An Exercise in Logic
If you’re walking around the United States on two feet and have opposable thumbs in the year 2001, you probably need some mental exercise. Try this little logical jog twice a day until you can do it without becoming winded or working up too much of a sweat --
Let’s say that there’s a popular downtown bar operated by a man named Hank Freightgrouse. Now let’s say that he books a famous blues harmonica player (well, as famous as a blues harmonica player is going to get) to play in the bar, and that a Yankee transplant Wilmingtonian harmonicist talks her way onto the bandstand during the show. Now let’s say that ol’ Hank is a musician himself and has some strong feelings about the quality of shows he’s paying for in his bar and doesn’t want the by-way-of-Queens local player up there detracting from the show.
Now, let’s say that the situation in which Mr. Freightgrouse goes up to the side of the stage and signals for the local to quit playing and sit down and then her husband comes up to interfere with bar owner Freightgrouse’s intentions = P. Let’s proceed with the logic and say that the situation in which the interaction between the harmonicist’s husband and the bar owner leads to the bar owner being arrested and taken to court for assault = Q. Now let’s label the court outcome, in which Mr. Freightgrouse is found innocent = R.
Here’s where the logic comes in, and where the mental flabbiness of readers is most likely to show up first. Logically, for P + Q = R to be true in this scenario, then the assault charged filed by the harmonicist’s husband must be false. In more standard, verbal form, if Mr. Freightgrouse is innocent of the assault charges, then the person making the charges be lying under oath, which means that the harmonicist’s husband is perjuring himself both in swearing out the arrest warrant in the first place and in the courtroom itself.
Where the reader’s mental flabbiness is likeliest to show up again is in extending the results of the above exercise in logic one more step. Most of us know that non-profit organizations must meet certain state and federal guidelines in order to obtain and retain their tax-free and tax-deductible status. To add specific information to this general assumption, let me assure you that the originating documents of such groups must require their officers to be of sound moral character.
Now let’s say that the known perjurer is elected president of a non-profit organization, for example, the Blues Society of the Lower Cape Fear. Reader, what does your newfound strength in logic tell you about the validity of that man holding that office?