CHAPTER ONE
There are many different brands of Hell from which men who live to be old can choose. The only certain thing is that old men get no choices that are not Hell. Many of these suburbs of Hell will be discussed in this examination we’re calling The Truth About Old Men. You can live in Ugly Hell, you can choose Matrimonial Hell. You can choose the Hell your children design for you. You can choose Government Hell, Employment Hell, Dating Hell and, if you escape them all, there is always AARP Hell. Ironically, growing old is growing enlightened, and of all the Hells waiting for old men Enlightenment Hell is the most painful.
Here are a few of the splendid tortures an enlightened old man must endure:
Until we become enlightened, we never doubt the statement that "competition keeps the price down". We believe this so strongly we support laws forbidding monopolies and encouraging competition. Americans are obligated to believe competition keeps the price down until they reach the age of sixty. After that, no one cares what they believe, so that's when the media and the politicians stop speaking to them and enlightenment sets in. That's when it occurs to an old man that competition has shaped American commerce from its very beginning and it continues to define the marketplace up to this moment. During that lengthy stretch of time, the price of virtually everything has gone up astronomically. How, then, could it be true that competition keeps the price down? Obvious answer: IT DOES NOT. The whole thing is pony pucky. But you don't begin to really suffer from the scam until your realize you've been duped, and that is one of the splendid tortures waiting for the occupants of Enlightenment Hell.
It's so sweet to be stupid and it lasts so long. But when you hit sixty it's all over. You realize no one becomes a policeman because he wants to protect and to serve. People become policemen because they love the power and respect the badge and gun help them extort from smarter people. Proctologists do not study the field because they believe the world needs healthier rectums or because there's an exaggerated demand for proctologists or because they had an uncle who died of hemorrhoids. They spend their day examining assholes because it thrills them to poke about in other people’s assholes. Similarly, don't think your podiatrist has a problem with foot odor. It gives him an orgasm. Ever meet a man with amazing self-confidence who has no apparent talent and only a whisper of a brain? Look in his pants. And, in case you didn't know it because you haven't reached sixty yet, television news anchors masturbate by looking in a mirror. All these annoying realizations are waiting for you in Enlightenment Hell.
Let’s not start with a whitewash. The “golden” in “golden years” is a load of crap! The chief beef most of us have is that we invested a lifetime working toward things that were gone by the time we earned them.
The well-intentioned among us, just for instance, threw away a mountain of opportunities for multiple orgasms when we were young enough to enjoy them, spending that time, instead, improving our education just so we could grow up prosperous. That would be our revenge against all the thin-witted high school Lotharios who squandered their teenage years chasing pussy. They enjoyed heavy petting for 4 or 5-years, during which we wiser guys kept our noses in the books, worked our asses off and went without pussy.
The idea was…for the next 60-years, AFTER the education, we’d stretch the boundaries of what human beings can do and remain loose on the streets as we claimed our reward -- a secretary! Also known as a personal sex-slave.
We expected return on investment. But just when we got our key to the executive washroom, she was gone. Where did she go? Why...the corner office down the hall, of course, of course. She’s holed up in there behind her new VP stripes with a barricade of judges and harassment laws blocking the door. What kind of justice is that?
It’s like Bernie Madoff was suddenly put in charge of punishment and the crime was growing old. Bernie liked to say, "You’re going to pay and pay and pay and, in the end, your reward will be bankruptcy."
1964…I’m working two part-time jobs after school trying to earn enough money to buy the thing I want most – a brand new Impala convertible a block long and lane wide with a 427-cubic inch engine. By the time I earned enough money for a new ride, they all looked like matchbox cars and had 13-horsepower. Later, everyone was driving a truck. Where's my reward?
The house we lived in that year was a 3-bedroom rambler in the suburbs. Nice place. It cost fourteen-thousand-dollars new. The same house in the same neighborhood would cost two-hundred-thousand today. Every time I get enough saved up for a new house, the price goes up. What is that? Maybe, there’s not enough competition in the real estate market.
Gilda Radner was right. It’s always something. I wanted to peg my pants when I was a kid. I wanted them so tight only the color would suggest I had them on. My dad wouldn’t let me. By the time I got old enough to have them pegged without interference, everybody was wearing bell-bottom pants. Then they went to MC Hammer/Sinbad balloon pants. Now they wear them so baggy a homeless family could take up residence inside a pair. When are the damned pegged pants coming back?
I ran away to Hollywood when I was a kid. I wanted to be a cowboy movie star. I wanted to ride a golden palomino with a silver saddle and wear rhinestone-studded shirts and a two-gun rig with bone-handle six-shooters. By the time I finished my acting education you couldn’t tell the cowboy heroes from the bums hustling quarters on the boulevard. Not only their horses didn’t have names, but the heroes didn’t have names. And one lousy gun! What the hell kind of cowboy hero is that. I don’t blame Roy Rogers for dying.
One of the phrases I used to hear old men at the barber shop say when my dad took me for a haircut was “day late and a dollar short”. Not only they don’t say that anymore, but the barber shop where the old men hang out doesn’t even exist. Now you have to hold your nose to prevent suffocating on the stink of styling gel when you go to get a haircut. And the magazines lying around have names like Cosmo and Housekeeping. You don’t hear fishing stories and you don’t hear politics. You hear dating stories, unless you turn off your hearing aid and pretend you aren’t there.
I hope I don’t sound like an angry old man…really…because I hate understatement. What I am is vexed, bitter, disillusioned, disenfranchised, disrespected, disgusted, displaced, disoriented and sort of pissed off. But the time for complaining is passed. And the strength for resisting is gone. And the evil merchants at AARP who promised I’d have a voice in the manufacture of laws if I’d give them some membership money have had me for lunch.
#
On a more uplifting theme…consider death. Here’s what I want to know: Does congress think I’m going to live forever? Do the makers of law not realize I’m going to die? Do they think it will not be painful? Do they think I deserve the pain? Why is it against the law for me to go to a doctor and say, “Okay, I’m finished. I’d like a prescription for the put-you-to-sleep drug, so that I can go painlessly and happily in a sweet dream about days gone by with my assets intact for passing along to my heirs.”
Why is my only alternative to a protracted, pain-based existence in which everything I own is sold off to pay doctor bills and I am reduced to food stamps and welfare with a closing page that features, a self-induced inscrutable, hanging from the chandelier of his government subsidized two-room rat hole?
There is an answer, ya know. It is but one of the many illuminating pearls that come only to old gentlemen in the twilight of their years…old men who have had a lifetime to see through the mountain of pony pucky in which they have been mired throughout their productive years. THE GOVERNMENT PLAN IS FOR YOU TO DIE AFTER RETURNING ALL YOU HAVE EARNED TO THE COMMON POT.
The government is obviously complicit in arranging end-of-life legislation so that such a selected, serene, pain-free death is outside the reach of all but the wealthiest, if we are to judge the persuasion of the government, and that includes the human beings sitting at the head table during this week’s city council session. The government has had over 200-years to get it right. How complicated can it be?
It’s easy enough for the old man to run it down. Here we go…The Constitution got it right! EACH of us is granted life, etc. as an inalienable right. The GOVERNMENT does not own our lives. According to the Constitution…they belong to US. It’s not the government’s business when we choose to bring our individual lives to a close.
This outrageous position taken by the administration and the congress throughout their history is a clear and unabridged body of proof that a conspiratorial commitment is made by those who serve us in government; a commitment to the belief that a citizen’s claim to his/her own life should be subordinate to the claim laid by the government. Yet, no reasonable panel of enlightened citizens could possibly decide that the government should have more control over HOW and WHEN the individual citizens of the United States choose to finish their lives. And, yet, the government has done nothing effectively to enforce this right for people over 65 during its entire history. Why is it necessary to complain about this?
The CHURCH, you say! Aha! If that is a bonafide answer, let those motivated to live within the church’s doctrine be so guided. Let them also have the right to make the personal decision according to their own priorities. And let that right be enjoyed by all citizens. Let the pharmacists go forward and the doctors be indoctrinated; let the police and the undertakers hear, as a part of their training, education on end-of-life victims. Figure out some fancy branding like they do over at the abortion clinic…something like their “Pro Choice” brand. After all…let’s not forget…if you are granted the inalienable right to your own life, then it belongs to YOU. Let the law facilitate your right to end it when you wish with easy senior access to appropriate drugs.
And there’s at least a spanking due the pharmaceutical companies who profit on the dirty little secret they keep, which explains the seniors in question are a major profit center and keeping them alive as long as possible with expensive drugs is a fine enterprise that will collapse with the introduction of a drug offering a pleasant death for each senior. So, while the interests of commerce are served, the rights of the individual citizen are squashed, and where’s the courageous, eloquent, congressman who will make this case for us? Where’s the articulate lawyer hired by the AARP and what do you want your damn dues to do that’s more important to ya?
Tip of the hat here to the PAC hired by the amalgamated life insurance companies of America. Question for you people. Just how much time and money do you spend helping elected office holders understand it’s good for everyone when people live loooooong lives and bad for anyone who sponsors legislation that gives them an easy way out. The old man believes the issue never arises between you, because after all, it’s implicit in the conspiracy.
Younger people will ask, “How will this peaceful death thing impact my Social Security prospects, if all the old people who don’t want to live any longer, suddenly all die off one day?”
The old man just winks back. Duh, he thinks. It is not possible for younger people to see any affair or any human being except through a very narrow filter…a filter which is subjectively focused on everything inside the next couple weeks.
Meanwhile, the old man’s filter embraces the last 65 years. The whole thing looks different by now. He scratches the skin where the hair used to be. What a wonder, he thinks, that a whole nation full of ordinary folk would be so horribly victimized by the treachery of their congress and betrayal of their commerce. It just got by him in younger days…back when they were squeezing his brain day in and day out. Once, he, too, believed it was better for everyone that the old people were forced to suffer in pain through the thousand infirmities that beset them while all they own is given to doctors, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, people who manufacture dentures and those little devices you can set off with the press of a button just before you draw your last breath to tell the authorities it is time to come collect your bones and free up the space for the next dumb curmudgeon.
That ambition to make you suffer for the profit of commerce, apparently, trumps the ambition of every living citizen to die a peaceful death of their own choosing on a day they have selected. But it really doesn't look that way to ya, until you finally meet that 3-headed monster whose alternating faces you have seen at every dark corner of your life -- the one who decides these things.
He is illusive. But loosely defined, he is an alliance between the churches, the corporations and the lawmakers. Everybody comes out of the arrangement with clean hands because nobody does his own dirty work. Instead, henchmen do it. They will show up in various costumes with bad news for you. They represent Child Protective Services, the school board, the IRS, the media, the union, your boss, your commanding officer, your city council, your warden and your parole officer...each gouging for shelf space in the battle for power over you.
This is why it is illegal for doctors to prescribe a pill that could easily bring about a quiet, peaceful, dignified death for people over 70 who have drawn all the breath they wish.
Guy says, "It's all about your perspective on life." Of course, he's right, but you don't want to hear anything from the perspective of a citizen of Enlightenment Hell...a place where YOU might look like you’ve fallen off the edge of sanity into the black hole of thought and reason and should wait patiently for sound judgment to assert itself in the closing chapters of your life..
Friday, January 13, 2012
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Sometimes, a cure for the world’s real problems seems so close at hand. Sometimes, I’m driving down the street, watching the citizens walk by with their britches around their knees and I think all it would take to fix America is a good pair of suspenders.
Other times, I’m trying to get a read on what’s happening out there and I switch on the TV, cycle through the hundreds of channels the new technology has given me, passing right by reruns of The Rifleman, Mayberry RFD and The Golden Girls, and I find what looks like a sane interpretation of current events and news.
Oh, yes, I think. I’ll just pop in on the world while it’s not looking. I’ll find out what it’s up to, see what it’s thinking and get a read on how things are going. The moderator is a girl about 12 years old who, someday, hopes to become a model. She’s asking another girl about 12 years old, who would already be a model, but she went to economics school and now she’s going to explain The War on Terrorism and its impact on money markets across the globe. It’s okay. She’s the CEO of a major American corporation and should give us some answers we can use.
I’ll get some serious hard news from people who know what they‘re talking about, I think. I flip to a local channel, depending on the sage interpretation of Bob Sheifer or Peter Jennings, but they're gone. In their place is another model about 12 years old and she’s introducing today’s guest commentator who will consume the next minute and a half delivering today’s editorial. He’s a plumber from the Bronx. He stopped by after work to do the CBS Evening News before his bowling league meets at 8. It's a pub stunt by the net designed to create the impression that the media and the citizens it controls are all together in one big happy reality stew.
