Chapter CXXXVIII

CXXXVIII

And there is an appendix, and it is a set of rules of engagement, written for one jurist who has not yet sat an examination.

It tells her what she will meet when she leaves South Bend.

That the arena is held by the graduates of the elite secular schools. That they will hold the senior partnerships, the federal clerkships, the agencies. That they are brilliant. That they are credentialed. And that they are intellectually compromised by the very paradigms that trained them.

Note the order of those four sentences. He gives them brilliance and credentials first, in full, without qualification, and only then names the compromise — which is the device again, and it is his, and I have been using it all night on his instruction without knowing where he got it.

And then he gives her the tactic, and it is one sentence long.

You do not argue the math.

Because the math is sound. That is the trap and he names it as a trap. The redundancy would have cost forty millions. The death was improbable. The vendor complied in every particular. The arrangement was efficient for the taxpayer, who is also a person and is also entitled to consideration.

That is the opposing case put at its strongest, by the man arguing against it, in his own book, unhedged.

And then, having conceded every figure:

observe that the sum was balanced by moving a cost off the ledger and onto a body,

and invite the room to consider whether that is efficiency or merely accountancy performed at somebody else's expense.

That is the whole appendix. Everything else in it is elaboration of that one turn.