American Consequences - February 2021

FUN

An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king – Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn – mud from a muddy spring; Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leechlike to their fainting country cling... But then there’s Shelley full of praise and sweetness in “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”... Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form – where art thou gone?... And just keep going... And take your hues with you. What a versifying slog it must have been writing up Little Miss S.O.B. Conspiracy theories excuse our failures. It wasn’t me . It was intersectional hegemonistic normative structural bias that flunked math. Conspiracy theories explain our misfortunes. Even such minor misfortunes as the introduction of New Coke in 1985, which gave rise to a conspiracy theory that Coke introduced the deliberately inferior New Coke so that it could later reintroduce a fake Old Coke with its formula altered to use less expensive ingredients. This caused Coca-Cola then-President Donald Keough to tell Time magazine (doubtless with a sigh), “The truth is, we’re not that dumb, and we’re not that smart.” But we the believers in conspiracy theories are that smart. And that’s what’s most fun about conspiracy theories... They make the world so dumb that even we can understand it.

American Consequences

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