I cycle around the news channels, looking for a read on the world. Everything can’t have gone to hell that quickly. The REAL NEWS can’t be that hard to find. After all, I have a half-dozen solid choices now. I find they all agree on today’s top story. It’s about an Idaho woman who disappeared ten days ago from a resort community in Mexico. She hasn’t been heard from since. The Mexican army has been called out to find her. Local authorities are hiding the truth. American journalists have gathered in a throng outside her hotel. Her face is on the cover of every tabloid paper displayed at the Safeway check out counter. We don’t know if she’s dead or alive. Her boyfriend, a 12-year old lothario who is employed as an attorney, has taken a sabbatical from his career to look for her. Her husband and children are in tears when they’re interviewed. Her gay friend is trying to be brave. A famous American bounty hunter is on her trail. A law team that once got a legendary athlete off the hook has agreed to represent her interests pro bono.
I heard about the missing woman this morning when I tried to listen to the radio talk shows. I already know about the cover-up by local authorities being paid off by the tourist industry. Don’t worry. Tourism is not suffering because a woman went missing. It’s suffering because the missing woman is getting so much press.
I’m concerned. I Google American missing persons to find out how often a tragedy like this happens. 2,300 disappeared today. Roughly 900,000 are lost annually.
I fix a bowl of oatmeal. I take my heart medicine, have a warm bath and sit at the dinner table for a while, staring at the dribble cloaking the inside of my empty orange juice glass. And I wonder...what are we gonna do about the woman who went missing in Mexico?
Sometimes, a cure for the world’s real problems seems so close at hand. Sometimes, I’m driving down the street, watching the citizens walk by with their britches around their knees and I think all it would take to fix America is a good pair of suspenders.
Other times, I’m trying to get a read on what’s happening out there and I switch on the TV, cycle through the hundreds of channels the new technology has given me, passing right by reruns of The Rifleman, Mayberry RFD and The Golden Girls, and I find what looks like a sane interpretation of current events and news.
Oh, yes, I think. I’ll just pop in on the world while it’s not looking. I’ll find out what it’s up to, see what it’s thinking and get a read on how things are going. The moderator is a girl about 12 years old who, someday, hopes to become a model. She’s asking another girl about 12 years old, who would already be a model, but she went to economics school and now she’s going to explain The War on Terrorism and its impact on money markets across the globe. It’s okay. She’s the CEO of a major American corporation and should give us some answers we can use.
I’ll get some serious hard news from people who know what they‘re talking about, I think. I flip to a local channel, depending on the sage interpretation of Bob Sheifer or Peter Jennings, but they're gone. In their place is another model about 12 years old and she’s introducing today’s guest commentator who will consume the next minute and a half delivering today’s editorial. He’s a plumber from the Bronx. He stopped by after work to do the CBS Evening News before his bowling league meets at 8. It's a pub stunt by the net designed to create the impression that the media and the citizens it controls are all together in one big happy reality stew.
I cycle around the news channels, looking for a read on the world. Everything can’t have gone to hell that quickly. The REAL NEWS can’t be that hard to find. After all, I have a half-dozen solid choices now. I find they all agree on today’s top story. It’s about an Idaho woman who disappeared ten days ago from a resort community in Mexico. She hasn’t been heard from since. The Mexican army has been called out to find her. Local authorities are hiding the truth. American journalists have gathered in a throng outside her hotel. Her face is on the cover of every tabloid paper displayed at the Safeway check out counter. We don’t know if she’s dead or alive. Her boyfriend, a 12-year old lothario who is employed as an attorney, has taken a sabbatical from his career to look for her. Her husband and children are in tears when they’re interviewed. Her gay friend is trying to be brave. A famous American bounty hunter is on her trail. A law team that once got a legendary athlete off the hook has agreed to represent her interests pro bono.
I heard about the missing woman this morning when I tried to listen to the radio talk shows. I already know about the cover-up by local authorities being paid off by the tourist industry. Don’t worry. Tourism is not suffering because a woman went missing. It’s suffering because the missing woman is getting so much press.
I’m concerned. I Google American missing persons to find out how often a tragedy like this happens. 2,300 disappeared today. Roughly 900,000 are lost annually.
I fix a bowl of oatmeal. I take my heart medicine, have a warm bath and sit at the dinner table for a while, staring at the dribble cloaking the inside of my empty orange juice glass. And I wonder...what are we gonna do about the woman who went missing in Mexico?
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
The truth about old men isn’t hard to tell. What’s hard is to keep it a secret. Now and then one of us lets it out. Howard Cosell was America’s preeminent sports broadcaster, having logged a lifetime of national spotlight, covering everything from the rise of Muhammad Ali through Olympic ceremonies all the way to Monday Night Football when he said the sentence that ended his career. “Look at that little monkey run.” Goodbye Howard.
New Yorkers had been intimidated by the granite countenance of Don Imus glaring at them from bus billboards for decades until that fatal radio show that found him saying the phrase, “...nappy headed hos.” Goodbye Imus.
Keeping one’s mouth shut is especially difficult for old men who are being paid vast sums of money to express their opinions. It’s much easier for old men who are bosses, but they don’t exactly get a free ride. Try telling a female employee her hair looks nice and you’ll find yourself on the wrong end of a career-shattering law suit, alleging sexual harassment. What you said is of no concern to the judge. The law’s only interest is in what the employee THOUGHT you meant by the statement.
How is it possible that your job could fall into jeopardy and your career come to a close over what another person THINKS you MEANT when you said, “Your hair looks nice today”?
It takes an old man to see the wisdom of it. Here’s the chronology of the enigma: Wife got tired of your refusal to read between the lines when she hinted at what she meant. She believes it should be illegal to actually say what you really think. She and her girlfriends do not communicate that way. Instead, they require the men in their lives to “read between the lines“, and any man unable or unwilling to do that is guilty of divorce-proportion punishment for not being sensitive enough to GUESS what they are thinking. They’re tired of it and not going to take it anymore. They all go down to register at the polls. They elect politicians who support their position that men should be required to “read between the lines” when women speak. Reading between the lines becomes a requirement subject to legal action when it is disregarded. Reading between the lines is now an accepted form of communication enforced by the courts in the workplace. In fact, if we don’t like what we hear when we read between the lines you speak, your career is kaput. Don’t think being Howard Cocell or Don Imus can save you. And it sure as hell won’t save a boss stupid enough to compliment a female employee on her haircut.
The truth about old men is that they’re no different than they were when they were young men. The survivors have simply learned to keep their mouths shut. Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of an old man. Who can guess when it will fall out in an unguarded moment? Who’d-a thunk the secretary would ever get wise to my real meaning when I said, “Your hair looks nice today”? How on earth did she ever guess I was really thinking, “Show me your tits.” But then who’d-a thunk a man could lose his job over what he was thinking, whether he was actually thinking it or not.
An old man understands where the game, GUESS WHAT I’M THINKING came from. It’s a parlor trick Wife once used to prevent him from dodging the blame for not being able to read her mind. He just never expected it to find its way into the workplace and, if he were stupid enough to tell you what he‘s really thinking, you‘d discover he believes there’s something diabolical about GUESS WHAT I’M THINKING being used to decide legal issues in a court room. But it is.
So...just in case you don’t have it yet, because you haven‘t mastered the technique of reading between the lines, let’s put it down in plain language. In sexual harassment cases what the old man actually said to the female employee is irrelevant. The only relevant issue to the court is what she thought he was thinking when he said it. Confused? More than half of us are very clear on the matter. That would include the half of us who are female amplified by the sleazy bastards who have sold their soul to your X-wife in exchange for her vote at the polls.
The truth about old men is that they’re always thinking show me your tits when they say, “Your hair looks nice today.” You can’t fire them all, so you have to make the cut somewhere. Who gets off the hook? The ones smart enough to pretend they’re gay before they say the phrase, “Your hair looks nice today.” They’re allowed. We give them that dispensation because they know how to read between the lines. Unfortunately, it’s a gift confined to gay salesmen and female news anchors who will need it to locate the missing woman in Mexico.
The truth about old men isn’t hard to tell. What’s hard is to keep it a secret. Now and then one of us lets it out. Howard Cosell was America’s preeminent sports broadcaster, having logged a lifetime of national spotlight, covering everything from the rise of Muhammad Ali through Olympic ceremonies all the way to Monday Night Football when he said the sentence that ended his career. “Look at that little monkey run.” Goodbye Howard.
New Yorkers had been intimidated by the granite countenance of Don Imus glaring at them from bus billboards for decades until that fatal radio show that found him saying the phrase, “...nappy headed hos.” Goodbye Imus.
Keeping one’s mouth shut is especially difficult for old men who are being paid vast sums of money to express their opinions. It’s much easier for old men who are bosses, but they don’t exactly get a free ride. Try telling a female employee her hair looks nice and you’ll find yourself on the wrong end of a career-shattering law suit, alleging sexual harassment. What you said is of no concern to the judge. The law’s only interest is in what the employee THOUGHT you meant by the statement.
How is it possible that your job could fall into jeopardy and your career come to a close over what another person THINKS you MEANT when you said, “Your hair looks nice today”?
It takes an old man to see the wisdom of it. Here’s the chronology of the enigma: Wife got tired of your refusal to read between the lines when she hinted at what she meant. She believes it should be illegal to actually say what you really think. She and her girlfriends do not communicate that way. Instead, they require the men in their lives to “read between the lines“, and any man unable or unwilling to do that is guilty of divorce-proportion punishment for not being sensitive enough to GUESS what they are thinking. They’re tired of it and not going to take it anymore. They all go down to register at the polls. They elect politicians who support their position that men should be required to “read between the lines” when women speak. Reading between the lines becomes a requirement subject to legal action when it is disregarded. Reading between the lines is now an accepted form of communication enforced by the courts in the workplace. In fact, if we don’t like what we hear when we read between the lines you speak, your career is kaput. Don’t think being Howard Cocell or Don Imus can save you. And it sure as hell won’t save a boss stupid enough to compliment a female employee on her haircut.
The truth about old men is that they’re no different than they were when they were young men. The survivors have simply learned to keep their mouths shut. Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of an old man. Who can guess when it will fall out in an unguarded moment? Who’d-a thunk the secretary would ever get wise to my real meaning when I said, “Your hair looks nice today”? How on earth did she ever guess I was really thinking, “Show me your tits.” But then who’d-a thunk a man could lose his job over what he was thinking, whether he was actually thinking it or not.
An old man understands where the game, GUESS WHAT I’M THINKING came from. It’s a parlor trick Wife once used to prevent him from dodging the blame for not being able to read her mind. He just never expected it to find its way into the workplace and, if he were stupid enough to tell you what he‘s really thinking, you‘d discover he believes there’s something diabolical about GUESS WHAT I’M THINKING being used to decide legal issues in a court room. But it is.
So...just in case you don’t have it yet, because you haven‘t mastered the technique of reading between the lines, let’s put it down in plain language. In sexual harassment cases what the old man actually said to the female employee is irrelevant. The only relevant issue to the court is what she thought he was thinking when he said it. Confused? More than half of us are very clear on the matter. That would include the half of us who are female amplified by the sleazy bastards who have sold their soul to your X-wife in exchange for her vote at the polls.
The truth about old men is that they’re always thinking show me your tits when they say, “Your hair looks nice today.” You can’t fire them all, so you have to make the cut somewhere. Who gets off the hook? The ones smart enough to pretend they’re gay before they say the phrase, “Your hair looks nice today.” They’re allowed. We give them that dispensation because they know how to read between the lines. Unfortunately, it’s a gift confined to gay salesmen and female news anchors who will need it to locate the missing woman in Mexico.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Now and then, old men get lonely. They try not to think about the decades they squandered working two jobs so mama could stay home with the kids. It’s painful to remember mama’s words on the day he retired with visions of the travel they’d enjoy, the long, lazy days sailing or dabbling a baited hook he‘d been looking forward to. Her words will forever echo in his atrophied brain. “You’ve kept me chattel in the kitchen all these years. It‘s your fault I had no career. Now, it‘s time for ME.”
“But, honey,” he says, “I thought we agreed this was the life we wanted.”
“That’s because you are completely incapable of reading between the lines.”
The divorce has come and gone now. The kids are on their own, not that it would be possible to recognize them as his own. Suspenders would help. The old man has even passed through the return to single life, abbreviated by the second marriage and the resounding sock on the snout dealt him by wife number two, who was from another planet. Now he’s just hanging out on the dating sites, hoping that somewhere there is still a sane individual wearing a skirt who can understand him.
He posts a profile on Hook Me Up dot com. In the section designed to describe himself he talks about being a man with his own agenda, a man who knows where he’s going, a man of self-determination and inner strength. He thinks this is the sort of fellow a woman will respect, admire and, perhaps, grow to love. He gets back unsolicited hate mail, branding him as a control freak. In the section asking about his sexual propensities he tries to make it clear he is not a deviate. Using his own pedestrian parlance, he explains that he is accustomed to mounting the female. He considers this a selling point. He gets back e-mail from women who presume him to be a “master”. They are hoping to be chained and gagged, whipped with pretend instruments of torture and humiliated by a “dom” to whom they will play “sub” in titillating adventures called “role playing.” What he once viewed as commonplace male deportment is now characterized as the perverse, sadistic machinations of a savage reprobate.
