(67) The Art of Governing
There's this essay of Jean Baudrillard's in Screened Out about the death of the former French president and Socialist François Mitterand and the controversy surrounding his death -- how his doctor wrote a book released nine days after Mitterand's death about how it was discovered in 1981 that François had prostate cancer and forced his doctor to keep silent about it. The book was deleted after 33,000 copies sold because it broke an agreement of confidentiality. Baudrillard conjectures that Mitterand's contempt for those immediately around him (politicians, family, and the public) as well as the secrecy in regard to his prostate cancer (and if one were to extend it to other secrecies, I'd say other issues from love affairs and cover-ups stemming all the way back to the Fifties and so on ranging from torture in the war for Algerian independence to illegal wiretapping of those who might reveal his affairs to his authorization of the bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in the harbor of Auckland, New Zealand) kept the president motivated to live for well over a decade. In essence, death itself was president of France and steering Mitterand by having his death delayed through feeding off of his contempt for others. Another excellent example of his contempt, not noted in the Baudrillard essay, was that his last meal consisted of an endangered species, a yellow-throated songbird called the Ortolan said to historically signify the soul of France. Talk about a fare-thee-well that means "Fuck off!"
Anyway, since I'm having a very difficult time with A Room Never in Daylight (six pages in and I'm already drained by the process), I want to write a play about an American variant of Mitterand called The Art of Governing. Let's call him Relgrey for now -- the significance of the name is that it's a corruption of "(a) grey (sense of) realism" (for reasons that shall soon become obvious), like how Meursault in L'Etranger was a merging of "mer" and "soleil." (Sun and sea, for those who know neither your French nor your existentialism.) The following is just a rough outline, so I'm sorry if any of it seems muddled. Relgrey wins the next election by making the Democrats draw in everyone on the left who felt alienated by the Donkeys and discarded them as being too moderate. This strategy also causes the Republicans to absorb the moderates and alienate the ultra-Christian fundamentalists and other members of the far-right. Anyway, like Mitterand (in the eyes of Baudrillard), Relgrey thrives on contempt. He governs by virtue of (a terminal, incurable) illness that he swears his doctor to secrecy about, and that secrecy proves to be his lifeline. He has a slough of affairs and illegally spies on conservatives and reactionary groups (partially in reaction to Bush and a desire to make conservatives taste their own medicine). The Right is frightened that Relgrey's morphing into the 21st Century American answer to Stalin and plots about how to dispose of him cycle among their ranks. Relgrey makes attempts to dissolve the government because he knows how little they care about the public, not that he really cares about the "little people" either. He is described as neurotic and corrupt, but behind the scenes he explains to an advisor that even if he were neurotic, his neurosis would inadvertently be a way of warding off madness and that various ailments (from the common cold to AIDS) are probably protecting people from something more dangerous.Through his wiretapping, he secretly becomes a whistleblower by exposing various high-ranking officials in Congress as frauds -- mainly conservatives and Democrats who have moderate or right-wing inclinations -- by trickling information to the media through connections who pass them on to other connections and succeeds in making the public lose faith in government. He also assists in turning would-be assassins in on the Right. The Democrats gain control of Congress two years after Relgrey's inauguration, and now that the more conservative traces of the party have been ousted (not to mention the GOP being relegated to minority status) Congressmen have more in common with Relgrey. He convinces them to dissolve the government and establish a new one -- essentially in a quiet revolution, like how the Constitution was instituted after the Articles of Confederation were discarded without the necessary unanimous approval. However, that's not his intent. Relgrey seemingly starts to develop a conscience and realizes that governmental control, wage slavery, and so on only inhibit the public and that they deserve better -- but then he lapses back into his usual state of mind, musing that they probably deserve to die. Relgrey really begins to fall ill when his doctor breaks his confidentiality agreement and is set to release a book about the cover-up of the President's illness, but Relgrey still manages to keep it somewhat concealed by not really showing it (like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his polio). The nation is placed under a state of emergency when the government dissolves on the eve of his State of the Union address, where Relgrey divulges the nature of his illness. Sensing that he has nothing more to lose now that he's approaching death, he begins to confess everything and talks straight to the people. He explains how the government cares nothing for the people, reveals his affairs, expresses dismay at his neo-fascist upbringing, desires a thoughtful form of anarchism and hopes for a world without government control before announcing his resignation. Then, he commits career suicide by turning around and flaunting his contempt for the "clueless" public, purposefully disgracing the people in order to prove his point about the essence of government. He swiftly takes a turn for the worse physically now that he's revealed everything and has nothing juicy left to subsist upon in order to keep him going. Relgrey toys with the idea of starving himself to death but opts for a quicker demise and enlists the assistance of a lunatic Midwest reverend (modeled after Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas) by offering to leave everything in his will to the reverend if he shoots Relgrey. The reverend gladly accepts the proposal and murders Relgrey in an instant after having savored his blood for the past three years. The American public realizes collectively that they've inherited a pile of shit and the nation-state gets bogged in a sort of limbo, wondering if they could ever trust anyone to lead them again. Whether they decide to or not will remain unanswered. As for the reverend, he manages to gather the slightest fathom of Relgrey's contempt when he discovers how obsessed the deceased was with The KLF while rummaging through his heir's belongings. No, not really -- that sort of allegory's too obvious a connection for my liking!