On Mike Tyson, Survivor, and the Binding of Ehud

An old article I wrote on the blog of the Movement for Direct Democracy...

Years ago my late grandmother and I heard a news item about Mike Tyson, the former world boxing champion, being charged with rape and assault. My grandmother asked me, surprised: "He knows how to hit people?" "Of course, Grandma," I answered. "That is how you become world boxing champion: you learn to hit better than anyone else." And then I started thinking about that fact and what it says about politics.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

This year I happened to watch a few episodes of Survivor. It is an instructive show when it comes to human character, human society, intellectual and emotional strategy and more — in my view more enlightening than a current-affairs talk show, if you know how to watch it. The obvious fact connecting Survivor to Mike Tyson is that the three players who reached the semi-final were among the better manipulators in the group. Dan, Naama and Marina knew how to lie, when it was worth telling the truth, who to form an alliance with, how to exploit it to the full, when the right moment was to break it, how to explain away the lies and present themselves as innocent, and how to carry out emotional manipulation.

I do not blame them for any of it: reaching the final was the goal of the game, and there is no room for everyone in the final. Since reaching the final requires minimising risk where possible and securing the support of as many contestants as you can, the tactics I listed are the most effective ones. That show was also an excellent place to learn why a competition of that kind leaves no room for morality.

Moshik, one of the older and more successful members of the group, tried to establish an "ethical code" under which the "deserving" — as he defined them — would be advanced to the next stage. Clearly that strategy served him too, since he was certain he was one of the "deserving," but his attempt is the interesting part of the whole business. The attempt was to create a situation in which, if contestant A advanced contestant B because of an alliance even though B had proved himself undeserving (by shirking work, for example), then the group would act against A. According to Moshik, over time the choice of who moved on would not be built solely on alliances, politics, lies and manipulation, but would rest, at least partly, on the worth of the contestants. Moshik's attempt failed, because everyone engaged in alliances — who naturally feared his growing power within the group — schemed and quickly succeeded in voting him out. Interesting.

Success in the political field has long been called survival, and we have all been watching episodes of the reality series "The Evening News" since before reality was a media trend. There too I see the same lies and manipulations, the same alliances, the same crossings of lines and feigned innocence, and the same barren attempts to set moral rules that will filter out the "undeserving." The difference is that politics resembles the world boxing championship far more closely: there you have to hire private investigators, you have to lie, you have to cross lines against your own ideology, you have to bribe and to take bribes, and more. I do not blame them either: this is the game we are so proud of, the one called "representative government," and at the top there is room for only a few.

In Survivor the prize was a million shekels and an off-road vehicle, while in politics the prize is control over the state budget — which grants the ruler and those around him financial security for life, and entry into the history books as members of Israel's governments. On top of that, politics also grants the media exposure that people go on reality shows for, and one should not underestimate the biological nature of human beings and their aspiration, especially among the males among us, to the status of tribal chief, which today is achieved through television.

What does Moshik's ouster teach us about people like Dan Meridor, Benny Begin and others? And even more interesting: what does the success of Dan, Naama and Marina teach us about Shimon Peres, Ehud Olmert and Bibi Netanyahu? What a shame we have no "testimonial" camera filming Ehud Olmert, the way it filmed Dan Manu, turning his head, smoothing his tie and laughing to the camera: "What an idiot that Mofaz is! I knew he would move to Kadima from the start. I even managed to convince him I was doing him a favour by sticking him in transport. I cannot believe the losers on this show!"

The surprise in Survivor was the rise of Noam, who was stuck for most of the game on the "island of the dead," to the final. He did not take part in the scheming, did not lie all that much, did not stain himself in the viewers' eyes, and astonishingly almost won the final — to the displeasure of the other contestants, who felt, rightly, that he had reached the final undeservedly. Why did the other contestants feel so insulted by Noam's showing? The reason they stated explicitly is that Noam did not have to do the same scheming the others did: he did not have to lie, to pretend to be a friend to people he could not stand, he did not have to play the "emotional" card, he did not have to justify why he was or was not voting someone out in flat contradiction of his promises, and more — while the others were forced to demean themselves, to do all of that and worse.

I am certain that politicians feel exactly the same way about chiefs of staff who are parachuted straight into the front row of their party, but they will not talk about the bribery and the pretence they have been engaged in for years in order to preserve their own position. Difficult.

Here I come to the main idea: if we really do put hundreds and thousands of politicians into the political arena where the only criterion for success is manipulation of the public and of the other players in the arena, the ability to lie without blinking, the ability to form alliances against your own ideology and the ability to stick a knife in your friends' backs — then why are we surprised, like my grandmother, that the new champion, the prime minister, knows how to manipulate the way Mike Tyson knows how to hit?

To me this looks deeply hypocritical. I would have given the Survivor win to Dan Manu: he was, after all, the champion of manipulation, not Noam. Why, then, did I too feel that the win should go to Noam and not to Dan the schemer? Because I do not like schemers.

What is the conclusion about politics? We are the hypocrites. We know the political arena is dirty and we know the champion (the prime minister) is the champion of schemers, yet we hate him for it and bind him on the altar. We bring down prime ministers left and right, and from the right and the left. Is this ugly game — in which we filter by capacity for manipulation and then get angry at Dan for winning and accuse Ehud of corruption — not simply an attempt to clear our own consciences, so that we will not have to intervene in the game more meaningfully, and can go on pretending the game is not really dirty?

It is time the game had a boss who would change its rules completely. Both Dan and Ehud feel wronged, and rightly so, that we impose on them a game in which manipulation is the main thing and then hate them for succeeding at it. Politicians are thirsty for a boss who will tell them what to do — also, and mainly, so that it will be clear to them what is legitimate and what is not. The game we threw our politicians into also causes them distress: in some it sterilises the conscience, in others it breeds bitterness and eventually retirement, and I would not be surprised to learn that their life expectancy is shorter as a result. The politicians who have retired will be the first supporters of the idea that the public should take the reins and put some order in the stable. It is time we too stopped clearing our consciences by binding one politician or another on the altar, and simply understood that we need to take management into our own hands and end this terrible reality show once and for all.