He tries again. This time he makes it clear he respects women. A good woman belongs on a pedestal, he writes. Now he gets mail that opens with the line, Hi, Pantyboy and goes on to describe the wardrobe of frilly things he will wear when he becomes her love monkey.
Finally, a resonating chord is struck, and he meets a potential love interest for dinner. Less combative conflict has been waged in war zones. By the end of the salad it’s clear this is a contest to determine who is smartest, most accomplished, more erudite and less afflicted by damaging past relationships. By the end of the entrée he understands it will be his obligation to pay for every indiscretion committed by every man to whom she has been married. He wonders how these men managed to get away with the ignominious sin of being born male, but he envies them for managing to get away. When the check comes, she pulls out her wallet, but is quick to put it away if he just insists on being a gentleman. Paying the check is how the term “gentleman” is defined now. It was, after all, the reason he responded to her profile on Hook Me Up dot com -- the part where she described her ambition as a search for a man who knows how to treat a lady like a lady.
Now the lady would like to go home and be laid. “What’s that,” she says. “You have no Viagra? It would be bad for your heart?”
He tries to explain the comical irony that the only people who need Viagra are those most likely to suffer from a heart condition, but she’s not in a humorous mood. Next week, he’ll see her new profile on Hook Me Up dot com. She’s looking for a man between the ages of 12 and 20 who knows how to treat a lady like a lady.
Now and then, old men get lonely. They try not to think about the decades they squandered working two jobs so mama could stay home with the kids. It’s painful to remember mama’s words on the day he retired with visions of the travel they’d enjoy, the long, lazy days sailing or dabbling a baited hook he‘d been looking forward to. Her words will forever echo in his atrophied brain. “You’ve kept me chattel in the kitchen all these years. It‘s your fault I had no career. Now, it‘s time for ME.”
“But, honey,” he says, “I thought we agreed this was the life we wanted.”
“That’s because you are completely incapable of reading between the lines.”
The divorce has come and gone now. The kids are on their own, not that it would be possible to recognize them as his own. Suspenders would help. The old man has even passed through the return to single life, abbreviated by the second marriage and the resounding sock on the snout dealt him by wife number two, who was from another planet. Now he’s just hanging out on the dating sites, hoping that somewhere there is still a sane individual wearing a skirt who can understand him.
He posts a profile on Hook Me Up dot com. In the section designed to describe himself he talks about being a man with his own agenda, a man who knows where he’s going, a man of self-determination and inner strength. He thinks this is the sort of fellow a woman will respect, admire and, perhaps, grow to love. He gets back unsolicited hate mail, branding him as a control freak. In the section asking about his sexual propensities he tries to make it clear he is not a deviate. Using his own pedestrian parlance, he explains that he is accustomed to mounting the female. He considers this a selling point. He gets back e-mail from women who presume him to be a “master”. They are hoping to be chained and gagged, whipped with pretend instruments of torture and humiliated by a “dom” to whom they will play “sub” in titillating adventures called “role playing.” What he once viewed as commonplace male deportment is now characterized as the perverse, sadistic machinations of a savage reprobate.
He tries again. This time he makes it clear he respects women. A good woman belongs on a pedestal, he writes. Now he gets mail that opens with the line, Hi, Pantyboy and goes on to describe the wardrobe of frilly things he will wear when he becomes her love monkey.
Finally, a resonating chord is struck, and he meets a potential love interest for dinner. Less combative conflict has been waged in war zones. By the end of the salad it’s clear this is a contest to determine who is smartest, most accomplished, more erudite and less afflicted by damaging past relationships. By the end of the entrée he understands it will be his obligation to pay for every indiscretion committed by every man to whom she has been married. He wonders how these men managed to get away with the ignominious sin of being born male, but he envies them for managing to get away. When the check comes, she pulls out her wallet, but is quick to put it away if he just insists on being a gentleman. Paying the check is how the term “gentleman” is defined now. It was, after all, the reason he responded to her profile on Hook Me Up dot com -- the part where she described her ambition as a search for a man who knows how to treat a lady like a lady.
Now the lady would like to go home and be laid. “What’s that,” she says. “You have no Viagra? It would be bad for your heart?”
He tries to explain the comical irony that the only people who need Viagra are those most likely to suffer from a heart condition, but she’s not in a humorous mood. Next week, he’ll see her new profile on Hook Me Up dot com. She’s looking for a man between the ages of 12 and 20 who knows how to treat a lady like a lady.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
The first draft of this illuminating look at old men contained a chapter on how a woman can locate a suitable old man for romance. Upon reading it, a female friend asked a question that resulted in its deletion. She said, "Who would care?"
Clearly, we failed miserably to establish adequate value for old men in the chapters, so let's outline the old man's dating regimen and begin with the caveat that no one is qualified to be a "significant other" to an old man without, first, meeting certain requirements herself. High on the list is failing vision. She must survey the sagging countenance of the old man through squinted eyes. Secondarily, the ability to apply substantial imagination to what she sees through the squint is also an important property on the resume of any woman hoping to snare the old man.
This information should be of benefit in the composition of a woman's profile for posting on the dating sites, and the dating sites are highly recommended for anyone hunting the old man as he is not likely to be seen roaming at large on the dating landscape.
On random occasions, he may have felt the youth and vitality he is missing could be recaptured by some time spent in a nightclub. He may have done his best to arrange what is left of his hair properly, given himself a clean shave and purchased some trendy clothes to make an appearance in some place where people collect to dance and enjoy music. He may have poured hot wax in both ears so that what passes for music in these places does not soil his brain.
At first, he may be discouraged at the front door by the smirk on the face of the 12-year old bouncer during the obligatory ID check. But once inside, several unsavory things relegate the indignation at the door to the status of minor annoyance.
As he makes his initial reconnoiter of the room he notices himself drawing interest he had not anticipated. He believes the female glances he is enjoying spring from an interest in older men. He has heard about this propensity among young ladies, this desire for the companionship of older gentlemen, but it has not yet occurred to him such women do not go hunting older men in places where people dance and listen to music. Interested women are merely wondering why he has come to this place and what he expects to do there.
The old man also draws interest from a few of the younger men at the nightclub. He presumes they envy his maturity and calculated luster. These men who give him a second glance can be separated into various categories -- some believe he is a policeman, some suspect he owns the place, some are gay and looking for a new daddy and the rest are considering rolling him in the parking lot.
Following a once-around of the room, the old man locates a place at the bar where he can order a drink. He asks for a martini, but changes his order when asked by the bartender what a martini is. "I'll have a fuzzy navel," he says. Before he leaves the stool he samples several other offerings and finds they all have one thing in common -- all are without any significant alcoholic content. The owner of the establishment considers the low alcoholic content a public service. The old man believes it is criminal misrepresentation, but will avoid saying as much.
As he occupies his perch at the bar, the old man analyzes the tattooed, pierced female members of the throng. Quickly he realizes this examination requires greater scrutiny than it once did, because a closer look reveals a high percentage of them are not females at all. Still, he does not believe it would be entirely accurate to describe them as men either.
Soon enough, the old man settles on a young woman who has glanced at him twice, slides off his stool and tosses a few bills on the bar he believes will more than cover the cost of the drinks. The bartender corrects him, explaining he owes at least twice as much as was tossed upon the bar. "Uh...I thought that was a twenty," he explains, augmenting the fortune he has already offered. He departs the bar thinking it would be nice to have a little buzz in return for the six drinks he has purchased, but he is in no mood to object as his frying pan is hot and there are larger fish to fry.
He smiles at her, and she says, "Hi."
"I wish I were," he remarks, but the humorous reference to the absence of alcohol in the drinks is lost on her.
He tells her he likes her tattoo.
"Which one?" she asks.
He points to the design on her neck and says, "The angry little squirrel."
"That's a komodo dragon," she tells him. "They come from Japan."
"Aha," he says. "Actually, the komodo dragon is indigenous to the islands of Indonesia. They can grow to ten feet long and weigh as much as 250 pounds. The komodo is the largest lizard in the world."
She stares at him blankly. "It's not a lizard," she says.
"Well...uh...what is it then?"
"It's a dragon," she says. "Duh."
She accepts his offer to buy her a drink, and he resists the temptation to order Kool Aid, thinking she might find it a reference to her age rather than a commentary on the lack of alcoholic content in what passes for cocktails at the club.
He asks if she comes to the disco often, and she asks what a disco is. Desperately looking for some conversational correspondence, he tries politics, mentioning the new Obama administration and asking if the election went her way. "I guess," she tells him. "I didn't vote this time."
"Are you happy to see George Bush go?"
"Who’s George Bush?" she asks.
The old man can't resist a chuckle. "Without George Bush," he says, "911 would have been just the beginning."
"Well, I think we need all the emergency numbers we can get?" she tells him.
Despite their lack of common ground, she almost snuggles against him as they speak, and the old man's confidence that she finds him attractive is encouraged. When he suggests they find a quieter place to talk she agrees and even suggests her place. Soon they are on the sidewalk outside, and the din of "the disco" has died.
As he digs the wax out of his ears with a fingernail, he asks where her place is located.
"First the money," she says. And then, as if reading from a Christmas shopping list, she runs down the various acts she is willing to perform and the price per each.
Crestfallen and deflated, he explains that he does not pay people for sex, and to this she says, "Well, how the fuck do you expect to get it?"
This is why capturing the old man depends upon a woman's willingness to list her profile on a senior dating site. The only other realistic option can be found in the phone book under "VFW." We are recommending the Internet.
The first draft of this illuminating look at old men contained a chapter on how a woman can locate a suitable old man for romance. Upon reading it, a female friend asked a question that resulted in its deletion. She said, "Who would care?"
Clearly, we failed miserably to establish adequate value for old men in the chapters, so let's outline the old man's dating regimen and begin with the caveat that no one is qualified to be a "significant other" to an old man without, first, meeting certain requirements herself. High on the list is failing vision. She must survey the sagging countenance of the old man through squinted eyes. Secondarily, the ability to apply substantial imagination to what she sees through the squint is also an important property on the resume of any woman hoping to snare the old man.
This information should be of benefit in the composition of a woman's profile for posting on the dating sites, and the dating sites are highly recommended for anyone hunting the old man as he is not likely to be seen roaming at large on the dating landscape.
On random occasions, he may have felt the youth and vitality he is missing could be recaptured by some time spent in a nightclub. He may have done his best to arrange what is left of his hair properly, given himself a clean shave and purchased some trendy clothes to make an appearance in some place where people collect to dance and enjoy music. He may have poured hot wax in both ears so that what passes for music in these places does not soil his brain.
At first, he may be discouraged at the front door by the smirk on the face of the 12-year old bouncer during the obligatory ID check. But once inside, several unsavory things relegate the indignation at the door to the status of minor annoyance.
As he makes his initial reconnoiter of the room he notices himself drawing interest he had not anticipated. He believes the female glances he is enjoying spring from an interest in older men. He has heard about this propensity among young ladies, this desire for the companionship of older gentlemen, but it has not yet occurred to him such women do not go hunting older men in places where people dance and listen to music. Interested women are merely wondering why he has come to this place and what he expects to do there.
The old man also draws interest from a few of the younger men at the nightclub. He presumes they envy his maturity and calculated luster. These men who give him a second glance can be separated into various categories -- some believe he is a policeman, some suspect he owns the place, some are gay and looking for a new daddy and the rest are considering rolling him in the parking lot.
Following a once-around of the room, the old man locates a place at the bar where he can order a drink. He asks for a martini, but changes his order when asked by the bartender what a martini is. "I'll have a fuzzy navel," he says. Before he leaves the stool he samples several other offerings and finds they all have one thing in common -- all are without any significant alcoholic content. The owner of the establishment considers the low alcoholic content a public service. The old man believes it is criminal misrepresentation, but will avoid saying as much.
As he occupies his perch at the bar, the old man analyzes the tattooed, pierced female members of the throng. Quickly he realizes this examination requires greater scrutiny than it once did, because a closer look reveals a high percentage of them are not females at all. Still, he does not believe it would be entirely accurate to describe them as men either.
Soon enough, the old man settles on a young woman who has glanced at him twice, slides off his stool and tosses a few bills on the bar he believes will more than cover the cost of the drinks. The bartender corrects him, explaining he owes at least twice as much as was tossed upon the bar. "Uh...I thought that was a twenty," he explains, augmenting the fortune he has already offered. He departs the bar thinking it would be nice to have a little buzz in return for the six drinks he has purchased, but he is in no mood to object as his frying pan is hot and there are larger fish to fry.
He smiles at her, and she says, "Hi."
"I wish I were," he remarks, but the humorous reference to the absence of alcohol in the drinks is lost on her.
He tells her he likes her tattoo.
"Which one?" she asks.
