. And for this, when the nation came a calling, Porgy was the one who had to inform the mayor that he must debate.
The debates were in every state. The mayor had played it cool. Privately, he’d begged. He begged everyone he possibly could until Porgy was the last person left to beg. To call the mayor dirty would be to undersell his disposition. He’d never been clean. The mayor, in a moment of vulnerability, had asked Porgy to give him an easy opponent, to do whatever he could. Porgy looked him in the eye and swore he would. It was a lie. Porgy wouldn’t game the debates. They were the only thing Crestfalls had. Besides, the mayor had made his choices. The debates were because of people like him.
People started shuffling in as early as they could. More were tailgating. The dim lights gave the meeting hall a low, sickly hue, and the lights flitted and flickered with the electroshock. The mayor’s opponent was an ultra-earnest activist type, a pairing that, going into it the match, put them on even heel and made the event feel like it could be a squeaker.
As Porgy watched the debate, he wondered if the mayor was a sociopath. The first question, about meats, served the mayor well. He launched into a boilerplate tirade about crime. Every statement burned a path that scorched the earth behind, an incendiary take that required anyone who wanted to so much as quantify it to walk into the fire while everyone watched. Social services, the mayor said, were a waste. Lawbreakers needed to be locked away with edible keys. According to the shocker, the mayor was being earnest. He seemed to almost squeal with delight as he neared his finishing word, pivoting towards his debate partner with a grin, eager to see the shock.
The audience looked about quizzically. It’d been a time since someone had lasted that long on bullshit and emotional appeals. Porgy understood though. The mayor, he knew, had never actually decided what he’d believed, so in any given moment, he could believe whatever he needed to. Porgy wondered if this marked the end or the beginning of the end of the great experiment. In that same moment, the town wondered if its mayor was indeed the most honest man in the country, if he had some kind of mandate of heaven. For a moment, they all thought he might be president.
The opponent hesitated and took the shock. He wouldn’t be a better debater, but he did say on the topic, “we pay for these things one way or another.” The audience recognized something in this. The mayor did not. He fought battles to keep power. He didn’t know about winning wars. He reached for a long-held fact, except it wasn’t a fact anymore. Not to the crowd, anyway, and that was what mattered. No matter, the mayor thought as he prattled on, stalling by describing a random law. About to launch into the verbal gymnastics that would cosmetically connect his filler to the topic, the shock came. His scream betrayed the pain. It wasn’t just that he’d been thrown off his game. Rather, just as he had never actually formalized what he’d believed in, he now felt unable to discern in real time what was true information and what was useful information.
Most everything he said after that was said without the momentum to fool the shock. The shamelessness of it brought out something in the crowd. The mayor was pelted, first lightly with scraps and pocket lint, then with drink and trash and whatever disgusting mushy things were at hand, and finally with hard things, rocks and books and cans and such.
As a question came up about the separation of church and state, two things he’d never really believed in, he called out for Porgy, pled, begged, until he simply wailed Porgy’s name in between random shouts of “help” and “please” until the debate just kind of ended. People shuffled out contentedly onto their pub or parlor. In the moment, they didn’t have much to say. It’d all been onstage, and the satisfied grins said it all.
The mayor made a point of making it home despite the damage splayed on his face. His wife in furs led him out, her face white with fear. He insisted he was fine, but the way he said it, blankly, nervously, repeating the same thing rapidly and aloofly, insisted otherwise. He was carted off to the hospital in the late night/early morning and committed. He returned home one month later and announced his resignation as the deputy mayor stood next to him. The deputy looked terrified. He realizing he was next. The mayor killed himself a few months later. He left no note beyond a jotting on scrap paper: “no dice.”
By the time the body was discovered, the debates had crossed over, and Porgy was surprised to find himself in demand. People needed help knowing how to set debates up and, more importantly, keep them clean. Porgy was invited to speak and teach all over, even abroad. On some days, he’d lecture then immediately hop on calls spreading the gospel. He met others like him who’d had the same idea and pushed it through their communities until it hit the top. Great minds, they say, think alike. One in particular helped Porgy deal with the loneliness of the road. Before he knew it, she was all he thought about. She was so free, and when he finally made the move, he felt awash in that freedom. She had an enthusiasm he hadn’t felt since the days when he’d first met his wife. He’d married young, but now anything felt possible.
