Katy McDermott

“Watership Down” is one of my favorite books of all time – and I believe there’s a lot of wisdom in it too, assuming you can get past the whole “but they’re rabbits” thing. I even think it’s relevant to the current business setting. Here are some thoughts I had about the main character…

Has there ever been a more unlikely hero than Hazel? Not very big, not unusually intelligent, not even particularly charismatic, he nonetheless leads his friends through “a sea of troubles,” as Shakespeare would say, and sees them safely home. How on earth does he manage it, this unassuming Everyrabbit?

The first thing we see Hazel do is trust. His brother Fiver, a prophet of sorts, is terrified by a vision of nameless horror that threatens to destroy their home. Hazel believes him, and determines to escape with his brother – and anyone else who wants to go. And several do: Bigwig, Blackberry, Dandelion, Silver, Buckthorn, Pipkin, Hawkbit, Speedwell, and Acorn.

 Hazel is decisive. Even in the face of uncertainty, he takes a position and sticks to it. He is generous – how much easier it would have been for him to sneak away with just his brother, saving his own skin with no one else to worry about! But he chooses his course, swallows his fear, and sets off into an unknown night.

Their first night’s wandering is surely the worst. Venturing into strange country, no one knows who is in charge. Why should Hazel be the leader, simply because it was he who decided to go? Bigwig and Silver are stronger; Blackberry is smarter. Nothing has been proved to them, no authority has yet been earned.

Early on, the rabbits are forced to cross an unfamiliar stretch of land where any manner of dangers might lurk. Hazel goes first, to make sure it’s safe, and with his quiet courage sows the first seeds of his leadership. The rabbits make it through that first night, but in the morning, a fresh challenge is laid before them – a river that must be crossed.

Hazel’s tenuous leadership is put to the test. His friends are weary in body and spirit, Pipkin appears to be hurt – and Bigwig simply doesn’t like to swim. Challenged by Hazel to test the waters, Bigwig reluctantly crosses the river, only to return moments later with news that means they must all swim immediately or risk being killed. But Hazel will not leave the injured Pipkin.

Enter Blackberry, with the clever idea of floating Pipkin across the river on a loose board. Hazel doesn’t entirely understand Blackberry’s idea, but he agrees on faith and orders them all into the water. The crossing made, he searches for a safer place while the others finally sleep.

What a manager Hazel would make! Who hasn’t worked, at one time or another, for someone who is threatened by the talents of a subordinate, who looks to increase his or her own importance by diminishing a colleague? Not Hazel. He seeks the greater good – a better life for those who have chosen to follow him – and is grateful to have so intelligent a comrade as Blackberry. When morale is low, he does not try to inspire his friends with grand speeches, but turns to Dandelion – who has a way with a story – to hearten them with tales of the great rabbit hero El-ahrairah.

Hazel recognizes, and appreciates, the strengths of his compatriots. He knows that he belongs to them, as they belong to him, and he values that belonging.

Hazel isn’t perfect, though. His greatest faults, shared by many a suddenly-elevated leader, are pride and overconfidence. When misplaced certainty almost costs Bigwig his life, Hazel loses no time in rallying the rabbits to save their wounded friend. He admits his mistake, learns from it, and guides the group to the high hills where Fiver assures him they’ll be safe.

Hazel may be effective in a crisis, but he displays his leadership most strongly in his ability to see the big picture. It is Hazel who realizes that the new warren will die out unless they can find female rabbits to join them; Hazel who suggests that they befriend an injured but threatening bird and use him as a scout; Hazel who organizes the expedition to free the imprisoned females of a faraway warren and secure the future of the rabbits of Watership Down. He marshals the unique talents of each of his followers to achieve the result they all need.

He asks for help.

He leads by example.

Above all else, Hazel never gives up; his love for his friends won’t let him. Diplomat, strategist, CEO, general – he manages to be all of these things simply because he cares so much. Witness our greatest leaders:  Abraham Lincoln fighting to hold a nation together; Harriet Tubman guiding slaves to freedom in the face of overwhelming danger; Winston Churchill battling the ultimate evil of Hitler.