He points to the design on her neck and says, "The angry little squirrel."
"That's a komodo dragon," she tells him. "They come from Japan."
"Aha," he says. "Actually, the komodo dragon is indigenous to the islands of Indonesia. They can grow to ten feet long and weigh as much as 250 pounds. The komodo is the largest lizard in the world."
She stares at him blankly. "It's not a lizard," she says.
"Well...uh...what is it then?"
"It's a dragon," she says. "Duh."
She accepts his offer to buy her a drink, and he resists the temptation to order Kool Aid, thinking she might find it a reference to her age rather than a commentary on the lack of alcoholic content in what passes for cocktails at the club.
He asks if she comes to the disco often, and she asks what a disco is. Desperately looking for some conversational correspondence, he tries politics, mentioning the new Obama administration and asking if the election went her way. "I guess," she tells him. "I didn't vote this time."
"Are you happy to see George Bush go?"
"Who’s George Bush?" she asks.
The old man can't resist a chuckle. "Without George Bush," he says, "911 would have been just the beginning."
"Well, I think we need all the emergency numbers we can get?" she tells him.
Despite their lack of common ground, she almost snuggles against him as they speak, and the old man's confidence that she finds him attractive is encouraged. When he suggests they find a quieter place to talk she agrees and even suggests her place. Soon they are on the sidewalk outside, and the din of "the disco" has died.
As he digs the wax out of his ears with a fingernail, he asks where her place is located.
"First the money," she says. And then, as if reading from a Christmas shopping list, she runs down the various acts she is willing to perform and the price per each.
Crestfallen and deflated, he explains that he does not pay people for sex, and to this she says, "Well, how the fuck do you expect to get it?"
This is why capturing the old man depends upon a woman's willingness to list her profile on a senior dating site. The only other realistic option can be found in the phone book under "VFW." We are recommending the Internet.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
One of the greatest dangers old men face is a return to the workplace after a period of retirement. Of course, that pre-supposes success the first time around and that means an old man on the come-back trail is a little smarter than the average bear. That’s where the rub develops.
All the children on the job share a common look in their eyes when they see the old man coming. It’s a look no one but the old man recognizes, so they don’t realize it‘s written all over their face. The look screams “I know you know something I don’t know, but I don’t know what it is.” That look is followed by one which screams even louder, “What ever you do, don’t give me advice.” That’s another way of saying, “You may know something I don’t know, but I DON’T want to know what it is.”
The kids also share a common belief that the reason hiring old people is a bad idea is that all people over 50 have Alzheimer’s Disease and cannot find the pencil sharpener when it’s time to process data. They believe Alzheimer’s disease is the reason old people require more toilet paper than is necessary and are continually clogging up the toilets -- they cannot find their own assholes. The reason they share that belief is that each of them does his part to pass it around, to insure they all agree. This will mean anything coming out of the old man’s mouth they don’t already know must be the result of Alzheimer’s disease, rather than stuff he found out before they were born.
Once, I tried to explain to my son why he should listen to my advice and guidance. I thought the facts spoke for me, but he forced me to recite them anyway by behavior that suggested he knew as much as I did.
I said, “Look, son...on the day you were born I finished up a 27-year stretch of life that I would now like to describe for you. On each and every day of those 27-years I was conscious (except for the day after I married your mother, on which I was drunk and remember nothing.) On each of those 9,612 days I learned something new. I have been thinking over this advice I am giving you 27-years longer than you have been thinking about it. How dumb do you think I would have to be in order to know less about the issue than you do?”
“Pretty damn dumb,” he said. “So what’s your point?”
Old men remember when the advice of elders was a valuable commodity and obtaining the guidance of a mentor was key to noteworthy achievement. But when you’re on the come-back trail and the kids see you coming, all they know is that you know something they DON’T know, they DON’T KNOW what it is and would rather not find out. So whatever you do, whatever you say, don’t give them any advice. Keep your mouth shut and pretend you’re as stupid as they are or they will sabotage your come-back by clogging up the toilets.
It is true that kids today are living in a different world than the one in which the old man grew up. The children on the job have very good reasons to be suspect of any advice he gives them. After all, the future waits for no one, things are changing at the speed of sound and “new” is still the most powerful word in the advertising dictionary.
Prudent, reasonable old men remember stories their dads told them during those bonding moments they were balanced on the paternal knee, hanging on every word and learning they would, at some point, be required to walk 9-miles to school... with no shoes... in the driving snow... after milking the chickens. They understand the high-tech workplace where information moves from nation to nation as quickly as it moves from mouth to mouth contains challenges and demands only a nimble brain can resolve. And the old men who have not completely surrendered to the savagery of Alzheimer’s are not so jaded they expect to find the sort of primitive solutions their fathers warned them about during the bonding moments to have an application in the modern world populated by their junior colleagues on the job. After all, the old man reasons, if kids today were so primitive ancient wisdom could solve their problems, one might expect to see them walking about with their skin decorated by cryptic designs etched in indelible ink like the old man‘s ancestors. One might expect them to perforate their bodies and insert imbedded jewelry into the orifices they create. Why...to the old man they would look a bit like multi-cultural indigenous peoples dancing around a campfire.
It is essential to any old man attempting to make a professional come-back that one simple syllable be mastered. It should be used to answer any question posed by bosses half his age. All together now...repeat after me...”Duuuh.”
One of the greatest dangers old men face is a return to the workplace after a period of retirement. Of course, that pre-supposes success the first time around and that means an old man on the come-back trail is a little smarter than the average bear. That’s where the rub develops.
All the children on the job share a common look in their eyes when they see the old man coming. It’s a look no one but the old man recognizes, so they don’t realize it‘s written all over their face. The look screams “I know you know something I don’t know, but I don’t know what it is.” That look is followed by one which screams even louder, “What ever you do, don’t give me advice.” That’s another way of saying, “You may know something I don’t know, but I DON’T want to know what it is.”
The kids also share a common belief that the reason hiring old people is a bad idea is that all people over 50 have Alzheimer’s Disease and cannot find the pencil sharpener when it’s time to process data. They believe Alzheimer’s disease is the reason old people require more toilet paper than is necessary and are continually clogging up the toilets -- they cannot find their own assholes. The reason they share that belief is that each of them does his part to pass it around, to insure they all agree. This will mean anything coming out of the old man’s mouth they don’t already know must be the result of Alzheimer’s disease, rather than stuff he found out before they were born.
Once, I tried to explain to my son why he should listen to my advice and guidance. I thought the facts spoke for me, but he forced me to recite them anyway by behavior that suggested he knew as much as I did.
I said, “Look, son...on the day you were born I finished up a 27-year stretch of life that I would now like to describe for you. On each and every day of those 27-years I was conscious (except for the day after I married your mother, on which I was drunk and remember nothing.) On each of those 9,612 days I learned something new. I have been thinking over this advice I am giving you 27-years longer than you have been thinking about it. How dumb do you think I would have to be in order to know less about the issue than you do?”
“Pretty damn dumb,” he said. “So what’s your point?”
Old men remember when the advice of elders was a valuable commodity and obtaining the guidance of a mentor was key to noteworthy achievement. But when you’re on the come-back trail and the kids see you coming, all they know is that you know something they DON’T know, they DON’T KNOW what it is and would rather not find out. So whatever you do, whatever you say, don’t give them any advice. Keep your mouth shut and pretend you’re as stupid as they are or they will sabotage your come-back by clogging up the toilets.
It is true that kids today are living in a different world than the one in which the old man grew up. The children on the job have very good reasons to be suspect of any advice he gives them. After all, the future waits for no one, things are changing at the speed of sound and “new” is still the most powerful word in the advertising dictionary.
Prudent, reasonable old men remember stories their dads told them during those bonding moments they were balanced on the paternal knee, hanging on every word and learning they would, at some point, be required to walk 9-miles to school... with no shoes... in the driving snow... after milking the chickens. They understand the high-tech workplace where information moves from nation to nation as quickly as it moves from mouth to mouth contains challenges and demands only a nimble brain can resolve. And the old men who have not completely surrendered to the savagery of Alzheimer’s are not so jaded they expect to find the sort of primitive solutions their fathers warned them about during the bonding moments to have an application in the modern world populated by their junior colleagues on the job. After all, the old man reasons, if kids today were so primitive ancient wisdom could solve their problems, one might expect to see them walking about with their skin decorated by cryptic designs etched in indelible ink like the old man‘s ancestors. One might expect them to perforate their bodies and insert imbedded jewelry into the orifices they create. Why...to the old man they would look a bit like multi-cultural indigenous peoples dancing around a campfire.
It is essential to any old man attempting to make a professional come-back that one simple syllable be mastered. It should be used to answer any question posed by bosses half his age. All together now...repeat after me...”Duuuh.”
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Being an old man in the beginning of the 21st Century is a tough job. It requires one to ignore certain observations that only an old man has lived long enough to have made. Like observations about America’s signature value -- freedom. Oops. See how nonsense can slip from the lips of an old man?
The problem is that “freedom” was only recently replaced as America’s signature value, and the old men have not yet grown sufficiently comfortable with its second-tier status and its new definition. Sometimes, we lose our heads and fall into the mire of long-ago notions. Sometimes, we forget freedom is no longer the first consideration when we go about our daily jobs in the most powerful nation in the history of humanity.
It takes an old man to remember we were on the verge of losing liberty as our signature value before the second world war began. Old men remember America’s romance with Communism before we discovered an undeniable truth about it -- it is the antithesis of all we stand for as a nation.
Back in those days we loved the Russians. We even loved the Americans masquerading as Russians in the World Wrestling Federation. We were intrigued by their lovely model for government, a society in which people were rewarded for their labors on the basis of need rather than achievement. Russians did not have to exhaust themselves in the pursuit of excellence to make a living. All they had to do was be a citizen and have need. In fact, the architect of Communism, Karl Marx, wrote it just that way in his Communist Manifesto. He wrote: From each according to his ability to each according to his need. We liked that idea well enough to consider the Russians allies through WWII. Together, we wiped out Hitler and his elitist Nazi regime.
Ironically, we were in no small part rescued from our embrace of Communism by a little Russian refuge named Ayn Rand who came to America on a mission to turn us back to our roots as a country where hard work resulted in great wealth. Through her literary contributions we discovered that the right of self-determination lay at the heart of the long struggle to build our great society. And many of us living in that time saw clearly the difference between an America whose defining value was freedom and a country like Russia whose defining value was equality. In those days there was a clear distinction between the right to equal treatment under the law and the WISH for equal consideration in the private sector. In those days, the “private” sector was just that -- a place where a citizen could invest money, build a business and enjoy the freedom to hire whom he wished for whatever reasons he wished, to promote people according to his own agenda, to serve customers according to his own bigotry, to speak to his employees as he wished, to fire them as it moved him and to, essentially, build his private empire according to his own opinions without interference from the government. No one dared suggest that the employees had a “right” to equality that should trump the owner’s right to “freedom.”
In the long view that can only be taken by old men it’s clear that argument has been settled now, despite Ms. Rand‘s valiant effort to preserve the essential American ethic. Indeed, each of the freedoms listed above as well as a lengthy roster of others not mentioned have fallen in the name of two struggles -- the struggle for racial equality and the struggle for gender equality. And now an old man can only sit wagging his head on the sidewalk of life, discarded as a racist and a misogynist if he opens his mouth to complain.
There is a certain pain coursing through the arthritic limbs of old men whose long view includes this metamorphosis of values. If the elevation of “equality” to national signature value had resulted in a better educated society with a brighter future, old men would be well advised to keep their mouths shut. But by every standard worthy of use as a measure America is rushing head-long into the abysmal destiny that has taken down all the great empires in history. And on Top Five list after Top Five list used to measure successful nations America has fallen from number one to somewhere outside the top ten. That decline has accompanied the decline of freedom as the nation’s signature value, but the parallel is only visible to old men who remember when.
Today, in northern ghettos and rural communities throughout the south young African American children are being taught by their mommies how to fill out government requests for assistance as a form of career guidance. Sadly, requesting government entitlements has become a legitimate form of earning a livelihood. Sadder still, the activity of government assistance is a method of confiscating wealth earned by ability for return to the less accomplished on the basis of need. Karl Marx would be smiling broadly. But good luck finding a person in America under the age of 30 who ever heard of him.
There is one great consolation in being an old man -- the absence of wasted space in your mailbox. It’s all filled up by discount offers from AARP -- the organization the old man joined so that his voice would be heard.
Being an old man in the beginning of the 21st Century is a tough job. It requires one to ignore certain observations that only an old man has lived long enough to have made. Like observations about America’s signature value -- freedom. Oops. See how nonsense can slip from the lips of an old man?
The problem is that “freedom” was only recently replaced as America’s signature value, and the old men have not yet grown sufficiently comfortable with its second-tier status and its new definition. Sometimes, we lose our heads and fall into the mire of long-ago notions. Sometimes, we forget freedom is no longer the first consideration when we go about our daily jobs in the most powerful nation in the history of humanity.
