Democracy Is Terrifying
As I sit typing these words, our country is in the throes of the most acrimonious presidential election in recent history. As far as I can tell, it is indeed without precedent. One candidate didn’t win a single primary vote. The other is awaiting sentencing for all sorts of vile stuff. Amidst it all, both sides are accusing the other of ushering in the death of democracy. Considering how well the citizenry has done at exercising our franchise in the past, perhaps it’s time to just let it go and embrace anarchy.
This is the RRS Sir David Attenborough. Had the people been
given their way, this magnificent arctic research vessel would
have been named Boaty McBoatface.
Example 1
In 2014, the British government announced the construction of a new polar research vessel. The Brits have a long and illustrious legacy of exploration and have produced such pioneering luminaries as Shackleton, Cook, Drake and Stanley. This new icebreaking vessel was to represent the state of the art in modern arctic research ships. It was estimated to cost around 200 million pounds. At current conversion rates, that’s about $263 million.
So, great. The Limeys were going to make a cool new exploration ship. The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the agency behind the enterprise, wanted to ensure that the British taxpaying public felt some personal connection to their not-insubstantial investment. As a result, they proposed a nationwide competition to determine the name of this amazing new machine. That was their first mistake.
The British have a storied history of cool ship names. A few examples include Battleaxe, Conqueror, Indefatigable, Implacable and Revenge. With a legacy like that, what could go wrong? Well, plenty, it seems.
When the final votes were tallied, the top five results were Boaty McBoatface, Poppy-Mai, Henry Worsley, David Attenborough, and It’s Bloody Cold Here. Boaty McBoatface actually took 33.16% of the overall vote, three times that of the next-closest challenger. Now, the NERC found itself in a quandary.
Boaty McBoatface received 124,109 votes. The people had spoken, and clearly. However, what they had spoken was pretty darn stupid. The NERC directors stepped in and made an executive decision to name the vessel the RRS Sir David Attenborough.
Sir David Attenborough is actually a pretty great guy. His brother, Richard, was the actor who played the billionaire grandfather/dinosaur enthusiast John Hammond in “Jurassic Park.” However, David is an esteemed naturalist and champion of environmental causes in the real world. Two of the other options were likewise laudable.
Poppy-Mai was a toddler who boldly faced incurable cancer. Henry Worsley was an Afghanistan war veteran who perished while attempting the first solo unaided crossing of the Antarctic in 2016. Any of those would obviously have been fine had the voting public seen fit to get with the program. As a consolation prize, however, the fun-loving folks at NERC did announce that one of Attenborough’s submersibles could indeed be named Boaty McBoatface. The actual voters, however, were having none of that.
A petition soon garnered some 3,800 signatures that demanded that Sir David Attenborough actually legally change his name to Sir Boaty McBoatface “in the interest of democracy.” A Spanish internet forum leveraged their platform to promote the choice of Blas de Lezo, a Spanish Navy officer who won the Battle of Cartagena de Indias against the English in 1741. This option garnered fully 38,000 votes before the frustrated NERC leadership pulled it from contention.
Nowadays, the RRS Sir David Attenborough boldly soldiers on pushing the boundaries of science. One of its cool little remotely-piloted submersibles does indeed have Boaty McBoatface stenciled across its side. I suppose it could have been worse. I was personally pulling for “It’s Bloody Cold Here.”
Opus the Penguin, from the magnificent “Bloom County”
comic strip, very nearly became the president of the student
body when I was in college. Source: Wikipedia
Example 2
Back when dinosaurs roamed the plains, and I was a young mechanical engineering student at the University of Mississippi, it came time for the student body to vote for a new resident. The obligatory handful of identical frat guys threw their hats in the ring. However, they all looked and acted the same. The slate of candidates was decidedly unsatisfying, so some dude took out a tiny little ad in the Daily Mississippian, the school newspaper, suggesting a dark horse candidate. He proposed that Opus the Penguin from the timelessly awesome Berkeley Breathed’s “Bloom County” comic strip might be a better choice.
In case you haven’t had the pleasure, “Bloom County,” “Calvin and Hobbes,” “The Far Side,” and “Dilbert” were the best comic strips in the history of newsprint. A great deal of practical wisdom could be found in the silly doodles and whimsical musings of their sundry, thoroughly fictitious characters. Opus the Penguin seemed to be a much better option than the half dozen or so frat guy alternatives. Somebody even put up flyers with his likeness around campus.
Personally, I wrote in Opus for President and felt great doing it. Apparently, so did about a zillion other students. I am suspicious that some of the frat guy candidates actually running for the esteemed office also voted for Opus. The fake penguin won by a landslide.
The associated chaos occupied the pages of the Mississippian for a few days until some loser administrator made the observation that Opus the Penguin was not technically enrolled as a student. Whoever was number two on the list got the job despite not having received more than about a dozen actual votes. Opus, despite being the unambiguous people’s choice, was sent packing — kind of like Joe Biden.
Ruminations
The point is that it can be hard to get folks to take elections seriously, particularly when faced with a slate of candidates that is patently ridiculous. That’s where we find ourselves today. So, come November, I would encourage all of you to make a sober and informed decision when you head to the polls. If not, we run the very real risk of having the country run for the next four years by a cartoon penguin. And who’s to say that might not be an improvement?
