The Cynic Express(ed) 2.12: Politics as Paranoia

     West End Games makes a wonderful game called Paranoia. You do not have to be a die hard fan of role-playing games to appreciate the mirth. In the futuristic game, a Big Brother computer sees everything that our wayward adventurers do. Unfortunately, the computer is mad, and the missions it assigns to its pawns are often suicidal and irrational. The characters, mutants and members of secret societies in a world where mutants and secret societies have been banned, must seek out and destroy enemies of the state, like themselves. Great hilarity ensues as the players blast each others’ characters and rationalize their behaviour to the Computer. One person, the final arbitrary arbiter, listens to the rationalizations and rewards those that sound the best, which means to say the most twisted-yet-plausible within the context of the game.

     Ah, how life imitates gaming! As a recuperating English major, I am bound by my vocation to synthesize metaphors out of what should be unrelated items. How like the game Paranoia the climate in Washington!

     After all, some members of Congress and the current presidential administration strike postures as colorful as peacocks and as sincere as, well, politicians. Enough said. When Trent Lott says on one day that he cannot support action in Iraq, and on the next that he really did not mean it exactly that way, he is really trying to pander. Earnestly, but not sincerely, expressing how he feels, or how the he thinks the Computer wants him to feel. When publishers from varied sources such as Salon and Hustler express, in almost the same words, that desperate times call for dirty measures, or that the ends justify being mean, they have one eye on the target they’re blasting away and one eye upon the camera through which the Computer sees everything they do.

     In Paranoia, though, each character has five clones. After all, if the game master runs the game correctly, the characters will have blasted each other to oblivion at least once before tying their shoes. The clones ensure that each player will be able to play for more than the first twenty minutes of the evening’s festivities. The Computer instantly flies in a clone by robot drone plane so that the merriment remains seamless.

     Washington, too, has its clones. Whether a press secretary, chief of staff, or Congressional spinner, spectators need handy scorecards and profiles printed in Time to keep track of the name of the moment. Whenever a Speaker of the House receives a couple of laser blasts for being a Commie Mutant Traitor or criticism for bungling a set of elections, a drone appears out of nowhere bearing a new but unmarred copy of the original. And the clone flies in, and Zap! He’s toast, too. I kinda sympathize with that guy—what was his name? I mean, I once had a Paranoia character who was drawn into a Mutant Zapper that sucked mutants to their deaths like a bug zapper. The clone flew in, right into the area of effect of the Mutant Zapper, and Zap! The clone got it right away, too.

     Of course, I am running into a problem with the metaphor I am so meticulously crafting. The Computer. I am not sure to whom the Troubleshooters in Washington pander. The media? I doubt that. Although various commentator and entertainalists spend some time pooh-poohing the media’s coverage of the machinations and mayhem in Washington, the papers and television stations still revel in the implications and rationalizations. Perhaps the American People serve the role of spectator and scorekeeper, but here in the heartland I have not found anyone who believes a whole Lott of Washington’s sound bites. On the other hand, we did not elect a new crop of congressmen and senators last time out.

     I suspect, though, that the people in Washington parade and pomp and preen for – themselves. Falling prey to everything against which Machiavelli warned Princes, the players in Washington come up with excuses, one-liners, and grandstands designed to make their staffers and pollsters coo and praise. Certainly not people snug in the middle of the country, away from the coasts, who do not really care that each action in Washington have an equal and opposite quip or condemnation.

     Or maybe I am just cynical, but it sounds twisted-yet-plausible within the context of my worldview.