It takes an old man to remember we were on the verge of losing liberty as our signature value before the second world war began. Old men remember America’s romance with Communism before we discovered an undeniable truth about it -- it is the antithesis of all we stand for as a nation.
Back in those days we loved the Russians. We even loved the Americans masquerading as Russians in the World Wrestling Federation. We were intrigued by their lovely model for government, a society in which people were rewarded for their labors on the basis of need rather than achievement. Russians did not have to exhaust themselves in the pursuit of excellence to make a living. All they had to do was be a citizen and have need. In fact, the architect of Communism, Karl Marx, wrote it just that way in his Communist Manifesto. He wrote: From each according to his ability to each according to his need. We liked that idea well enough to consider the Russians allies through WWII. Together, we wiped out Hitler and his elitist Nazi regime.
Ironically, we were in no small part rescued from our embrace of Communism by a little Russian refuge named Ayn Rand who came to America on a mission to turn us back to our roots as a country where hard work resulted in great wealth. Through her literary contributions we discovered that the right of self-determination lay at the heart of the long struggle to build our great society. And many of us living in that time saw clearly the difference between an America whose defining value was freedom and a country like Russia whose defining value was equality. In those days there was a clear distinction between the right to equal treatment under the law and the WISH for equal consideration in the private sector. In those days, the “private” sector was just that -- a place where a citizen could invest money, build a business and enjoy the freedom to hire whom he wished for whatever reasons he wished, to promote people according to his own agenda, to serve customers according to his own bigotry, to speak to his employees as he wished, to fire them as it moved him and to, essentially, build his private empire according to his own opinions without interference from the government. No one dared suggest that the employees had a “right” to equality that should trump the owner’s right to “freedom.”
In the long view that can only be taken by old men it’s clear that argument has been settled now, despite Ms. Rand‘s valiant effort to preserve the essential American ethic. Indeed, each of the freedoms listed above as well as a lengthy roster of others not mentioned have fallen in the name of two struggles -- the struggle for racial equality and the struggle for gender equality. And now an old man can only sit wagging his head on the sidewalk of life, discarded as a racist and a misogynist if he opens his mouth to complain.
There is a certain pain coursing through the arthritic limbs of old men whose long view includes this metamorphosis of values. If the elevation of “equality” to national signature value had resulted in a better educated society with a brighter future, old men would be well advised to keep their mouths shut. But by every standard worthy of use as a measure America is rushing head-long into the abysmal destiny that has taken down all the great empires in history. And on Top Five list after Top Five list used to measure successful nations America has fallen from number one to somewhere outside the top ten. That decline has accompanied the decline of freedom as the nation’s signature value, but the parallel is only visible to old men who remember when.
Today, in northern ghettos and rural communities throughout the south young African American children are being taught by their mommies how to fill out government requests for assistance as a form of career guidance. Sadly, requesting government entitlements has become a legitimate form of earning a livelihood. Sadder still, the activity of government assistance is a method of confiscating wealth earned by ability for return to the less accomplished on the basis of need. Karl Marx would be smiling broadly. But good luck finding a person in America under the age of 30 who ever heard of him.
There is one great consolation in being an old man -- the absence of wasted space in your mailbox. It’s all filled up by discount offers from AARP -- the organization the old man joined so that his voice would be heard.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Among my favorite delights as a school boy was the county fair. I would save my Coke bottles for months, redeeming the deposit for 2-cents per and have on hand, perhaps, $20 in order that I might invite a girl to the fair with me.
It was at the county fair I noticed that, from astride a horse on the merry-go-round, it looks as if the world is spinning around, while from the ground it looks as if the ride is spinning around.
Much later, I became a morning radio host and noticed that I sometimes felt as if I were on the back of a merry-go-round pony, watching the world spin around. Before that, it seemed that the Democratic Party was interested in the affairs of the little guy while the Republicans were interested in the profit to big business. As the world spun around and time went by, my perceptions matured. It began to seem as if the Republicans were interested in a Conservative interpretation of the Constitution, preserving the ethic of industry and self-reliance, while the Democrats were more interested in confiscating earned wealth for redistribution to those with greater need -- a patent recipe for Communism. I thought I had stepped off the merry-go-round when my point of view changed, but later I realized I had merely switched ponies.
Any old man is more insightful than any young radio host. In terms of clarity there is no substitute for time on the planet, and that is so because to reach the truth about democracy a man must think it over for about fifty years.
It was during the old man's college days that he was made to read "Walden Pond," and introduced to the notion that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. The truth of the statement is so evident it's most remarkable characteristic is that no one ever mentioned it before Thoreau. It is not, however, the only great, enduring truth no one ever mentions about the mass of men. It's equally damning, but just as obvious, that the mass of men are profoundly lazy. They have no significant ambition above grazing in the pasture, much as a sheep might, for the duration of their lives. The mass of men may dream about great achievement and envy those who reach it, but will grab a fishing pole rather than a pick ax wherever there is bait to be had.
It is this propensity for sloth among citizens of all nations that defines global politics and assists the old man in his understanding of democracy and the free enterprise system. The fundamental construction of the human unit varies little from continent to continent. A man may develop certain superficial differences owing to the circumstance of his origin. For instance, the color of his skin may be effected over generations because of the place of origin from which his ancestors sprang and its proximity to the sun. But Africa or the ice caps, New York or The Netherlands, his devotion to industry will be determined by something much deeper than climate. And in all nations the lazy will vastly outnumber the industrious.
Pigs may vary in appearance from continent to continent, but at the county fair in younger days the old man noticed they all come running when the slop is poured no matter what their pecking order in the hierarchy of pigs. In fact, a human can hardly tell who’s in charge and who’s just hanging out.
Still, a pig grown up in the circus will behave differently than the typical farm porker. This is because of the milieu into which he is thrown as a young swine and not because of any fundamental difference pig to pig. Once the circus trainer demonstrates to a young pig in training that exquisite treats are possible for specific behavior, a small percentage of pigs in training will exhibit behavior designed to earn the treat. Others will not. In the final hour, a coral of pigs at the circus will produce distinguished pigs and, over time, result in a much different appearance when the lights go up than a coral from the farm would, despite the presence of potential performers in both corals.
The pigs on the farm have no incentive to perform. They are entirely equal to each other and while some may have their way in the barnyard, they will all bring the same price per pound at the market, regardless of their individual differences in life. It is the milieu into which the young porker is thrown at birth that inspires a certain percentage of swine to step forward and perform stunning acts of amusement. Without the belief that great rewards come with outstanding achievement even the most promising of porkers never get beyond jockeying for position at the trough.
The observations made at the county fair in the buds of an old man's youth assist him greatly in understanding how it happened that the United States of America came to be the greatest, most formidable and wealthiest society in the recorded history of humanity. While the text books he read in school suggested the abundance of natural resources were most responsible for the nation's singular status, fifty years of thinking over what he saw at the county fair conspire to produce, at last, the realization that this business about natural resources is so much slop in the trough. Now, it's clear the tantalizing lure of tasty treats produced by a system that rewards effort and achievement makes the real difference between the farm pigs and the circus pigs.
Following this observation, the prudent old man recognizes now is the time to keep his mouth shut about what he has learned. He cannot mention it without making the suggestion that the standard of imposed equality enjoyed by farm pigs produces a less able society than the "some pigs are better than other pigs" system used at the circus. It is dangerous to mention this because, on the farm or at the fair, the number of pigs who have the capacity to be stars in the circus is vastly smaller than the number of pigs who will benefit by imposed equality. The fact the old man uncovers after fifty years of thinking it over is that it is this small minority of gifted swine who distinguish the circus coral from the farm coral and without incentive to perform they are merely suffocated in a sea of mediocrity. It is a very short leap from that to the observation that once all the swine are voting at the polls, equality will trump freedom every time.
If it is true, the old man asks, that when put to a vote the overwhelming number of men will opt for a system founded on the principles of equality rather than freedom to perform, then how did the United States of America ever survive long enough as an incentive driven society to rise to the stature of world's greatest nation? And somewhere around the age of 60 the dust of muddy thinking clears and the old man realizes the founders of the USA never imagined a time when everyone would vote.
It was Thomas Jefferson's statement in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal" that drives the modern model for American society. But the word "men" relies upon a liberal interpretation before it can be applied to females and property such as slaves. By keeping the right to vote restricted to the pigs interested in the freedom to be superior the US grew to super nation status. Once the right to vote was opened to all pigs the weight of those pigs more interested in equality began to alter the complexion of the society until now it is only a moment removed from a time when there is no circus pig to be seen for there are no treats to be had for all pigs are equal to all other pigs regardless of their performance.
And now the orange juice dribble cloaking the inside of my glass has become hardened and will require heavy-duty scrubbing. I take my heart medicine and turn on the TV. While the United States of America continues to sink into the same ocean of dysfunction that brought about the demise of the USSR and while the reason for it's decline is now clear in my mind, the news program I rely upon for the answer I have just developed alone begs me, instead, to focus on the missing woman in Mexico. And I wonder how much longer it will be before there is no one to pour slop into the communal trough.
Among my favorite delights as a school boy was the county fair. I would save my Coke bottles for months, redeeming the deposit for 2-cents per and have on hand, perhaps, $20 in order that I might invite a girl to the fair with me.
It was at the county fair I noticed that, from astride a horse on the merry-go-round, it looks as if the world is spinning around, while from the ground it looks as if the ride is spinning around.
Much later, I became a morning radio host and noticed that I sometimes felt as if I were on the back of a merry-go-round pony, watching the world spin around. Before that, it seemed that the Democratic Party was interested in the affairs of the little guy while the Republicans were interested in the profit to big business. As the world spun around and time went by, my perceptions matured. It began to seem as if the Republicans were interested in a Conservative interpretation of the Constitution, preserving the ethic of industry and self-reliance, while the Democrats were more interested in confiscating earned wealth for redistribution to those with greater need -- a patent recipe for Communism. I thought I had stepped off the merry-go-round when my point of view changed, but later I realized I had merely switched ponies.
Any old man is more insightful than any young radio host. In terms of clarity there is no substitute for time on the planet, and that is so because to reach the truth about democracy a man must think it over for about fifty years.
It was during the old man's college days that he was made to read "Walden Pond," and introduced to the notion that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. The truth of the statement is so evident it's most remarkable characteristic is that no one ever mentioned it before Thoreau. It is not, however, the only great, enduring truth no one ever mentions about the mass of men. It's equally damning, but just as obvious, that the mass of men are profoundly lazy. They have no significant ambition above grazing in the pasture, much as a sheep might, for the duration of their lives. The mass of men may dream about great achievement and envy those who reach it, but will grab a fishing pole rather than a pick ax wherever there is bait to be had.
It is this propensity for sloth among citizens of all nations that defines global politics and assists the old man in his understanding of democracy and the free enterprise system. The fundamental construction of the human unit varies little from continent to continent. A man may develop certain superficial differences owing to the circumstance of his origin. For instance, the color of his skin may be effected over generations because of the place of origin from which his ancestors sprang and its proximity to the sun. But Africa or the ice caps, New York or The Netherlands, his devotion to industry will be determined by something much deeper than climate. And in all nations the lazy will vastly outnumber the industrious.
Pigs may vary in appearance from continent to continent, but at the county fair in younger days the old man noticed they all come running when the slop is poured no matter what their pecking order in the hierarchy of pigs. In fact, a human can hardly tell who’s in charge and who’s just hanging out.
Still, a pig grown up in the circus will behave differently than the typical farm porker. This is because of the milieu into which he is thrown as a young swine and not because of any fundamental difference pig to pig. Once the circus trainer demonstrates to a young pig in training that exquisite treats are possible for specific behavior, a small percentage of pigs in training will exhibit behavior designed to earn the treat. Others will not. In the final hour, a coral of pigs at the circus will produce distinguished pigs and, over time, result in a much different appearance when the lights go up than a coral from the farm would, despite the presence of potential performers in both corals.
The pigs on the farm have no incentive to perform. They are entirely equal to each other and while some may have their way in the barnyard, they will all bring the same price per pound at the market, regardless of their individual differences in life. It is the milieu into which the young porker is thrown at birth that inspires a certain percentage of swine to step forward and perform stunning acts of amusement. Without the belief that great rewards come with outstanding achievement even the most promising of porkers never get beyond jockeying for position at the trough.
The observations made at the county fair in the buds of an old man's youth assist him greatly in understanding how it happened that the United States of America came to be the greatest, most formidable and wealthiest society in the recorded history of humanity. While the text books he read in school suggested the abundance of natural resources were most responsible for the nation's singular status, fifty years of thinking over what he saw at the county fair conspire to produce, at last, the realization that this business about natural resources is so much slop in the trough. Now, it's clear the tantalizing lure of tasty treats produced by a system that rewards effort and achievement makes the real difference between the farm pigs and the circus pigs.
