Excuse me for my ignorance. It turns out that I know little or nothing about the human lymphatic system.

My readers know that I am interested in the body-politic.

I asked myself the question: “Does the body-politic read newspapers or watch television?” In response I came up with the metaphor: the body-politic is like the lymph system, a major byway of communication that is largely invisible.

I then concluded that the body-politic doesn’t follow the news directly, but it has readers and watchers of news and the readers and watchers (like the lymph nodes that create anti-bodies) pass along information only when it is reliable. For example, all the people who personally know Gray Davis have passed along horrid descriptions of Davis to the rest of the body-politic.

The exception to the body-politic not following the news is going to be tonight — the California Recall debate on TV. I expect the body-politic to watch the debate. Maybe 3-5 million Californians will watch, just to make sure that the next governor, Arnold, is an OK guy. Arnold takes office on October 8th, one day after the election.

Imagine the chaos at the Governor’s Mansion and the Governor’s Office with only one day to move out before Arnold moves in. Of course Arnold will be polite, he doesn’t need to be in a hurry.

Back to my ignorance. After coming up with the metaphor of the body-politic having a communication system like the human lymph system, I had to read the Encyclopedia Britannica section on the lymph system.

The lymph system weighs about as much as the liver; it is distributed all over the body. Every day half the proteins in the bloodstream leak out and the lymph system returns them to the blood. Lymph is colorless, and almost the same composition as plasma. The exception to colorlessness is that lymph is white when it is transporting cholesterol, which is the main way fat moves about the body. The lymph nodes are the main locus of bacterial combat, where the anti-body system is initiated. Lymphocytes are in every organ, are self generating and can be found concentrated in bone marrow and the thymus.

Before I looked it up I knew that the lymph system brings garlic to the skin surface, so you can smell it on someone else and does the same with sperm odor, transporting it from the vagina. to the skin surface.

The Britannica entry on the lymph system has more “recently discovered” and “is currently unknown” phrases than any other entry I’ve seen in the Britannica. The lymph system was discovered nearly four hundred years ago. It is still much of a mystery, but better understood than the body-politic. So far, we haven’t even discovered the body-politic, which remains an imaginary entity.

I have already written my blog to post the night before the election. It tells blog readers what the body politic is going to do on election day.