The Elephant and His Sycophants
A Fable for our Times
Disclaimer: The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental. Where your imagination takes you is entirely up to you. All speech included below is protected by the First Amendment, at least for the time being.
Of Unrelated Words That Are Now Related
On the shelf this week, I’ve had a couple of words reverberating through my empty chambers—elephant and sycophant. They sound like they belong together, don’t they?
You know what an elephant is, so I won’t bother explaining but will remind you of its political connotation, the symbol of the Good Old Party, the official party of our president-elect.
The former and future President Brump, the head honcho of the Broligarchy, is an elephant in countenance and as a Republican. I adore real pachyderms—their fine memories, their kind social ways, and their tenacity. True and honorable elephants of the world, please forgive me for personifying your species to my creative advantage.
The word sycophant has little relationship to the word elephant, although both originate in the Greek language and share some phonetic elements. Elephant comes from the Greek word for ivory, while sycophant comes from the Greek sykophántēs, “a person who disparages an unjustified accuser who has in some way perverted the legal system.”1 In modern parlance, it has a slightly different meaning—a sycophant is “someone who offers insincere flattery to gain advantage.”
King Elephant and His Sycophants
Once upon a time in a not-so-distant land lived a narcissistic ruler. Half of the critters in the country elected him to the highest office in the land, believing he had come to make their country great again. The other half called the pachyderm ruler a felon, for not only had he engaged in insurrection during a prior election, but he also actively broke election laws and sent his loyal henchmen to threaten citizens on his behalf.
He managed to evade justice, while more ordinary weasels and foxes who had consorted with him suffered fines and went to prison for his crimes. Eventually, he won the highest office in the land by making promises to the worker bees—promises he never planned to keep.
One day, after being installed, having destroyed the branches of government meant to keep him in check, he said to a large crowd of critters, “You will never have to go through the discomfort of another election again.”
Half of the very big gathering—which was, according to the Elephant, “the biggest crowd ever seen or imagined on the planet”—cheered and clapped. The other half booed and yelled obscenities at President Elephant.
He lifted his head and trunk and bellowed, “Dissenters among you will be punished! I’ll hunt you and your families down, and anybody with whom you consort.”
Critters in the crowd honked, crowed, mooed, and barked.
“My vast army of spies will report your illicit thoughts, and my sycophants—AI tech-bros—will monitor your every movement and utterance through their extensive networks of satellites that command our communications systems.”
Half of the crowd chanted, “Lock them up! Lock them up!”
“From now until my death—if that ever happens (maybe it won’t)—you are to refer to me as King Elephant.”
Half of the crowd cheered, “Long live the King! Long live the King!” The other half cowered in silence.
“As your King, I proclaim my five children princes and princesses and my wife Queen Elephant. My eldest son will succeed me should I ever die.”
After declaring himself King Elephant, he swung his considerable weight around and roused his loyal royal followers into a frenzy. The legions of worker bees that got him elected believed he would make their lives better and vowed to protect his kingdom at whatever cost. They pulled out their stingers and went to work, dreaming of a return to the good ’ol days of milk and honey. Their kind were dying out for lack of work, but they felt secure because they were loyal.
The Elephant King, known to be the most dishonest creature to have ever lived, was so dishonest that even his lies couldn’t keep up with his ever-shifting allegiances, self-aggrandizing narratives, and ceaseless thirst for power and wealth.
His techno-bro sycophants—humans—once his enemies, now feared him and thus pledged a transactional fealty to the Elephant King, even if it meant suppressing inconvenient truths and allowing the King to bend a once free press into a propaganda machine.
In exchange for their allegiance, the King promised his sycophants “Big Things, Great Things.” And since humans are motivated mostly by greed, these men were eager to please King Elephant. They also feared his large ax, which he wielded in his trunk with terrifying precision. They had witnessed beheadings and the removal of limbs on more massive creatures than they and had no appetite for that.
The sycophants praised the King’s intelligence, though he often confused maps with menus and spoke in incomprehensible tangles of conflicting words. They lauded his physical strength, though amongst themselves noted his insufficiency of character. He had long ago buried his conscience deep beneath his elephant-sized ego.
After a short time, and with the aid of his sycophants, King Elephant’s kingdom began to crumble. The fields lay fallow; rivers dried up. Existing bodies of water were lifeless due to unchecked industrial expansion under the Elephant King’s watch. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and fires tore across the land, destroying habitats and homes. The air turned black and thick with despair.
The worker bees who elected the elephant were dying of starvation and disease in the wake of all the king’s bad policy decisions regarding the environment, education, and health of his dominion. The kingdom no longer employed or supported teachers, scientists, inventors, or artists. Those who were trained as such remained in hiding for fear of retribution for truth-telling.
The common folk, who once revered the elephant as a symbol of strength and wisdom, now saw him as a lumbering menace. His every step left devastation in its wake, but they didn’t know what to do. He had stripped them of their power and abolished the democratic processes the forefathers instituted to prevent someone like him from wielding unchecked power, bringing a great nation to its knees.
To be continued . . .
Dear reader, I pause in the retelling of this story and apologize for its darkness. You see, the power has gone out in the storeroom where I sit. There is no water, and fierce winds blow outside, fanning flames that scorch the earth and destroy livelihoods. I’ll resume my tale next week and hope you will keep reading. Rest assured, an underground rebellion is afoot. Don’t despair.