Political Wisdom, And Its Rarity

It was becoming astronomically expensive for our political parties to keep narrowing down potential voters statistically to those populations who were best at predicting the outcome of our presidential elections. It began with finding the few swing states that determined the outcome. Then it progressed to the key neighborhoods. Billions of dollars were spent on the research surrounding this sensitive instrument of predictability and reliability that focussed upon smaller and smaller groups.

The idea finally arose that perhaps there was one individual who was always right in determining the outcome, and that while it might be even more expensive to determine statistically who it was, it would save so much more money in the long run. So the thinking went in our highest circles of the elite.

Thus it came to pass that our finest minds became engaged in the requisite number crunching with the most up-to-date parallel computers at their fingertips. After four months of this, and as cash began running low, it appeared that one such individual was found, one who had never erred in determining election outcomes all over the country as well as on the presidential front: it was Yankel Fishbein, an inmate in the back wards of an obscure mental institution in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He was a catatonic who almost never was moved to speak, but his electoral predictions were absolutely perfect, and thereafter no money was spared by either major political party in giving him the best care known to medical science. Yankel was old enough to have covered all the elections from the years 1972 until the present and future with absolute perfection, although he was never observed reading any newspaper or otherwise engaging with the news of our world.

Democrats and Republicans alike worshiped his wisdom, whatever its source might be, and they came to him, imploring his aid. Indeed, most recently, when asked who the next President of the United States was going to be, he opened his eyes wide, as was his wont when thus queried, and he gazed heavenwards to receive his message. Then, after the passage of some weeks, he delivered his oracular prediction with total confidence in its rectitude, and his words sped through our Internet, as all the newspapers around the world printed them in wonderment.

The presidential election of 2012 in the USA came and went. For the first time in his life, Yankel Fishbein was found to be wrong in his prediction! All the best reporters flocked to speak to him at his bedside, asking why. Yes, they asked him, over and over again, how it could be that he was now wrong for the first time in his life.

Three months later, when these people from all over the world had asked their persistent question to the weak and aging Yankel Fishbein yet again, for who knows how many times, his lips began to tremble. Slowly, he opened his mouth, displaying its missing teeth for all to see. Lifting his heavy head laboriously from his pillow, and now speaking clearly to the assembled multitudes before him, he said, “Oh, shit!”. He never spoke again.

Kashaknishra's agent,  11/7/2012