Following this observation, the prudent old man recognizes now is the time to keep his mouth shut about what he has learned. He cannot mention it without making the suggestion that the standard of imposed equality enjoyed by farm pigs produces a less able society than the "some pigs are better than other pigs" system used at the circus. It is dangerous to mention this because, on the farm or at the fair, the number of pigs who have the capacity to be stars in the circus is vastly smaller than the number of pigs who will benefit by imposed equality. The fact the old man uncovers after fifty years of thinking it over is that it is this small minority of gifted swine who distinguish the circus coral from the farm coral and without incentive to perform they are merely suffocated in a sea of mediocrity. It is a very short leap from that to the observation that once all the swine are voting at the polls, equality will trump freedom every time.
If it is true, the old man asks, that when put to a vote the overwhelming number of men will opt for a system founded on the principles of equality rather than freedom to perform, then how did the United States of America ever survive long enough as an incentive driven society to rise to the stature of world's greatest nation? And somewhere around the age of 60 the dust of muddy thinking clears and the old man realizes the founders of the USA never imagined a time when everyone would vote.
It was Thomas Jefferson's statement in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal" that drives the modern model for American society. But the word "men" relies upon a liberal interpretation before it can be applied to females and property such as slaves. By keeping the right to vote restricted to the pigs interested in the freedom to be superior the US grew to super nation status. Once the right to vote was opened to all pigs the weight of those pigs more interested in equality began to alter the complexion of the society until now it is only a moment removed from a time when there is no circus pig to be seen for there are no treats to be had for all pigs are equal to all other pigs regardless of their performance.
And now the orange juice dribble cloaking the inside of my glass has become hardened and will require heavy-duty scrubbing. I take my heart medicine and turn on the TV. While the United States of America continues to sink into the same ocean of dysfunction that brought about the demise of the USSR and while the reason for it's decline is now clear in my mind, the news program I rely upon for the answer I have just developed alone begs me, instead, to focus on the missing woman in Mexico. And I wonder how much longer it will be before there is no one to pour slop into the communal trough.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
There are some small morsels of understanding that can only be reached by spending five or six decades breathing on the planet. Despite the popular notion that the only thing old men know is stuff that happened before the Internet was invented, the old man learned something new every day since entering the dubious realm of old men. To appreciate his keen capacity to continue learning, one must ignore the fact that he occasionally falls asleep at the wheel of his car.
There are some simple truths that, if widely acknowledged, would be damaging to the social order. To keep them secret, civilization and, in particular the nation we occupy, has over-complicated these truths with so much bluster and obfuscation that even the most erudite young man cannot reach them with his most profound application of intellect. And so...the period that follows middle-age is a sort of awakening akin to the one during which the old man learned to tie his shoes or knot his necktie. After focusing on what seemed like a complicated problem day after day for a protracted length of time, the simplicity of the exercise finally reaches him, and what was an enigma shrouded in confusion reveals itself to be, essentially, a puzzle a moron could solve, except for the aplomb with which civilization has kept it secret.
Once the brain has been seasoned by the passage of fifty or sixty years, once the testosterone has ceased to shape a man’s decision making process and the challenge to change the world has been replaced on his daily agenda by the challenge to digest Mexican food, these simple truths begin to emerge with astonishing clarity. Chief among the intellectual ambushes that fall away is the function served by the process of voting citizens into public office.
Personally, I have never cast a ballot in a solitary election even once in my life. I never fully understood my ambivalence to elections until I entered that shadowy time following middle-age when the solutions to mysteries that plagued me throughout my naïve youth became obvious. I always just told myself it felt like hypocrisy, but I could never explain that feeling to other people, so it remained for most of my life a private, dirty little secret. I didn’t vote.
Of course, I’ve heard all the criticism leveled at people who do not vote. Normally, it goes like this: “Your forefathers gave their lives to insure this freedom.” Suddenly, with absolutely no direct connection between the word “vote” and the word “freedom,” the process of casting the ballot became an expression of liberty in the minds of those making the criticism. Well, it wasn’t that suddenly. Actually, the connection developed long ago and has been reinforced through repetition across the two centuries of America’s preeminence on the world stage.
I was victimized by the charade until the age of 55. By then, I’d heard countless times about how America was on the way to this or that war zone to bring “freedom” to the people living in a nation run by a dictator where the right to vote did not exist. I’d seen dictators fall under American occupation over and again, believing without question that our penetration of that sovereign nation was motivated by our obligation to champion “liberty” across the world -- a noble calling. And all it took to “liberate” those unfortunate denizens of the dictatorship was to put in place a government run by people who were “voted” into office by the citizens. And so, the enduring myth that freedom and the right to vote were inseparable conscripted me for most of my life.
But there in the dark time following middle-age when the lights began to go on and the dogma and propaganda began to fall away I realized freedom was much simpler than the complicated construction of national governments. Freedom is about the absence of LAW...not the right to vote for the makers of law.
Law has only one function. It is to control the movement and behavior of human beings and, thereby, abbreviate their freedom. When we vote a congress into office that enacts a body of law which is suffocating in its mass we have not achieved freedom. We have achieved tyranny at the hands of elected officials.
It is difficult for an old man to avoid bittersweet, mortified laughter when presumably well-educated people show their faces on his television set and justify the invasion of a country as America’s responsibility to liberate that nation’s citizens by installing a government like the one which runs the USA -- the one which is mired in so much law the prison systems will not hold the criminals who violate it -- the one in which any policeman can arrest any citizen on a whim because an American cannot get from his home to his office without violating a litany of LAWS --.the one in which the courts are choked with cases involving infraction of laws which seek to regulate how a citizen may treat his own body -- the one in which each new bill that reaches the status of law is accompanied by a small herd of lesser laws piggy-backed upon it -- the one in which every day every politician’s primary ambition is to write additional law and the one in which the population has been so confused that it actually believes candidates for office who have written law should be returned to office on the basis of such achievements rather than made to explain the authorship of those laws as acts of incarcerating otherwise FREE citizens.
The smart old men learned this simple truth about law at an early age. They learned it in LAW SCHOOL. The secret held in trust by the lawyers at large in America is that freedom is not determined by the right to vote for the people who will further restrict the liberty of those they serve through the authorship of additional law, but by the mass of LAW which governs their movement and behavior. It is no coincidence that a preponderance of politicians is graduated from law schools. And it is no monumental intellectual achievement to decide upon graduation from law school that it is wiser to join them than to fight them.
This is the hypocrisy that orchestrated my decision to abstain from participation at the polls. Call it an act of moral indignation performed at an age too tender to interpret the simple truth that only an old man can see. And as I enter my sixth decade, I call it by something simpler still. I call it the truth about old men. Name it as the reason we seldom invite them to the party. Invoke it in the cloak of jaded points of view and reduce it to the predictable manifestation of the syndrome wise old men cannot avoid -- cynicism. For the real truth about old men is that they grow out of the mind-numbing control of certain widely maintained intellectual prisons designed to regulate civilized life the way children grow out of their belief in Santa Clause -- gradually, with jaws sagging in disbelief -- disbelief that they could ever have been so misled by so many people and such a mountain of nonsense so transparent they would require sixty years of mulling it over before they could reach clarity on the matter.
There are some small morsels of understanding that can only be reached by spending five or six decades breathing on the planet. Despite the popular notion that the only thing old men know is stuff that happened before the Internet was invented, the old man learned something new every day since entering the dubious realm of old men. To appreciate his keen capacity to continue learning, one must ignore the fact that he occasionally falls asleep at the wheel of his car.
There are some simple truths that, if widely acknowledged, would be damaging to the social order. To keep them secret, civilization and, in particular the nation we occupy, has over-complicated these truths with so much bluster and obfuscation that even the most erudite young man cannot reach them with his most profound application of intellect. And so...the period that follows middle-age is a sort of awakening akin to the one during which the old man learned to tie his shoes or knot his necktie. After focusing on what seemed like a complicated problem day after day for a protracted length of time, the simplicity of the exercise finally reaches him, and what was an enigma shrouded in confusion reveals itself to be, essentially, a puzzle a moron could solve, except for the aplomb with which civilization has kept it secret.
Once the brain has been seasoned by the passage of fifty or sixty years, once the testosterone has ceased to shape a man’s decision making process and the challenge to change the world has been replaced on his daily agenda by the challenge to digest Mexican food, these simple truths begin to emerge with astonishing clarity. Chief among the intellectual ambushes that fall away is the function served by the process of voting citizens into public office.
Personally, I have never cast a ballot in a solitary election even once in my life. I never fully understood my ambivalence to elections until I entered that shadowy time following middle-age when the solutions to mysteries that plagued me throughout my naïve youth became obvious. I always just told myself it felt like hypocrisy, but I could never explain that feeling to other people, so it remained for most of my life a private, dirty little secret. I didn’t vote.
Of course, I’ve heard all the criticism leveled at people who do not vote. Normally, it goes like this: “Your forefathers gave their lives to insure this freedom.” Suddenly, with absolutely no direct connection between the word “vote” and the word “freedom,” the process of casting the ballot became an expression of liberty in the minds of those making the criticism. Well, it wasn’t that suddenly. Actually, the connection developed long ago and has been reinforced through repetition across the two centuries of America’s preeminence on the world stage.
I was victimized by the charade until the age of 55. By then, I’d heard countless times about how America was on the way to this or that war zone to bring “freedom” to the people living in a nation run by a dictator where the right to vote did not exist. I’d seen dictators fall under American occupation over and again, believing without question that our penetration of that sovereign nation was motivated by our obligation to champion “liberty” across the world -- a noble calling. And all it took to “liberate” those unfortunate denizens of the dictatorship was to put in place a government run by people who were “voted” into office by the citizens. And so, the enduring myth that freedom and the right to vote were inseparable conscripted me for most of my life.
But there in the dark time following middle-age when the lights began to go on and the dogma and propaganda began to fall away I realized freedom was much simpler than the complicated construction of national governments. Freedom is about the absence of LAW...not the right to vote for the makers of law.
Law has only one function. It is to control the movement and behavior of human beings and, thereby, abbreviate their freedom. When we vote a congress into office that enacts a body of law which is suffocating in its mass we have not achieved freedom. We have achieved tyranny at the hands of elected officials.
It is difficult for an old man to avoid bittersweet, mortified laughter when presumably well-educated people show their faces on his television set and justify the invasion of a country as America’s responsibility to liberate that nation’s citizens by installing a government like the one which runs the USA -- the one which is mired in so much law the prison systems will not hold the criminals who violate it -- the one in which any policeman can arrest any citizen on a whim because an American cannot get from his home to his office without violating a litany of LAWS --.the one in which the courts are choked with cases involving infraction of laws which seek to regulate how a citizen may treat his own body -- the one in which each new bill that reaches the status of law is accompanied by a small herd of lesser laws piggy-backed upon it -- the one in which every day every politician’s primary ambition is to write additional law and the one in which the population has been so confused that it actually believes candidates for office who have written law should be returned to office on the basis of such achievements rather than made to explain the authorship of those laws as acts of incarcerating otherwise FREE citizens.
The smart old men learned this simple truth about law at an early age. They learned it in LAW SCHOOL. The secret held in trust by the lawyers at large in America is that freedom is not determined by the right to vote for the people who will further restrict the liberty of those they serve through the authorship of additional law, but by the mass of LAW which governs their movement and behavior. It is no coincidence that a preponderance of politicians is graduated from law schools. And it is no monumental intellectual achievement to decide upon graduation from law school that it is wiser to join them than to fight them.
This is the hypocrisy that orchestrated my decision to abstain from participation at the polls. Call it an act of moral indignation performed at an age too tender to interpret the simple truth that only an old man can see. And as I enter my sixth decade, I call it by something simpler still. I call it the truth about old men. Name it as the reason we seldom invite them to the party. Invoke it in the cloak of jaded points of view and reduce it to the predictable manifestation of the syndrome wise old men cannot avoid -- cynicism. For the real truth about old men is that they grow out of the mind-numbing control of certain widely maintained intellectual prisons designed to regulate civilized life the way children grow out of their belief in Santa Clause -- gradually, with jaws sagging in disbelief -- disbelief that they could ever have been so misled by so many people and such a mountain of nonsense so transparent they would require sixty years of mulling it over before they could reach clarity on the matter.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
The oatmeal residue in my bowl is beginning to curdle. I don’t really care for oatmeal anymore, but, like masturbation, it’s gooood for you. It’s only a theory, but I have decided to believe frequent masturbation helps protect one from prostate difficulty -- at least I have no prostate problem. And, even if mine were the size of a grapefruit, I would continue to masturbate frequently, for without it there would be no romance in my life at all.
I am hoping what they say about Alzheimer’s is true -- that one develops an uncontrollable twitch...a sort of unconscious jerking motion. This would allow me to simply affix my fist to my most magnificent member and know love again without excessive stress.
