The Mongoose and The Cobra

Once upon a time, some citizens of Mongoose Jungle grew tired of this mongoose or that, and so it came time to choose between two creatures to become the new king: one a mongoose and the challenger, a cobra.  Nearly half the inhabitants believed what the mongoose was saying: that the jungle belonged to its inhabitants; that it was their laws, their freedom to defend themselves and their families; that they must conserve their way of life, work hard, get ahead, and eventually leave the jungle to their children with the same freedoms and opportunities they had enjoyed.  The other half heard only the voice of the cobra, who hissed of “change,” promising to unite and take care of everyone while asking every creature but the lowliest and poorest to “pay a little more." He positioned himself the young, cool, fair and popular father, partitioning out resources for everyone’s benefit, moving the jungle forward.  The cobra was quite mesmerizing, as snakes are. The coconut telegraph operators, with the exception of one fox, were all very much behind the cobra, and so by a narrow margin, the cobra won the vote, and soon all jungle creatures heard nothing but good things over the telegraph about their new leader, King Cobra.

     Many lower creatures cavorted and took their ease, eagerly consuming the promised resources delivered by the snakes every month.  Both the middle creatures who had chosen the mongoose along with those who had chosen the cobra found themselves working harder and longer than ever with less to show for it, because the cobra’s snakes were taking larger and larger shares of their production.  The top-middle shrunk and the middle-middle shrunk, so the jungle quickly became one low-middle class run entirely by snakes.  Of course there were still those at the very top who lived in caves with all of their treasures insulated permanently from the goings-on outside in the jungle, the most envied creatures of all.  Overall it seemed to most that the jungle flourished less lushly now than it did under the old mongoose kings, and inhabitants either made emotional and indefensible excuses for the cobra or else wished that the mongoose had won.  All creatures save for some of the poorest seemed edgy and nervous and less confident in their future than in years past. 

     The cobra stayed busy changing laws, making many executive orders, and working very hard to place new restrictions on how inhabitants might defend themselves.  The cobra knew that disarmed jungle creatures would be far easier to control and more reliant than ever upon the snakes.  At the same time, a relatively tiny number of crazy gorillas went on strange killing sprees which lit up the coconut telegraph with awful news, one after the other using clubs or rocks or their bare hands.  But instead of working hard to help inhabitants identify and banish deranged gorillas before trouble could happen, the cobra decided to ban all clubs (but not rocks or hands because these did not seem as deadly and fearsome as scary clubs).  Very secretly he sent thousands of clubs to the most evil inhabitants of a neighboring jungle while at the same time he hissed “Ninety percent of all clubs used against us by evil neighbors came from our own jungle!”  This fast and furious transfer of clubs the cobra did to gain support for his club ban, to make clubs seem like the problem, because many did not wish to relinquish their clubs and become defenseless.  The cobra sent spy monkeys everywhere to listen to conversations of his enemies and report back to him.  For those who had supported the mongoose, he sent his tax snakes out to carefully audit them and make sure they got every last banana, even mongoose supporters who were collecting bananas for charity. 

     Instead of uniting the creatures, the cobra soon had the unsettled inhabitants turning on each other, and now many were depending solely upon him and his snakes for life’s basic needs.  He and the snakes had achieved full control and built a powerful kingdom for themselves, all the while enabled by the incessant droning of the coconut telegraph.  Every time the mongooses tried to help, the coconut telegraph accused them of obstructing progress.  Bad times had fallen before upon Mongoose Jungle, but even the old gorillas who lived there many decades could not recall bad times ever lasting as long as this, under cobra rule.

     Meanwhile the mongooses very calmly knocked on caves and dens and nests trying to inform and enlighten inhabitants over the din of the telegraph, without saying “I told you so” because they did not want to hurt their feelings, while making it clear and widely known that it was their plan to combine the best ideas from both camps and launch a new campaign to again make one of their own king.  With the coconuts clacking away in the background insisting everything is getting better, some inhabitants, looking around them, could now comprehend the voice of the mongoose for the very first time, recognizing that a cobra, after all, is just a snake.

Seeing the truth right in front of you is always the hardest thing, and the only thing that counts.  Vote Republican.