politics as the Vegetarian-Anti-VaccinationParty is here.... The Central Diplomatic Council of the ReunitedNations has just announced, for the hundred and seventy-eighth time,that the Arab-Israel dispute has been finally, definitely andsatisfactorily settled. This morning's reports from Baghdad and TelAviv only list four Arabs and six Israelis killed in border clashes inthe past twenty-four hours, so maybe they're really getting thingspatched up, after all. During the same period, there were morefatalities in Newer New York as a result of clashes between theprivate troops of rival racket gangs, political parties and businesshouses.
"Which brings us to the local scene. On my way to the studio thismorning, I stopped at City Hall, and found our genial Chief of PoliceDelaney, 'Irish' Delaney to most of us, hard at work with a portabledisintegrator, getting rid of record disks and recording tapes of oldand long-settled cases. He had a couple of amusing stories. Forinstance, a lone Independent-Conservative partisan broke up aRadical-Socialist mass meeting preparatory to a march to demonstratein Double Times Square, by applying his pocket lighter to one of theheat-sensitive boxes in the building and activating the sprinklersystem. By the time the Radicals had gotten into dry clothing, therewas a, well, sort of, impromptu Conservative demonstration going on inDouble Times Square, and one of the few things the local gendarmeswon't stand for is an attempt to hold two rival political meetings inthe same area.
"Curiously, while it was the Radicals who got soaked, it was theConservatives who sneezed," Mongery went on, his face glowing withmischievous amusement. "It seems that while they were holding amonster rally at Hague Hall, in North Jersey Borough, some person orpersons unknown got at the air-conditioning system with a tank ofsneeze gas, which didn't exactly improve either the speaking style ofSenator Grant Hamilton or the attentiveness of his audience. Needlessto say, there is no police investigation of either incident. Electionshenanigans, like college pranks, are fair play as long as they don'tcause an outright holocaust. And that, I think, is as it should be,"Mongery went on, more seriously. "Most of the horrors of the Twentiethand Twenty-first Centuries were the result of taking politics tooseriously."
Pelton snorted again. That was the Literate line, all right; treatpolitics as a joke and an election as a sporting event, let theIndependent-Conservative grafters stay in power, and let the Literatesrun the country through them. Not, of course, that he disapproved ofthose boys in the Young Radical League who'd thought up thatsneeze-gas trick.
"And now, what you've been waiting for," Mongery continued. "The finalTrotter Poll's pre-election analysis." A novice Literate advanced,handing him a big loose-leaf book, which he opened with the reverencea Literate always displayed toward the written word. "This," he said,"is going to surprise you. For the whole state of Penn-Jersey-York,the poll shows a probable Radical-Socialist vote of approximatelythirty million, an Independent-Conservative vote of approximately tenand a half million, and a vote of about a million for what we call theWho-Gives-A-Damn Party, which, frankly, is the party of yourcommentator's choice. Very few sections differ widely from thisaverage--there will be a much heavier Radical vote in the Pittsburgharea, and traditionally Conservative Philadelphia and the upper HudsonValley will give the Radicals a much smaller majority."
They all looked at one another, thunderstruck.
"If Mongery's admitting that, I'm in!" Pelton exclaimed.
"Yeah, we can start calling him Senator, now, and really mean it," Raysaid. "Maybe old Mongie isn't such a bad sort of twerp, after all."
"Considering that the Conservatives carried this state by asubstantial majority in the presidential election of two years ago,and by a huge majority in the previous presidential election of 2136,"Mongery, in the screen, continued, "this verdict of the almostinfallible Trotter Poll needs some explaining. For the most part, itis the result of the untiring efforts of one man, the dynamic newleader of the Radical-Socialists and their present candidate for theConsolidated States of North America Senate, Chester Pelton, who hastransformed that once-moribund party into the vital force it is today.And this achievement has been due, very largely, to a single sloganwhich he had hammered into your ears: _Put the Literates in theirplace; our servants, not our masters!_" He brushed a handdeprecatingly over his white smock and fingered the badges on hisbelt.