Eventually, I expect male masturbation to become illegal. Like marijuana it is something we do to our own bodies in the privacy of our own homes, which allows us to have a good time without the presence of women. Apparently, these are sufficient grounds for law forbidding human male activity.
My wife convinced me to stop smoking marijuana when my son entered the first grade. She said it would be setting a bad example for him, and because I was unable to read between the lines, I thought she was referring to the obvious result, which would be time in prison or the destruction of brain cells. Years later, when son went off to college and wife and I divorced, I retired to my clearing in the forest on the banks of the St. Johns River to write best sellers that would never be published. And there I resumed the smoking of marijuana.
For three years I lived in the forest rarely ever seeing another human soul. The smoking of marijuana allowed me to find great pleasure in the simplest of pursuits. It made me independent of the need for human companionship, for I could find satisfaction that engaged me in the smallest of challenges.
I had to give it up again when I returned to civilization and resumed my career. By then drug testing was in place at every radio station where I might find employment. It was not coincidental that my need for human companionship returned along with the resumption of a pot-free lifestyle.
The conduct of civilization depends heavily upon the individual’s need for a sea of other souls surrounding him. Seen through an old man’s eyes, the danger of marijuana finally becomes clear. Who’d-a thunk a lifetime of arguing against laws forbidding the smoking of pot might end this way. The logic once seemed so plain. How could liquor that promotes violent confrontations be legally sold when marijuana, which promotes serenity and harmony, remained illegal? How could liquor that destroys the body be legally dispensed in establishments across the nation while marijuana which relieves stress and is no more or less harmful than cigarettes remained illegal? How could liquor be taxed for public improvements while billions in pot tax revenues escaped us and the sale of the substance was left to promote criminal activity and over-crowd our court systems and our prisons? It just didn’t make sense.
Finally, the evil of the weed becomes plain in the pale light of a seasoned intellect. One must make a journey across decades and know the emotional independence marijuana makes possible to see it. Then one must return to the stream of consciousness in which the need for other people becomes overpowering. Living through these chapters requires time spent in each to truly see the alteration in one’s own personality that marijuana makes. A nation populated by people in possession of real emotional independence is a dangerous thing -- not to the individuals involved, but to the nation which depends upon their need for each other.
This examination of marijuana’s impact on the culture is necessary in order to reach the conclusion mentioned earlier about the inevitability of masturbation becoming a criminalized activity. Yes, it did sound a bit absurd at the outset. But the old man can see it coming like a tsunami no one noticed until Miami was mincemeat.
Masturbation and marijuana are equally potent in their capacity to provide a man with emotional and physical independence. Closing in on sixty, I realize it was no coincidence that X convinced me to abandon the practice of masturbation even before she undertook the crusade to stop my pot smoking. She made a better man of me some would argue. It was not her design to increase my dependence on her companionship that motivated her -- that was a coincidental result they‘d say. But after one has lived through a few thousand afternoons spent thinking about a date for the evening and learned how easily such angst can vanish during a five minute masturbation session, magically replaced by a larger interest in tonight’s football game, it finally becomes clear that the real danger of masturbation is that it makes a man independent of the need for women, and that makes it as dangerous to the social order as marijuana for the very same reasons.
This had little impact on the business of law making before the politicians signed up to go to work for the National Organization for Women.
Once the girls and their politicians finally begin the assault on male masturbation and the pressure groups have developed on the net, once the PACs are sent to Washington to lobby the politicians about the creation of law to prohibit it, once the talk shows have kicked it around and Oprah and Rosie have branded it as a tool of the devil the bills to ban it will be forthcoming.
There will be new room made in the prison system for the chicken chokers who once roamed freely on our streets. Throw them in with the pot smokers. The disgruntled wives of celebrities will “out” their former spouses as whack-off wackos and careers will fall. Bids for public office will be aborted once the ugly truth about the monkey-spankers makes headlines. Bill O’Reilly will brand all yank-o-philes as Pecksniffian and challenge us to figure out what he means by that, but admit he once did it, though he immediately cleaned up the mess. Sean Hannity will call it the work of Satan and deny the impulse ever crossed his mind.
In the run up to criminalizing masturbation children will be encouraged to turn in their parents. The remaining male priests will be excommunicated. Not only crime cams in the bedrooms will finally be installed, but local municipalities will debate the economic impact of additional cams for closets.
Many of these measures will be ineffective and hard-core strokers will continue their bone boxing behavior until, at last, separate task forces of local law enforcement agencies are formed to police this activity in organized sting operations. Eventually, America will cum full circle to dependence on a once revered constable long ago relegated to the pages of history -- the beat cop.
The oatmeal residue in my bowl is beginning to curdle. I don’t really care for oatmeal anymore, but, like masturbation, it’s gooood for you. It’s only a theory, but I have decided to believe frequent masturbation helps protect one from prostate difficulty -- at least I have no prostate problem. And, even if mine were the size of a grapefruit, I would continue to masturbate frequently, for without it there would be no romance in my life at all.
I am hoping what they say about Alzheimer’s is true -- that one develops an uncontrollable twitch...a sort of unconscious jerking motion. This would allow me to simply affix my fist to my most magnificent member and know love again without excessive stress.
Eventually, I expect male masturbation to become illegal. Like marijuana it is something we do to our own bodies in the privacy of our own homes, which allows us to have a good time without the presence of women. Apparently, these are sufficient grounds for law forbidding human male activity.
My wife convinced me to stop smoking marijuana when my son entered the first grade. She said it would be setting a bad example for him, and because I was unable to read between the lines, I thought she was referring to the obvious result, which would be time in prison or the destruction of brain cells. Years later, when son went off to college and wife and I divorced, I retired to my clearing in the forest on the banks of the St. Johns River to write best sellers that would never be published. And there I resumed the smoking of marijuana.
For three years I lived in the forest rarely ever seeing another human soul. The smoking of marijuana allowed me to find great pleasure in the simplest of pursuits. It made me independent of the need for human companionship, for I could find satisfaction that engaged me in the smallest of challenges.
I had to give it up again when I returned to civilization and resumed my career. By then drug testing was in place at every radio station where I might find employment. It was not coincidental that my need for human companionship returned along with the resumption of a pot-free lifestyle.
The conduct of civilization depends heavily upon the individual’s need for a sea of other souls surrounding him. Seen through an old man’s eyes, the danger of marijuana finally becomes clear. Who’d-a thunk a lifetime of arguing against laws forbidding the smoking of pot might end this way. The logic once seemed so plain. How could liquor that promotes violent confrontations be legally sold when marijuana, which promotes serenity and harmony, remained illegal? How could liquor that destroys the body be legally dispensed in establishments across the nation while marijuana which relieves stress and is no more or less harmful than cigarettes remained illegal? How could liquor be taxed for public improvements while billions in pot tax revenues escaped us and the sale of the substance was left to promote criminal activity and over-crowd our court systems and our prisons? It just didn’t make sense.
Finally, the evil of the weed becomes plain in the pale light of a seasoned intellect. One must make a journey across decades and know the emotional independence marijuana makes possible to see it. Then one must return to the stream of consciousness in which the need for other people becomes overpowering. Living through these chapters requires time spent in each to truly see the alteration in one’s own personality that marijuana makes. A nation populated by people in possession of real emotional independence is a dangerous thing -- not to the individuals involved, but to the nation which depends upon their need for each other.
This examination of marijuana’s impact on the culture is necessary in order to reach the conclusion mentioned earlier about the inevitability of masturbation becoming a criminalized activity. Yes, it did sound a bit absurd at the outset. But the old man can see it coming like a tsunami no one noticed until Miami was mincemeat.
Masturbation and marijuana are equally potent in their capacity to provide a man with emotional and physical independence. Closing in on sixty, I realize it was no coincidence that X convinced me to abandon the practice of masturbation even before she undertook the crusade to stop my pot smoking. She made a better man of me some would argue. It was not her design to increase my dependence on her companionship that motivated her -- that was a coincidental result they‘d say. But after one has lived through a few thousand afternoons spent thinking about a date for the evening and learned how easily such angst can vanish during a five minute masturbation session, magically replaced by a larger interest in tonight’s football game, it finally becomes clear that the real danger of masturbation is that it makes a man independent of the need for women, and that makes it as dangerous to the social order as marijuana for the very same reasons.
This had little impact on the business of law making before the politicians signed up to go to work for the National Organization for Women.
Once the girls and their politicians finally begin the assault on male masturbation and the pressure groups have developed on the net, once the PACs are sent to Washington to lobby the politicians about the creation of law to prohibit it, once the talk shows have kicked it around and Oprah and Rosie have branded it as a tool of the devil the bills to ban it will be forthcoming.
There will be new room made in the prison system for the chicken chokers who once roamed freely on our streets. Throw them in with the pot smokers. The disgruntled wives of celebrities will “out” their former spouses as whack-off wackos and careers will fall. Bids for public office will be aborted once the ugly truth about the monkey-spankers makes headlines. Bill O’Reilly will brand all yank-o-philes as Pecksniffian and challenge us to figure out what he means by that, but admit he once did it, though he immediately cleaned up the mess. Sean Hannity will call it the work of Satan and deny the impulse ever crossed his mind.
In the run up to criminalizing masturbation children will be encouraged to turn in their parents. The remaining male priests will be excommunicated. Not only crime cams in the bedrooms will finally be installed, but local municipalities will debate the economic impact of additional cams for closets.
Many of these measures will be ineffective and hard-core strokers will continue their bone boxing behavior until, at last, separate task forces of local law enforcement agencies are formed to police this activity in organized sting operations. Eventually, America will cum full circle to dependence on a once revered constable long ago relegated to the pages of history -- the beat cop.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When we are young, the more frugal among us look forward to the savings we’ll enjoy as seniors in such places as the theater box office and the line waiting to buy condoms at the drug store. Too late we learn any such considerations are offset by the additional money we will spend on medication. So here are some things about doctors and the way in which they practice the modern day version of bone sawing that can save us all money -- things only an old man can know, but which are too often only learned after a small fortune is squandered on needless pharmaceuticals.
The regimen of a physician is best understood when looked at through the filter of a garage mechanic. It’s no coincidence that the guy who works on your car refers to the chassis as a “body." And it is a small stretch to think of the hospital as a “body shop”... for the mechanic and the doctor approach their work in very much the same way.
In the old days (a term seniors must learn to avoid, except when in dialog with other seniors) a mechanic scratched his chin while he listened to a customer explain the problem that brought him down to the garage.
“Uh huh,” the mechanic says, gaze riveted to the ground, deep in thought, his mind analyzing the possibilities. “Crank her up,” he says, wiping his greasy palms on a greasier rag. He cups an ear, leans toward the bonnet and his eyebrows knit with interest. “See whatchoo mean.”
Next comes an educated guess about the reason for the difficulty. He will not expect you to pay for any work he does based on an incorrect guess. His profit depends upon “right” guesses, and this is what separates him from inferior mechanics, who usually live next door to you or are related by blood.
Since you’re in a fixing mood and your car will now get you there, you visit the doctor to deal with the annoying pain in your scrotum. In the old days, a visit to your doctor closely resembled a trip to the mechanic’s garage. You explain the pain in your pecker. “Crank her up,” he says. He pokes about your torso for a bit, the metal flange on his stethoscope almost as cold as your wife’s touch, and then makes an educated guess about the difficulty. If his diagnosis is incorrect and you suffer the loss of a testicle needlessly, he will not expect you to pay for this. “Oops, my bad.” In the case of an old man, he might add, “Well, you weren’t using it anyway.”
In the old days this is how things were done. The practice of medicine is quite different in these bright shiny new days, but the parallels between the mechanic’s approach at the body shop for cars and doctor’s approach at the body shop for folks remains in force and, though it may be lost to kids, it’s plain as plum punch to the old man.
No need to explain the problem you’re having with your car now. It’s not even necessary that something be wrong with it when you arrive at the garage. The cost for the diagnostic will be the same whether something’s wrong or not. And just because the inept 12-year olds who siphoned gasoline from your tank last night left a section of garden hose hanging from your gas tank does not mean the mechanic will notice a connection between it and your complaints about a sudden, unexplainable decrease in gas mileage. This is because the mechanic was not listening when you explained the problem. The diagnostic will be relied upon no matter what a trained ear or an opened eye might suggest.
When results of the $60 operation are produced, it’s plain your carburetor is not properly carbureting. You buy a new one and go home believing in the marvels of modern tinkerage. The kids next door are happy to see they will not need a new section of garden hose tonight. The one they used the previous evening is still dangling from your gas tank, and it will find utility on tonight’s visit to your car.
You’re back at the garage tomorrow with the same complaint, the hose section still haplessly flapping in the wind, but left there this time by design so that the kids next door can use it tonight.
