Dear George,
Do you know why we’re the greatest power on the face of the earth? Because, we disembowel our children’s souls. The child’s soul, when it leaves the womb, is a dance, a slowly turning carrousel of gaily-colored swirls, twists, turns, squiggles, arcs, undulations, and gurlywhigs. The child dances even as it sleeps.
Nature abhors the straight line and symmetry, and the dance of the child reflects this abhorrence. But, function cannot abide the spontaneity of the dance, and if nothing else, we are a functional nation. Only lunatics dance, so we gut their souls and draw it off. Into the empty cavity, we stuff all the flotsam they will need to grow into “functional” adults.
First, we brand them, for the quickest way to snuff the soul is to turn its attention to the logo. Then we teach them the line: that linear progression of a temporal world devoid of the cycle that is the ground of the soul. We hound them about punctuality until they internalize the tick of the clock and their world in narrowed to a tense apprehension over the next appointment, the next deadline, the next whatever. Then we indoctrinate them into the iron grid of row and column: the rows and columns of seats neatly lined up in the classroom, the rows and columns of the spreadsheet they come to see as the only reality. We replace meaning with technique, emotion with number, value with concept.
We stuff their souls until they are so bloated the spirit suffocates and becomes dead to the movement of the dance, dead to the poem, dead to the song. Value evaporates and only the number is left; the dance dies and only the march remains.
God has truly blessed us.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
9:06:21 PM 
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