DON'T LET ANYONE TELL YOU WHO YOUR ENEMIES ARE

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"Our vibrations were getting nasty- but why? I was puzzled, frustrated. Was there no communication in this car? Had we deteriorated to the level of dumb beasts?"

-Hunter S. Thompson

Tazwell Torporchair was thinking out loud with some buddies at the Ashfrogger Inn. "Dudes!" he blurted, "I just had an idea!" He paused to make sure he had their attention. This was important, God Damn it. They were listening.

"Socrates was into this trip; something to the effect of 'don't harm anyone, even if they are bogus, unless it's in self defense…,' am I right?"

"Anyone who knows anything knows that," Sam Hill stated flatly.

"And Socrates was sentenced to death for being obstinate and seeking the truth."

"So tell us something we don't know, already," derided Stanley Wand with a disgusted and dismissive wave of his hand.

"OK, OK, stay with me here, this is significant. Socrates was a righteous dude and he was put to death, and he met his death calmly and stood up for what he believed in right up to the end. Now that's powerful stuff, eh? A sort of stirring combination of attributes and behaviors to see in one's fellow human. Kinda' stirs the old sense of king-hell human righteousness, don't it? But that's not all. He willingly drank the Hemlock rather than forsake his principles…whoa, what a dude, right?"

"He was one substantial creature," intoned Smith solemnly.

"Well, let me tell you, I've got an idea. Get this. We all want to make friends and influence people right? Well, we could make this Socrates dude into a kick-ass messiah!" Tazwell's friends said nothing. They sat staring at him like stunned fish. Like fish that have been pulled from the water and rapped on the head with a small blunt instrument. He continued, with all the persuasive force he could muster. "Plenty of suckers would go for it. Something to believe in, you know; a way to belong. Write up a sacred text, register with the council of churches. Socratic-wisdo-ipsa-ism. A religion for the thinking people of the world. Market it towards the logic-heads who balk at other religions. There's got to be a huge block of flockers out there that would hold with such a herd. We could have a tremendous following…"

"Why yes," cried moldy Fred the tractor lender, "Then we could found a religion and control minds!"

"And old dead Socrates couldn't do a dialectic thing to stop us!" crowed Douglas Denominator, leaping from his chair with excitement.

They all drank deep in a sweet silent moment, and their eyes gleamed with the idea, there in its raw state, with all its possibilities wide open before it.

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