Their dedication transformed these once-ordinary people into history’s heroes.

When you think about it, they’re a lot like Hazel.

Democrats mock Republicans. Conservatives despise liberals. Jesse Jackson and Rush Limbaugh vie for the hate-fueled rhetoric crown. Welcome to the United States Of You’re An Idiot.

There doesn’t seem to be any gray area anymore. In America today, you’re either a patriot or a communist – no in-between. We’ve become more polarized (and polarizing) than we’ve been for over a century. It scares me.

Where did it start, this extreme “Us vs Them” mentality? That part, at least, is easy: blame it on cable. Plenty has been written already about how the insatiable demands of our always-on televisions have led to the proliferation of Keith Olbermanns and Glenn Becks. It’s a sad fact, our “new now,” and we can only hope that people put down their verbal BB guns before they really do take someone’s eye out.

But before I go any further, a confession seems warranted: I’ve been a willing participant in this country’s increasing broadcast contrarianism. As a liberal Democrat, I read Slate.com, listen to NPR, howl at Jon Stewart, and think Stephen Colbert’s a genius. How is that any different from those who get their political information from Fox News or nod in heartfelt agreement with Sean Hannity?

Perhaps I need to reevaluate my own media choices, lest I continue to be a hypocrite…

It’s one thing to turn a spotlight on the divisiveness that characterizes so many of our country’s arguments – that’s become a virtual truism. The real question is: where will it lead?

For eight years, we liberals bashed Bush for not being able to pronounce the word “nuclear” and for leading our fighting men and women into a war founded on a lie. Now that Obama’s in the White House, conservatives gleefully enumerate his every broken campaign promise and point out the exorbitant cost of his healthcare plan.

Yes, the Democrats will probably lose their majority in Congress in the mid-term elections. And Sarah Palin may even become President in 2012 (in which case, I’m moving to Sweden, but that’s another story…) But then what? It’s not difficult to envision a future where every four years, the power changes hands from arugula-chomping “elitists” to beer-swilling “real Americans,” with the time between elections filled with sneering media commentary and total political gridlock.

And then we’ll have a revolution.

A Second Civil War.

What will it be like? Will there be uniforms? (“In this corner, wearing real American jeans, flannel shirts, and rugged work boots, are the Rip-Roarin’ Republicans; in the other corner, sporting three-piece suits, wingtip shoes, and wire-rimmed glasses, are the Debatin’ Democrats!”)

How about songs? “Over There, Where The Ideas Are So Wrong.” “When Johnny Comes Marching Home To A Two-Mommy Family Again.” “The Battle Hymn Of The Republicans.” “How You Gonna Keep ’Em Down On The Farm After They’ve Seen L.A.?”

I dunno – the titles seem a little long.

One thing’s for sure. Families would be torn apart. Even now, pre-revolution, there are dear friends with whom I don’t dare talk politics, since our discussions lead nowhere but to incendiary remarks and pejorative comments. We don’t listen to each other, and we don’t hear each other either.

If the Second Civil War comes, we’ll have to draw a line, establish a place for “us” and a place for “them” – which will, inevitably, leave many of us displaced.

How about other countries – in Europe, the Middle East, Asia? They’d have to choose sides – an odd position for them. Usually, it’s us meddling in their affairs, not vice versa.

Ultimately, who would “win” this (mercifully hypothetical) war? A colleague of mine brilliantly commented that it would be the conservatives, of course: “We libs would have to hide behind the trees we hug, because we don’t know how to shoot.”

So the idea that Lincoln (a Republican, I know) had – a more perfect union – would turn out to be a fantasy after all.

Is that really possible, though? Is the conviction that “I’m right and you’re so wrong that you should move to another country before you embarrass us any further” worth killing for? Worth dying for?

Maybe we won’t have to fight a war after all.

Maybe we can focus on the United States part.

And stop calling each other idiots.

