B. U. G. S.

I am about to write a piece explaining that one cannot understand the true genius of George Washington unless you first realize, I mean really take into account, the fact that he was not very bright.

This reminds me once again that most of the really important realizations in my life have sounded like jokes.

One of my best insights was taken entirely as a joke by every commenter.

Everybody talks about how their heart bleeds for poor Mexico. I wrote an article pointing out that fact that I wish WE had a Great Northern Neighbor the way Mexico does.

What would our Great Northern Neighbor look like? It would be made up of beautiful Nordics who made us look colored.

What would our Great Northern Neighbor be like?

It would have ten times our per capita income. When one of hteir companies sent a branch office to our area they would Exploit us by paying us at least five times as much as we get right now.

A minimum wage job from up there would start at fifty grand a year.

I could live with that.

You know how the average Mexican lives? Our Great Northern Neighbor would see our presnt standard living the same way.

Do you know thw malnutrition and bad teeth and diseases the average Mexican takes for granted. Can you IMAGINE the kind of health the aveage Mexican would take for granted if the United States didn’t EXIST?

They would look at the diseases and old age we take for granted EXACTLY the same way. Medical breakthroughs would be pouring through like a flood.

But it sounded like a joke.

It wasn’t.

I would LOVE to have a Great Northern Neighbor I could sneak into and earn two hundred dollars an hour.

And they would think they were EXPLOITING me.

But I understand why you considered this a joke.

But if you looked at the world this way, what a difference it would make?

Instead of whipping outselves about how POOR Mexico is by our standards, we would look at a world where Mexico existed and we did not.

That is a wholey different, a wholey realistic, worldview.

So why does it sound funny?

Because humor consits of insights. Humor consists of looking at things in a shocking way.

You know the old joke about the man who walked into the doctor’s office with a bird on his head?

The doctor asks, “What can I do for you?”

The bird replies, “I want you to get this guy off my ass.”

The humor is the surprise of looking at the world from an entirely different point of view, the BIRD’S point of view.

To a man who thinks like I do, the way so-called smart people look at the world is a series of jokes.