American Consequences - May 2018

sine, cosine, tangent, and crushed barn roof problems. And no, I don’t know a hypotenuse from a possum belly. But ... you should have heard me with the insurance adjuster. Euclid, Archimedes, and Pythagoras put together weren’t a patch on me. (Even less so since they’d be talking to the insurance adjuster in ancient Greek.) By the time I got done, the insurance company had not only paid for a new barn roof, it had paid for a new barn to go under it and a new chainsaw and a new pine tree and three cows to replace the cows that would have been killed when the barn roof collapsed if I’d had any cows. I’m ignorant – but I’m good at it. And the world should be thankful for all the Liberal Arts graduates who are just as good as I am at B.S. Think of all the things that we owe to B.S... Think of all the things that would be impossible without B.S... • Art • Literature • Rap Music • Dating • Marriage • Having a Talk With Your Son About the Birds and Bees

light, which is B.S. I pulled off a website on the Internet, which wouldn’t have any websites if it weren’t for B.S. Let us examine just two examples. First, politics... I’ll draw a box:

Look into the box. That’s politics without B.S. How would we be governed? Who could be elected? Imagine a candidate giving a B.S.-free stump speech: “No, I can’t fix public education. The problem isn’t funding or teachers’ unions or vouchers or lack of computer equipment in the classroom. The problem is your damn kids.” Our executive, legislative, and judicial branches would cease to function. Our political institutions would be “Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds (full of B.S.) sang.” The America that the world knows would disappear. ISIS would hold sway from Baghdad to Berlin. Vladimir Putin would leave off mere meddling and install himself, midst bathroom fixtures of gold, in Putin Tower. Xi Jinping would be General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, President of the People’s Republic of China, and Mayor of Cupertino, California. But perhaps politics isn’t the best example. There’s too much of it that would be good I’m ignorant – but I’m good at it.

• Advertising • Marketing • Sales • Tech Company IPOs

And don’t try adding to this list because it expands faster than Star Trek ’s USS Enterprise at warp 9, which is 729 times the speed of

82 May 2018

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