Bill pondered deeply, his coal-black eyebrows drawn down, one stubby digit fingering the iron-gray hair at his temple.
“A moron,” Joshua amplified, “believes that prohibition prohibits. He believes what the advertisers of breakfast foods have to say about their products, and he makes his stomach believe it, too.”
Bill nodded understandingly.
“He believes that, if the politician he votes for is elected, he will get what he longed for when he cast his vote.”
Bill nodded again.
“And,” continued Joshua, “when he doesn’t get it, he believes he is getting it.”
California Bill allowed himself a chuckle.
“He believes that this country has free speech. He knows it has because he read an editorial to that effect in his morning paper. And on the front page of that paper he read of twenty men being sent to the penitentiary because they made remarks which, in effect, merely voiced their dissatisfaction with the accepted order of things and called for a change.”
“Whoa!” cried Bill. “That’s radicalism! I took some o’ those birds to th’ pen’ myself.”
“It is not necessarily radicalism,” Joshua denied. “It’s merely commonsense. We’re not talking politics, remember, Bill. We’re simply trying to dismember the patient moron for our own enlightenment.”