She, Marinda was her name, didn’t feel the same. She came from a small town too, had chosen to stay unmarried—“avoided the yoke” was how she’d explained it to Porgy. She felt free around him because he wasn’t judgmental, not like her townsfolk were. And the enthusiasm she brought to the bedroom, it was a freedom you could have when you didn’t have to worry about gossip. She knew Porgy was married though she could tell—the way he spoke or didn’t of her—that Porgy only loved his wife by default, but it became clear that for Porgy, she wasn’t enough. Nor, it turned out, was Marinda. At first, they’d been kindred souls (his words), but with each dalliance Porgy became more “awakened”.
Porgy’s kids arrived to visit him on the road while Marinda was leaving his room dejected and cursing herself. Hadn’t she realized his eyes had moved on? He was still having at the intern, so his children walked in on engaging in a particularly risqué sex act. After the calm down and the clean-up, the wait in the lobby, and then the awkward meal, there was an unspoken agreement that mother wouldn’t be told. So now, Porgy too understood that some things weren’t to be said aloud. Porgy decided to move closer to the capital. For the debates, he said. The kids refused to move but began visiting more. Porgy had a good life in a version of the world closer to the one that he wanted to live in.
For three years, the greatest three years in the nation’s history and the history of democracy and maybe even the history of governance, politicians were honest because it was easier than having to lie, because it was so hard to get away with it. Their relationship to the money was clear, and everyone understood each other better. They didn’t just get each other more, they saw themselves as the puppets on purse strings, and they could know the actual differences between the different puppets and also the value of all the different types of strings.
Several autocracies raised alarm. This was anarchy, they’d bellow to anyone who could hear. They couldn’t get footage off of their internets fast enough, and there was always more. If you were a dictator or even just a strongman in those years, your people were rising up weekly, if not daily. The corpses of protesters shot by police and paramilitary and, of course, regular military weren’t even being removed. The bodies piled to high hell those years, it was terrible people would admit, but for once their societies looked like they actually were. It wasn’t just the democracy, as so many pundits insisted, it was the honesty. If someone was getting clarity and truth, then why shouldn’t they? Sure, there’d been talk of freedom and liberty in the past, but those had been abstract and invoked hypocritically, caked as they were in the language of inequality. But this, this you could see. You could see the leaders being electrocuted. You could see the audience realizing they’d been wrong. You could see it all. A president was eventually elected.
The people’s president was great, and they’d made up for lost time too. The national election debates had to be extended as parties struggled to field candidates and had to replace the ones that broke along the way. Parties as well sprung up to fill the gap, issue-based candidates that could show their skills and experience without having to justify a system or speak to all of it. A newish type of candidate arose, a less performative one. The age of the grabbers and chancers appeared to be over.
At the next presidential election, Certain Interests decided to intervene, their assets having been hit by the honesty policy. They buried the world in adverts and messaging. The debates were a violation of human rights. Exercises in bullying. Outright torture. Testimonials from “survivors” and a family of someone who didn’t survive were plastered all over. Celebrity envoys went everywhere they could: streamers, twitchers, chatshacks, confessionals, reality competitions, competitive eating battles. Bathed in the language of inclusivity and empathy, they pled to the public to choose a different way, a kinder one. Public servants shouldn’t be treated this way, they implored. When this didn’t take, they claimed it was unconstitutional, but then again most things either were or weren’t depending on how sharia you got with it. In desperation, they had other countries make statements at any international body that would listen. They started paying people to denounce the debates. Most wouldn’t, but the younger generation was hungry to show their teeth. Finally, they argued that the debates infringed on corporate personhood.
Forsaking all subtlety, they shut it down. Industry flexed its muscle and pooled its resources. They framed it as a war and claimed every space, from online chatrooms to factory walls, with messages about “taking power back.” Someone long ago had sold the meeting halls, monetized the parks, deregulated the electric grid, and all of that was leveraged to institute the new, improved “Civil Debates” as they were rebranded. All the candidates would do the debates and get scored. Polygraphs and the shocks would be “within humane limits.” The sadism was gone, they’d assured everyone. The old ways had returned.
The scoring criteria was released to the public. It was fair on the aerial, but the weightings left room for concern. The incumbent, the people’s president, didn’t win nor did the clear corporate shill. Instead a moderate named Purple Nurple walked away with the lead, and this, industry insisted, should translate to the polls. The people had had their experiment and gotten one in. Wasn’t it Daddy Business’s turn? The only thing that stopped the riots was the incumbent, who dispersed the mob.
That night Porgy broke into a crisis of faith. After some looting, he found himself strung out on a whore’s floor. He skulked out into the morning street, awash in shame and the stench of defeat. Later that morning it was announced that the incumbent had withdrawn. There had been an emergency meeting with the national interests, the reserve, and “aspects” of the government.
