Are you still there? I need you. Take the finger of your right hand and touch your sternum. Can you feel the bone? Okay, then you’re real. Do you ever imagine a fist in there, and does it sometimes grab your heart so tightly that you find it difficult to breathe?
When I argue with you, my dearest reader, it’s about the smugness I have grown to expect. Today’s reader is sometimes a customer first and a reader afterwards. Do you have it between those pretty ears of yours that because you’re a customer you are always right?
This is nonsense. This is the lie that salesmen tell you. And I know, because I’ve been a salesman. Sometimes a customer will actually find a good price on the right car. Sometimes we buy cars we can’t afford. Back before 2008 a lot of us bought houses we couldn’t afford. We like to go to casinos where we can buy hope and end up destitute. Nor is that the worst purchase our species ever made. Hundreds of thousands of intelligent young men bought The First World War. They bought the war to end all wars. They bought those trenches. They bought mustard gas. They bought death. They could have had it anyway, but they bought it early.
