Far Afield

XVIII

127 XVIII My meetings with Trevor, on the other hand, were not so rewarding . Having seen a greater reaction to his new public identity, he soon became convinced of his own politic value and thus wished to engage me more and more in weighty analyses of matters that were utterly foreign to him: international monetary relief, ethnic terrorism, the problems of state religions, et al. It was odd—the more freely he associated while speaking in public, the more narrowly he tried to attack particular issues in private. Though I managed to limit these new sorts of diatribes to no more than thirty or forty minutes (usually by harkening back to the campaign’s foundational themes and his role in orchestrating them), they were still torturous to endure and made my immediate chores harder. Never was his position over me exposed more cruelly than by his ability to hold me against my will in these discussions. “Perhaps that’s what makes us either conservatives or liberals,” he said one morning a few days after my meeting with Sono. He held up a magazine. “Here’s someone who writes that conservatives lack remorse because they believe that some people have an innate and permanent privilege, no matter how unearned. I agree with that assessment but I’ve also observed that liberals desire the reverse. They often wish to absorb an undue dread in order to justify their comfort. So against both of these fallacies, I propose an alternative: the ut- 128 Far Afield ter and complete freedom from the burden of ever having to earn anything. It is the evolution of a new social contract.” Given that this line of discourse was more interesting than most of his thoughts (and also that I was not opposed to this way of thinking, and told him so), for once I was reluctant to break him off. However, I also wanted to turn his attention to a television debate I’d tentatively scheduled with his rival Bergeron. I felt the exchange would do much to bolster Trevor’s standing while at the same time dethrone his opponent’s waning legitimacy. But when I brought it up, he was dismissive. “Oh that. Cancel it. I’m better off resting and saving myself for the weekend,” he said. “I’m doing too well now to be concerned with the likes of him.” Though abrupt, Trevor’s response was accurate. For he was doing well now, much better than anyone could have foreseen even a few short days before. The Gleaner’s poll had since come out and placed him third among the candidates, trailing Stanley and Van Gland by only a dozen percentage points. It was a finding that shocked all the campaigns, as well as the dwindling members of the public who still cared about the election (voter turnout was being pegged at about fifteen percent, and even that was an optimistic presumption). Moreover, though he still was lagging significantly, at least it could now be said that Trevor was within far-sighted striking distance of the frontrunners and at that, he was elated. How this sudden upward movement occurred was remarkable and yet predictable. Simply, it followed the course of most modern cultural phenomena. That is, it was a meaningless event that filled a waiting public vacuum and by dint of mass attention acquired significance , then urgency. It went according to the laws of the present-day consumptive media and it was fortunate for Trevor that my background was in this and that I could take advantage of the mechanism ’s unfailing ability to embody nothing yet signify everything. For example, early on, given the meager numbers of probable voters and the potential of the election to turn on the support of a committed few, one strategy that immediately suggested itself to me was to isolate Trevor in himself. Meaning that, as a candidate, Scott Brown 129 Trevor (under my direction) began appearing completely indifferent to the courting of any mass favor or attention, while at the same time offering no overtures or meaningful answers to voters or reporters. Standing alone as a matter of choice, not circumstance, which is how it usually had been. Trevor quickly grasped the ease of this technique and took it to heart so strongly during interviews and rallies that his disregard for others bordered on rudeness, so intent was he on acting out in the spirit...