Well, I was just sittin’ here, chewin’ on a piece of straw and lookin’ up at the big blue sky, strokin’ my dog’s head and feelin’ lazy and and, well, not sleepy…but, you know…the place where you’re between sleep and peaceful.

And, I got to thinkin’ that what I really needed was a nudge. You know, just somethin’ that would push the blood through a little faster and I wondered what would give me a good nudge, better’n somethin’ else that might just get me to look up, but not get up.

And, I came upon the notion that maybe the most nudgefying thing would be to lie to me…and then tell my I was stupid for not believing the lie. That’s a whopper with a twist.

You see, my Nudge Theory, is that most of the time, I just listen to folks go on and on about how they are gonna save the world, and fix the planet and build their big castles in the wide blue sky. Even my lazy dog dreams, I see his feet kickin’ and hear him whimperin’ in the middle of the night…fighting’ against pretend attackers or bears or somethin’

But if you tell me that you have figured out why something needs to be fixed on my land, and you have done all the studies and I need to give you my money to fix it, if I find out you lied that’s bad. But when you tell me and everyone I know that I’m stupid because I didn’t believe your lies…one of us is in for a moment of some soul reflection.

See, my “Nudge Theory” is that if you are spending your time getting people to believe your lies, by insulting them into capitulation, I ought to be nudging you into having a conscience.

Now, I don’t really know how to do this by myself, since your lie/insult campaign went all over to everyone we knew. So, I have to remove the effect of the “availability cascades”…where you tell the lie, insult me for not believing it…and go around to everyone pointing a finger at me and trying to get them to scoff at how stupid I am for not believing a lie…so that they will believe the lie…in order to avoid bein’ called stupid. It’s not that they actually believe the lie either, they just don’t want to be laughed at, anymore than the next fella.

So, the “availability cascade” needs to be reversed and undone, in order to “nudge” people back to …well, the truth. Except, the liar who adds insult to perjury…says, there’s no more need now for discussion, the matter is “settled” and anyone who doesn’t believe the lie and the insult…needs to wear a tin foil hat.

And he gets all his friends to write about it, in order to cover up the lie and to hurl more insults. So, you got yourself a good cyber-balkanization goin’.

Now, you got your lie, your insult, your coverup and your balkanized breeding grounds for more lies, more insults, more coverups, basically a manure spreader filled with rocket fuel.

One good thing about my “nudge” theory. It won’t cost nobody a trillion dollars to tell the truth. Lies are expensive creatures, like a bull with a tapeworm…you can’t feed it enough to keep it alive and you can’t afford to stop feeding it for fear it will die.