The Snowflake's Core

The biggest difference between the audience and a playwright is that the playwright knows how the story’s going to end. He feeds them tidbit after tidbit, clue after clue as he leads the audience’s minds on a merry chase.

The audience may think it they part of the action onstage, but they are not. They only experience the illusion of being involved but they are almost entirely passive, mesmerized in their seats.

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The chief disadvantage of conservatives is that they have chosen to be reliant on the Republican Party, which has for reasons of its own, decided to act almost entirely like an audience. They ask a few questions, essay a few reviews. They may even occasionally pelt the players onstage with a few rotten tomatoes.

But they remain the audience.

If there any scandals behind the curtain, if the actors are thrown out without cause or if a monster has taken charge of the story there is no one for the cast to run to for help. For their entire world consists of only two places: the stage and the audience. And the GOP is part of the audience.

Anyone who believes that something curious is happening behind the scenes on the national stage has two choices: to watch the play and believe what happens or to hope the Republican Party audience asks for a refund on their tickets.

But that’s not going to happen because the GOP likes the stagelights. Each of them dreams of being up there one day, basking in fortune and glory. They will put up with anything, endure an intermission of any length for the chance, however remote, of someday being in the glow of the footlights. They wouldn’t leave the threater unless a fire broke out.

However there is a third possibility that can be added to this binary state of affairs: for prominent persons in the audience to form a national council which will independently ask questions that the Republican audience will never voice. Maybe no one will listen to them at first, but as the strange play drags on their cries from the back will be ever more insistent. And what they might say is the following:

“The theater itself, including the aisles and the chairs you sit on, are the stage. Every second man in the audience — the person beside you — to whom you have paid but little notice, is picking your pocket. That is the real screenplay.”

Well that’s what happens in this little parable. But on the political stage of America today, there is nothing but quiet and the crunching of popcorn.