"There has always been, on the part of the Illiterate public, someresentment against organized Literacy. In part, it has been due to thehigh fees charged for Literate services, and to what seems, to many,to be monopolistic practices. But behind that is a general attitude ofanti-intellectualism which is our heritage from the disastrous wars ofthe Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries. Chester Pelton has madehimself the spokesman of this attitude. In his view, it was men whocould read and write who hatched the diabolical political ideologiesand designed the frightful nuclear weapons of that period. In hismind, Literacy is equated with '_Mein Kampf_' and '_Das Kapital_',with the A-bomb and the H-bomb, with concentration camps and blastedcities. From this position, of course, I beg politely to differ.Literate men also gave us the Magna Charta and the Declaration ofIndependence.
"Now, in spite of a lunatic fringe in the Consolidated Illiterates'Organization who want just that, Chester Pelton knows that we cannotabolish Literacy entirely. Even with modern audio-visual recording,need exists for some modicum of written recording, which can berapidly scanned and selected from--indexing, cataloguing, tabulatingdata, et cetera--and for at least a few men and women who can form andinterpret the written word. Mr. Pelton, himself, is the owner of ahuge department store, employing over a thousand Illiterates; he mustat all times have the services of at least fifty Literates."
"And pays through the nose for them, too!" Pelton growled. It was morethan fifty; and Russ Latterman had been forced to get twenty extrassent in for the sale.
"Now, since we cannot renounce Literacy entirely, without sinking to_fellahin_ barbarism, and here I definitely part company with Mr.Pelton, he fears the potential power of organized Literacy. In a word,he fears a future Literate Dictatorship."
"Future? What do you think we have now?" Pelton demanded.
"Nobody," Mongery said, as though replying to him, "is stupid enough,today, to want to be a dictator. That ended by the middle of theTwenty-first Century. Everybody knows what happened to Mussolini, andHitler, and Stalin, and all their imitators. Why, it is as much thepublic fear of Big Government as the breakdown of civil power becauseof the administrative handicap of a shortage of Literateadministrators that is responsible for the disgraceful lawlessness ofthe past hundred years. Thus, it speaks well for the public trust inChester Pelton's known integrity and sincerity that so many of ourpeople are willing to agree to his program for socialized Literacy.They feel that he can be trusted, and, violently as I disagree withhim, I can only say that that trust is not misplaced.
"Of course, there is also the question, so often raised by Mr. Pelton,that under the Hamilton machine, the politics, and particularly theenforcement of the laws, in this state, are unbelievably corrupt, butI wonder--"
Mongery paused. "Just a moment; I see a flash bulletin being broughtin." The novice Literate came to his side and gave him a slip ofpaper, at which he glanced. Then he laughed heartily.
"It seems that shortly after I began speaking, the local blue-ribbongrand jury issued a summons for Chief Delaney to appear before them,with all his records. Unfortunately, the summons could not be served;Chief Delaney had just boarded a strato-rocket from Tom Dewey Fieldfor Buenos Aires." He cocked an eye at the audience. "I know Irish isgoing to have a nice time, down there in the springtime of theSouthern Hemisphere. And, incidentally, the Argentine is one of thefew major powers which never signed the World Extradition Conventionof 2087." He raised his hand to his audience. "And now, until tomorrowat breakfast, sincerely yours for Cardon's Black Bottle, Elliot C.Mongery."
"Well, whattaya know; that guy was plugging for you!" Ray said. "Andsee how he managed to slide in that bit about corruption, right beforehis stooge handed him that bulletin?"
&nb
sp; "I guess every Literate has his price," Chester Pelton said. "I wonderhow much of my money that cost. I always wondered why Frank Cardonsponsored Mongery. Now I know. Mongery can be had."
"Uh, beg your pardon, Mr. Pelton," a voice from the hall broke in.
He turned. Olaf Olafsson, the 'copter driver, was standing at theentrance to the breakfast nook, a smudge of oil on his cheek and hisstraw-colored hair in disorder. "How do I go about startin' this new'copter?"
"What?" Olaf had been his driver for ten years. He would have beenless surprised had the ceiling fallen in. "You don't know how to startit?"
"No,