Lawyers

“LAWYER, noun. One skilled in circumvention of the law.” — Ambrose Bierce

Mr. Kerry is a lawyer. Mr. Edwards is a lawyer. Is it a good idea to have our country run by lawyers? Bill and Hillary Clinton were lawyers. They were honest and truthful, right?

My personal view is that a lawyer is a person who spends a lifetime studying the rules, so that these rules can be stretched or broken, ensuring riches without honest labor. Toward this end, hapless “plaintiffs” are enslaved, and paid off with a portion of the booty, and hapless “defendants” … well, who cares about defendants? They can get lawyers of their own.

Back in the days of Lincoln, himself a lawyer, a murder trial averaged a day and a half, and cost a few weeks labor. Gee, I wonder why it got changed. And by whom.

Of course, Mr. Kerry did not make his fortune as a lawyer. No, he made it the old-fashioned way. He married somebody rich. Twice.

Mr. Edwards, however, did make his fortune as a proper lawyer. He took the money away from doctors and hospitals. Say, by the way, how’s the cost of your health insurance? My wife and I pay almost a thousand dollars each month, about the same as for our home. I wonder where the money goes.

Of course, that raises a question of philosophy in my mind. I wonder which is more important, a doctor or a lawyer. Let’s see, if you were dying and you thought it might be the fault of somebody else, and you could only call for help from one person, a doctor or a lawyer, which would you call?

Hmmm, that’s a poser!

If you hire a lawyer, you know of course that he will tell you what you want to hear. In that sense, he’ll be on your side. And he’ll probably encourage you to sue, because, let’s face facts, he will come out ahead no matter what happens to you. Of course, if you lose, he will be very sad for you and surely he will tell you so very sincerely. He’ll probably do what he can to help you by mailing his bills promptly and so forth.

If this sounds correct in your experience, then I suppose you’d imagine it likely that Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards, the attorneys, would be the kind of guys to tell us what we want to hear. Well, that’s good, isn’t it? To hear what we’d like to hear?

Of course it is!

It will be good for us to have leaders who will promise us that we’re not in a war but just in a little nuisance, like a traffic jam. And that we can remove our soldiers from nasty foreign countries, because we don’t want soldiers hurt of course. And we’ll have things we want at home, too. Like plenty of oil for the SUV, and lots of free healthcare, and our taxes will be lower, and the budget will be balanced, and our children won’t have to pay for Social Security, and it will just be wonderful.

Sure it will.

And if it didn’t turn out so good for us, it would still turn out swell for the two lawyers! And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?

Besides being well-paid, a lawyer’s work consists only of writing words and speaking words, but not necessarily true words, of course. Rest assured, your lawyer will twist any awkward truth or facts to fit your desired reality. If he succeeds, and tricks the other folks into believing your made-up reality, then you could win big! And surely winning big is much more important than being fussy about truth or facts. I hope your hired truth-twister is really good at lying for you, so you can win big!

And now that we remember that Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards are lawyers, does that cast new insight about their constant “complaints”? Their shrill cries that somebody else is to blame? Their impressive posture, and noble delivery of grand-sounding sentences? Their ongoing claim that “they have a plan,” without spelling out what the plan might be? Their ability to talk without actually answering certain questions? Of course! That’s how lawyers operate! That’s what they do!

Shall we listen to two lawyers?

Shall we believe the words coming out of the mouths of two professional truth-twisters?

With their words, their suits, their striking gestures, they tell you over and over that you should trust them.

After all, they’re lawyers.