Dirty Harry and the Utopian Twinkie

From the days of our earliest recollection, the distant glow of our childhood, we remember them: The small assortment of kids on the playground who preferred to be in charge.   These seasoned six-year-olds did not group according to race or athletic ability. They did not unite to form an oligarchy, but rather tended to find their own sandboxes in which to hold forth. Tetherball, hopscotch, StarTrek role- playing; all had their kingpins. After all, somebody has to decide who gets to be Spock and who is relegated to Sulu.  Somebody has to decide if it’s ball contact only, or if ropesies get the green light.

We know these kids.  Their first lever of coalition was a particular deposit of social currency: the right shirt, shoes, lunch pail, or the coveted Twinkie within. Even better, an unassailable claim to exclusivity: “My dad owns the Twinkie factory”.  A likely fabrication but spoken with such conviction that few dare cast suspicion. The easy inference is that sticking with this kid will make the Twinkies flow.  “If you don’t believe me, come to my house and see all the Twinkies.” They come over. “Where are the Twinkies?” “They’re getting baked in the factory, you idiot.” The second lever of their superiority was not competency, but complexity: an assertion of ownership of a labyrinth of rules. Within this context, consider the following allegory.

Gabe got the tether-ball wrapped around the pole first, but little Harry confidently informed him of a rule he had violated, thus forfeiting the contest. Of course Harry knew he was a cheat, but was no less satisfied with victory by fraud than by merit.  The plum was simply to be on the uphill side of rolling dung. Harry’s self-indulgence was quickly transparent to Gabe, who had enough social and emotional currency to play somewhere else.   And, justifiably, Gabe called out Harry on the Twinkie factory fib.

But to Harry, such repudiation was in gross violation of the Cardinal Rule: Harry Is In Charge. Why? Because it makes Harry feel good.  This subordinated any other consideration.  Harry was not without recourse for retribution against such repudiation.  He knew he couldn’t win any kind of fair fight, so he learned the art of marshalling the kids who lacked the currency of the confident Gabe. They stuck with Harry because they wanted to be on a winning team of some sort, and there was the possibility of Twinkies in the bargain.

This would be their currency. With this currency they would be relevant. Relevance feels good. It feels so good that they find it difficult to challenge Harry’s agenda as long as he exudes confidence. So, Harry plotted with his little henchmen to poison Gabe’s friends against him with a smear campaign: Gabe is a bed-wetter. If enough people say it, it must be true.  Chalk up one for the Harryites. They are now relevant by being uphill from dung rolling right at Gabe. This feels good, too. But none of Gabe’s friends can recall a sour smell in his room, so the story fades quickly.

Fast forward: Harry has grown up now, he has branded himself with a degree from an elite university, he’s ambitious, and there is a game that has become intuitive to him. He has refined the art of marshalling the disenfranchised, to the point of creating the disenfranchised if none can be found otherwise. Who are the disenfranchised? Those who feel they have no currency to transact in the golden orb of relevance inhabited by people with the right shirts, shoes and Twinkie-holding lunchpails .  If they are not sufficiently dissatisfied, Harry will help them with that.

To continue in the vein of the allegory, Gabe is still out there somewhere, and Harry will never really feel like the score is settled. What score? Gabe violated the Cardinal Rule.  Harry needs some help to rectify things, so he gathers a bigger mob and convinces them they are party to Gabe’s ancient rejection. This rejection has somehow defined them. Gabe has taken their currency. This is why they are not relevant. They will not be relevant until they get their currency back from Gabe. It is crucial that they get it back, because Harry has given them an artful glimpse of Utopian relevance.

Now, the vision is clear.  All they have to do to claim their place on the pleasure orb is to unite with Harry in blaming Gabe and invest whatever squalid currency they do have, in Harry – emotional, spiritual and material.  That is to say they cede their will and their dignity to Harry. If they don’t already feel like their will and dignity aren’t worth keeping, Harry will help them see things more clearly. Harry will consolidate their human currency and forge it into a mighty lever that will lift heavy things and whack Gabe.

Our Harryites no longer have a lever of their own to do any lifting or whacking. But it’s OK, Harry has it covered.  And watching Harry – their anointed – doing the lifting and whacking will feel good.

But there is a basic flaw in Harry’s plan. Harry has sold the vision of universal relevance but in realty he sees relevance as a zero-sum game.  If anyone besides Harry has any, Harry has less than he might have. And since Harry’s governing principle is Harry, this is a situation that ultimately must be rectified.  More will not satisfy Harry, only all, and all is hard to come by. Just ask Alexander the Great and Adolf Hitler.

All Harry ever really wanted was his right afforded by the Cardinal Rule. And he needed a bigger club with which to whack Gabe, because Gabe violated the Cardinal Rule.  He convinced his minions that if they would simply cede to him their humanity, he would remove their accountability for their own existence by beating Gabe into giving up the Twinkie in his lunch pail.  Simon was never really interested in the Twinkie beyond its barter value for the humanity of his minions, and the satisfaction of taking it from Gabe, both of which inflate his self-perceived relevance.  And he can never have enough of his own relevance.  Harry is so self-absorbed it is difficult for him to notice the helical human consumption of his own plan, a plan that ultimately will never produce enough Twinkies to sustain itself.

Gabe took the beating once and decided not to bring Twinkies to school any more. Others kids heard about the affair and did the same.  They were all happy without their Twinkies. This was the crack in Harry’s plan, the point that escaped him from the very beginning, that Gabe and his friends did not derive their identity from their Twinkies. He was sure that if he could convince one group to sell their soul for a free Twinkie, he could convince another to sell theirs, so long as they could keep some of their Twinkie some of the time.

Well, one Twinkie did not divide up very well amongst the minions, and sensing that no more Twinkies would be forthcoming, they surrounded Harry with the glaring countenance of the bitterly betrayed. Harry had attempted to perpetrate a Ponzi scheme of Utopian relevance in which all of the value would ultimately float to him.  They had given Harry their will and their dignity, but he had no more Twinkies for Utopian distribution.  The Twinkie was not free after all. How vexed was Harry when he saw that he could never sustain any real leverage over Gabe and his friends. There were no more Twinkies and Harry had to default on his contract with his minions.

The angry call for redemption of their will and dignity frightened Harry badly. He wet his pants in public and had to go away for a long time.  But he will never forget the ignominious defeat. He’ll be back. And when he comes back in glorious reiteration, he won’t just be coming for Gabe. And he will have found new minions with angry faces and short memories. Watch your Twinkies.