A is for Algebra, Anarchy, Aphorisms, Agora, and Asshats.

 The English alphabet consists of 26 well known letters. A, B, C etc. Five letter are vowels, and each vowel multi-tasks bravely, each producing a number of different sounds. Most consonant also befuddle us with different sounds: "C" has a hard K sound, as in "cut" and a soft SSS sound, as in "nice". It's confusing, but so are we. 

All that is by-the-by. I am launching now into the letter A. I hope you enjoy it.

Algebra was invented by an 6th century Muslim named Al Khwarizmi. Actually, we should say that he perfected Euclid's early algebraic fumblings. Euclid, being quite dead at the time, didn't mind.

It is not known whether he did so out of sheer malice toward the generations of as-yet unborn schoolchildren who would be baffled by his work or not. He may simply have wanted to find the Dirty Big Black Hole at the centre of the galaxy. Suffice to say that he has caused more misery in fourteen centuries than any modern day oligarch, plutocrat, or petty dictator. 

Nevertheless, smart mathematicians like Stephen Hawking and Jeanette McLeod are (or were) able to speak fluent Algebra at conferences and Very Brainy Dinner Parties, where they would drop Algebraic Aphorisms by the dozen, causing admiration, mirth, and merriment galore. Aphorisms are, of course, not all that easy to come by in these days of alternative truths.

We can lay the blame for this squarely on the shoulders of Anarchic Educators, whose scorn for hierarchical authority is legendary. These well-intentioned folk have trouble agreeing on anything substantive, let alone things that we "normals" have difficulty in defining. As Algebra and Aphorisms can both be described as ephemeral (the "common" person find them as slippery as mercury, and twice as hard to hang onto) so we have ended up with generations of living humans who may with justification think to themselves "if I can't understand it, I may as well believe that which seems likelier: inoculations carry microchips for the Rich n Powerful to use to control me". 

This belief system turns many, many people into Asshats, and their brainpans into bowels. Their mouths act as sphincters, although it must be said the the Ocularis Oris is not, in reality, a simple sphincter. Lips are far better used to share kisses with, than to spill shit. Unfortunately, many people use their lips to do both.

They use the modern-day Agora to do so. People who are no more worthy of more than a fleeting condemnatory thought have taken over the modern-day Agora: the media. We see , hear, and read their words and vile opinions every day. They spill hatred, divisiveness, violence, and rancour from their brown-stained lips, They do this largely for the same reason a child throws a tantrum: it gets attention, and that's what they crave. These unseemly people are  either misguided Anarchists or simple Asshats: they answer to no greater hierarchy that their own ill-informed and cynical opinions.

Meanwhile, normal people (including the folk who can speak fluent a+b=x squared), find it hard to be heard above the uproar. The Agora has fallen.