I don’t live by the gulf coast or anywhere near it. The only time I ever went to Louisiana was years ago, for a corporate meeting, and like pretty much every other tourist I drank too much and ate a beignet. But I don’t think you need to have a lifelong shrimper’s clout to be enraged by the idea of a way of life dying thanks to cost-cutting by Big Oil.

The closest I’ve come to understanding this way of life is listening to heavily-accented fishermen with French-sounding names lament their losses on CNN. How can they ever be compensated for the fact that the ocean on which they depended for their livings is now glutted and streaked with oil – so much oil that there are reportedly “dead zones” where nothing will ever grow, or swim, again?

This is the power of the media at work. I see long stories – mini-documentaries, really – about the lives of gulf coast fishermen, and I feel as if I’m there. It is – well, was – beautiful. Mile after mile of mostly calm ocean, sea birds swooping after the shrimpers’ boats, one generation sharing the secrets of net-making, boat-building, and gumbo-stewing with the next.

You see, it’s not just the fishermen, shrimpers, and oystermen affected. It’s everyone who supports those industries too. And of course, it’s everyone who serves tourists like me by running restaurants, motels, sightseeing tours, and the like.

All of them – every single one of them – need a gulf coast that is unspoiled.

Unoiled.

They say it could be decades before the region comes back to the way it was. At least a generation.

Imagine you’re a netmaker’s daughter or a shrimper’s son – your parents and their parents and their parents before them all earned a living from the coast. You knew your future was secure – after all, you’d been out on the water or in the portside shop since shortly after you could walk. Now, though, you have to find a different kind of life, because this awful thing has happened and ruined in a few short weeks what has been there for centuries. You can’t even shake your fist and rage at God or fate – this curse is manmade. Oh, it’s okay for you – you’re young, you can find another way to live. But what about your parents, and their parents? Your heart twists with pity at the thought of them spending their close-to-retirement years clad in BP-issued vests cleaning tarballs off the beaches and laying thousands of feet of useless boom in the rust-colored ocean…

But there are no telethons for this. No generous fellow Americans donating money to help rebuild your way of life, compensating your parents and their parents for everything they’ve lost.

When a friend of mine pointed this out, it got me thinking. Why aren’t there telethons? There were telethons to benefit the tsunami victims, the Haitian earthquake victims, the victims (many of those same people who are now suffering because of the oil spill) of Hurricane Katrina.

I think there are a lot of reasons – and the reasons are complex.

First, no one died – well, no one after the initial eleven rig workers who perished in the Deepwater Horizon explosion that started all this. You don’t hold telethons for eleven people, plus, none of the eleven were children. Nothing gets people to open their checkbooks like footage of shattered parents sobbing over the broken bodies of their dead children. We hold our own children tighter – and quickly call an 800 number to make a donation.

Second, for many of the workers on the gulf coast, theirs were cash businesses. And “it was a cash business” often translates to “we didn’t pay taxes on our income.” Americans may pay one of the lowest tax rates of countries in the developed world, but there isn’t one of us who doesn’t feel unfairly burdened when we fill out our tax returns and send in our checks to the government on April 15. Why should we give money to people when we assume a lot of them didn’t even pay their taxes? So they’re being punished. Serves ‘em right, right?

Third, I don’t think we want to look too closely at what this spill represents. It’s terrible, to be sure. But BP wouldn’t have been drilling if we weren’t so dependent on oil in the first place. That’s the real conundrum – what should we do? Return to the Middle Ages? Stop traveling, stop driving? Stop doing the things that are so entwined in the American way of life? If we’re to continue as we are – this dependent on oil – then this sort of thing is going to happen. As I said, I don’t think we want to look too closely at it.

It’s a whole lot less complicated to seethe on behalf of the wildlife.

The issue that seems to upset people most is the fate of the pelicans. Who can forget that iconic picture of a drowning-in-oil bird, wings flailing, mouth wide open as if screaming “why have you done this?”

Perhaps we could organize a telethon for them.