Nurple had decent approval among the public. Nurple had opposed “improving” the debates and had been an outspoken voice against them. Unlike some of the other tooth and nailers, Nurple enjoyed time in the sun, could’ve been on the make in a different world. The next national election season lacked both pomp and circumstance.
***
Porgy’s life had become very different in the last few years. After his spiral, he’d had some time in the dark, eventually pulling himself out. There’d been a child, and then a marriage to a woman he’d met at a single parents mixer. He tried to dance around work, but she didn’t mind like he did.
“Being a truth advisor for a socials company was good work,” she assured him.
The glory days, he knew, were gone. When the invitation came, Porgy chucked it in the trash, and she pulled it out.
“Are you mad?” she asked. “Don’t you want to show your son how government works?” He squinted at her. Finally, she appealed to his ego. “Don’t you want your son to see how important you are?”
Porgy and family had an expenses paid trip to the capital. Porgy was asked to participate in one of the pre-event panels. He’d share the stage with the same activists he’d met on the road before, when they’d all actually built a better world only to watch it disassembled in record time. Porgy’s paid trip was contingent on him participating, but when the time came, he couldn’t. He squirreled wife and children away at the family time parade and went to watch the panel from the wings. Each member of the panel was dressed in a neon-colored suit. They all looked strung out, all of them chain smoking, struggling to find words. The moderator, of a different ilk, struggled to keep the energy. At one point, one of the panel called out for Porgy. “Where’s Georgy?” he shouted as the audience looked around. Porgy almost found his bravery, and the rest of the panel devolved into the panelists swapping suggestions for which drugs were best for getting through the day.
Audience behavior for the “official debates” was now highly regulated, with steep penalties involving both financial ruin and the forfeiture of one’s freedom. The first debate topic had already been announced. It would be about how detrimental to society the underground debates were. Footage of previous debates was also being scrubbed, and there would be new restrictions on recording debates from here on out.
In Nurple’s defense, it remains unclear if they knew the mic was hot. Many, especially the OVs (original voters), like to think that he knew and wanted to do right. Many of us, though, think that’s wishful thinking – the baying, pleading delusion of a re-infantilized society unequipped to reckon with its reality.
Backstage, Nurple doing vocal exercises while talking to an unidentified party, had said: “I am, basically, a billionaire’s bagman.” Then, assuming an exasperated tone, he added, “This vote is such bullshit and everyone knows it. Nothing’s been the same since they changed the debates. Even my boss thinks the debates were the highpoint of democracy. They thought they were great. The highpoint, their words. They said that.”
The crowd was aghast. As the moderator began their introduction and the candidates came on stage, Porgy left the VIP seats he and his family had been given near the stage and went to the stage. He looked as if he was about to speak. He approached the microphone and exhaled sharply as if he was about to orate.
Perhaps one word sputtered out. Then he vomited. It was loud and wet, and the thud of the chunks hitting the ground sounded magnificent with the hall acoustics. The acoustics also caught the stinking, fetid slime cycling up Porgy’s esophagus as well as the transition to raspy, dry heave. Everyone stood in place considering this. When he had finished, a security member shuffled over to him, shrugged, then tased him. Porgy fell into it and then twitched around for a bit as the president looked over him with a quizzical look. The first row did get a little wet.
Georgy Porgy had wanted to do his part for the world and for Crestfalls. He had been an integral force of the Great Debate Movement, but many towns had contributed and none were totally synonymous with the movement. In this moment, Crestfalls had truly become famous. It had tried to give the nation a better political discourse. In the end, it could only give the nation a more honest, more accurate one.
Porgy did get up, unsteady but wobbly. His wife came and pulled his pants up, gathered their child, and then they all left together. Porgy would be taken in for questioning when he returned to Crestfalls, and a stint in the hospital included electro.
In the debate hall, President Nurple watched Porgy miserably shuffle off, a slimy snail trail of failure in his wake. Nurple then shrugged and went to his lectern. He pulled out his device and started scrolling as the other candidates filed in. The moderator, clearly flustered and not untouched by the twit hitting the fan, straightened his back, cleared his throat, and resumed. He started working the crowd, asking friendly questions and gently ribbing audience members, but the mood was off and the jokes didn’t land. A fight broke out among the audience. Outside, the ratatat of cheap fireworks was getting nearer. The crowd squirmed, feeling uneasy.
[Image Credit : Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash]
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