Somewhere during the days you spend at the garage dealing with your mileage problem and AFTER you have replaced every malfunctioning device from the cigarette lighter to the CD player, the kids next door move their garden hose section to a car belonging to another old man down the street, and your gas mileage is magically improved. No one will ever know which of the operations performed by the mechanic was responsible for improving performance, but you will certainly receive a bill for each and be expected to pay for all.
You have, probably, already noticed the ways in which the modern doctor’s approach to your body conscripts the handbook used by the modern mechanic. Of course, you will pay for all the needless medicine and procedures used to cure your irritated scrotum and no one will ever know flannel underwear was responsible for the rash. All you will ever know is that the removal of one testicle brought about new considerations in the selection of under shorts and the problem miraculously disappeared somewhere during the process.
Working with the elderly is a challenging enigma for a 12-year old doctor. Like the secrets lawyers learn in law school, he acquired certain information during his education at medical school, which guides him. What he will never tell you is that he does not know a solitary doctor in the history of humanity who ever saved a single life. Every one of the patients eventually died. This tells him there is no such thing as a “cure” for anything. And THAT wisdom is the fulcrum upon which his approach to medicine is balanced. The challenge for him is to arrive at a drug cocktail precisely tailored to the pain you are having that considers the unique character of your particular body and whatever he has been taught by the pharmaceutical salespeople who visit him weekly. This will involve the keeping of charts on which the results of tests are recorded over a long period of time which reflect the impact of the drugs he prescribes. Once your under wear no longer contains flannel and the mysterious irritation in your scrotum vanishes, you will remain on the last cocktail prescribed for the balance of your days. You will, of course, die anyway and be buried in a pauper‘s grave, because your life savings were spent on medication designed to save your life.
If this information does not assist young people in the acquisition of useful wisdom only an old man possesses, a more pragmatic solution can be drawn into use. Simply estimate the cost at doctor’s per-hour charge for the time your physician spends in conference with sales representatives of pharmaceutical companies. If you are not good at estimating, just look at the bill from your doctor BEFORE the insurance company ponies up and you will see the results of that cost, because in the end YOU will pay for it. Add that to the cost of the time he spends attending drug seminars. And then consider the recent e-mail circulating among seniors from Ms. Sharon L. Davis, budget analyst for the U.S. Department of Commerce, concerning the difference between the cost of the active ingredients in many popular drugs and the price you pay at the counter for those drugs. For your dining and dancing pleasure, here are just a very few on the list I recognize.
CELEBREX - Cost of 100 tablets: $130.27. Cost of active ingredients: 60-cents.
CLARATIN - Cost of 100 tablets: $215.17. Cost of active ingredients: 71-cents.
PROZAC - Cost of 100 tablets: $247.47. Cost of active ingredients: 11-cents.
XANAX - Cost of 100 tablets: $136.79. Cost of active ingredients: 2.4-cents.
And, finally, consider how long it would take an ordinary grocery clerk to notice and track the difference in the numbers on the charts which mark the results of various drug cocktails, adjust the dosage to bring about a result within tolerance and pronounce you healed once your underwear is changed. Then think of how much money you might have saved by taking 6-weeks out of your life at an early age to attend a medical seminar designed for people who will, some day, be old so that you, too, can know everything relevant to the treatment given by the 12-year old doctor you are visiting and then, die just as decisively as you would no matter who administered the treatment.
When we are young, the more frugal among us look forward to the savings we’ll enjoy as seniors in such places as the theater box office and the line waiting to buy condoms at the drug store. Too late we learn any such considerations are offset by the additional money we will spend on medication. So here are some things about doctors and the way in which they practice the modern day version of bone sawing that can save us all money -- things only an old man can know, but which are too often only learned after a small fortune is squandered on needless pharmaceuticals.
The regimen of a physician is best understood when looked at through the filter of a garage mechanic. It’s no coincidence that the guy who works on your car refers to the chassis as a “body." And it is a small stretch to think of the hospital as a “body shop”... for the mechanic and the doctor approach their work in very much the same way.
In the old days (a term seniors must learn to avoid, except when in dialog with other seniors) a mechanic scratched his chin while he listened to a customer explain the problem that brought him down to the garage.
“Uh huh,” the mechanic says, gaze riveted to the ground, deep in thought, his mind analyzing the possibilities. “Crank her up,” he says, wiping his greasy palms on a greasier rag. He cups an ear, leans toward the bonnet and his eyebrows knit with interest. “See whatchoo mean.”
Next comes an educated guess about the reason for the difficulty. He will not expect you to pay for any work he does based on an incorrect guess. His profit depends upon “right” guesses, and this is what separates him from inferior mechanics, who usually live next door to you or are related by blood.
Since you’re in a fixing mood and your car will now get you there, you visit the doctor to deal with the annoying pain in your scrotum. In the old days, a visit to your doctor closely resembled a trip to the mechanic’s garage. You explain the pain in your pecker. “Crank her up,” he says. He pokes about your torso for a bit, the metal flange on his stethoscope almost as cold as your wife’s touch, and then makes an educated guess about the difficulty. If his diagnosis is incorrect and you suffer the loss of a testicle needlessly, he will not expect you to pay for this. “Oops, my bad.” In the case of an old man, he might add, “Well, you weren’t using it anyway.”
In the old days this is how things were done. The practice of medicine is quite different in these bright shiny new days, but the parallels between the mechanic’s approach at the body shop for cars and doctor’s approach at the body shop for folks remains in force and, though it may be lost to kids, it’s plain as plum punch to the old man.
No need to explain the problem you’re having with your car now. It’s not even necessary that something be wrong with it when you arrive at the garage. The cost for the diagnostic will be the same whether something’s wrong or not. And just because the inept 12-year olds who siphoned gasoline from your tank last night left a section of garden hose hanging from your gas tank does not mean the mechanic will notice a connection between it and your complaints about a sudden, unexplainable decrease in gas mileage. This is because the mechanic was not listening when you explained the problem. The diagnostic will be relied upon no matter what a trained ear or an opened eye might suggest.
When results of the $60 operation are produced, it’s plain your carburetor is not properly carbureting. You buy a new one and go home believing in the marvels of modern tinkerage. The kids next door are happy to see they will not need a new section of garden hose tonight. The one they used the previous evening is still dangling from your gas tank, and it will find utility on tonight’s visit to your car.
You’re back at the garage tomorrow with the same complaint, the hose section still haplessly flapping in the wind, but left there this time by design so that the kids next door can use it tonight.
Somewhere during the days you spend at the garage dealing with your mileage problem and AFTER you have replaced every malfunctioning device from the cigarette lighter to the CD player, the kids next door move their garden hose section to a car belonging to another old man down the street, and your gas mileage is magically improved. No one will ever know which of the operations performed by the mechanic was responsible for improving performance, but you will certainly receive a bill for each and be expected to pay for all.
You have, probably, already noticed the ways in which the modern doctor’s approach to your body conscripts the handbook used by the modern mechanic. Of course, you will pay for all the needless medicine and procedures used to cure your irritated scrotum and no one will ever know flannel underwear was responsible for the rash. All you will ever know is that the removal of one testicle brought about new considerations in the selection of under shorts and the problem miraculously disappeared somewhere during the process.
Working with the elderly is a challenging enigma for a 12-year old doctor. Like the secrets lawyers learn in law school, he acquired certain information during his education at medical school, which guides him. What he will never tell you is that he does not know a solitary doctor in the history of humanity who ever saved a single life. Every one of the patients eventually died. This tells him there is no such thing as a “cure” for anything. And THAT wisdom is the fulcrum upon which his approach to medicine is balanced. The challenge for him is to arrive at a drug cocktail precisely tailored to the pain you are having that considers the unique character of your particular body and whatever he has been taught by the pharmaceutical salespeople who visit him weekly. This will involve the keeping of charts on which the results of tests are recorded over a long period of time which reflect the impact of the drugs he prescribes. Once your under wear no longer contains flannel and the mysterious irritation in your scrotum vanishes, you will remain on the last cocktail prescribed for the balance of your days. You will, of course, die anyway and be buried in a pauper‘s grave, because your life savings were spent on medication designed to save your life.
If this information does not assist young people in the acquisition of useful wisdom only an old man possesses, a more pragmatic solution can be drawn into use. Simply estimate the cost at doctor’s per-hour charge for the time your physician spends in conference with sales representatives of pharmaceutical companies. If you are not good at estimating, just look at the bill from your doctor BEFORE the insurance company ponies up and you will see the results of that cost, because in the end YOU will pay for it. Add that to the cost of the time he spends attending drug seminars. And then consider the recent e-mail circulating among seniors from Ms. Sharon L. Davis, budget analyst for the U.S. Department of Commerce, concerning the difference between the cost of the active ingredients in many popular drugs and the price you pay at the counter for those drugs. For your dining and dancing pleasure, here are just a very few on the list I recognize.
CELEBREX - Cost of 100 tablets: $130.27. Cost of active ingredients: 60-cents.
CLARATIN - Cost of 100 tablets: $215.17. Cost of active ingredients: 71-cents.
PROZAC - Cost of 100 tablets: $247.47. Cost of active ingredients: 11-cents.
XANAX - Cost of 100 tablets: $136.79. Cost of active ingredients: 2.4-cents.
And, finally, consider how long it would take an ordinary grocery clerk to notice and track the difference in the numbers on the charts which mark the results of various drug cocktails, adjust the dosage to bring about a result within tolerance and pronounce you healed once your underwear is changed. Then think of how much money you might have saved by taking 6-weeks out of your life at an early age to attend a medical seminar designed for people who will, some day, be old so that you, too, can know everything relevant to the treatment given by the 12-year old doctor you are visiting and then, die just as decisively as you would no matter who administered the treatment.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
One of the major challenges faced by seniors living in the new millennium is posed by the metamorphosis through which commercial etiquette has traveled in the course of a respectable lifetime.
A trip to what we are calling the “convenience store” where gasoline is now purchased is rife with opportunities to examine these refinements in the way commerce relates to the people upon whom it depends for its livelihood.
In a more genteel time the landscape was punctuated by gas stations and the regimen for consumers was virtually effortless. It was not even necessary to exit the car. Simply drive up to the pump. A cherubic but somewhat soiled young man would approach the driver’s window smiling broadly and ask, “Fillerup?”
A “yes” nod to the attendant opened the driver to a virtual cornucopia of care. The costumed agent began by asking if you wished to keep the garden hose section dangling from the gas tank and, once it was removed from the orifice, he inserted his instrument and activated the automatic filler upper mechanism on his pump. While the refueling was in progress, the agent sprayed your windshield with solution and wiped it free of road debris, working hard to avoid spending too much time staring up your girlfriend’s skirt as he cleaned the passenger side.
“Pop the hood for me, sir?” he’d ask when the glass was done. Then the rag in his rear pocket would be used to clean your dipstick so your oil level could be checked. Battery cables would be given a quick wiggle to insure they were secure, belts would be jiggled to test their health and the radiator cap would be given a brief inspection. These courtesies were as productive for the owner of the station as much as for the driver, because any malfunctions discovered by the attendant would be called to your attention, and you would be offered parts and service necessary to repair or replace them. This could be done by the station’s on-duty mechanic while you waited.
At the conclusion of this process a predictable ceremony took place during which you would give the cashier some money. Two words would then leave his mouth designed to express the owner’s gratitude that you chose his shop to make your purchases. These words were, “Thank you“.
Now....in the glorious and progressive 21st Century, you will make a mental note to speak to your neighbor’s children about the section of garden hose dangling from your gasoline orifice as YOU insert the pump nozzle and fill up your tank AFTER using your bank card to pay a price that would have bought you a new set of tires in years gone by.
Any inspection of what lies beneath the hood will be done by you and any problems will be discussed with employees of the dealer, because the only employee of today’s gasoline station does not speak your language and knows less about automobiles than he does about acquiring American citizenship. The visitor from another nation who you meet at the cash register can be differentiated from the occasional American you encounter with ease. If you are old enough to be his grandfather, the American cashier will address you as “dude,” or, if you register any dissatisfaction, “geezer.”
Any air going out of the store through the dispenser and into your tires will cost 50-cents and be inserted in the tires by YOU. Any air coming into the store through the vacuum cleaner will cost you 75-cents. You pay no matter what direction the air is going.
The process has its benefits. Debit and credit card purchases can be handled at the pump, speeding up the gasoline purchase. When you reach for the receipt you will see an LED display instructing you to ask the cashier for the receipt. To obtain the receipt you will fall in line behind those purchasing lottery tickets and wait.
At the conclusion of the process you will hear four words from the retailer’s representative. These are, “Have a nice day.” You will answer, “Thank you.”
Young purchasers of gasoline do not realize the cashier has been instructed by the owner to thank customers for choosing to spend their money in his establishment. They believe it is good etiquette for the CUSTOMER to thank the CASHIER for allowing them to shop there. But the old man bites his tongue every time he hears “Have a nice day.” and nearly gnaws it off when he, sometimes, hears himself absent-mindedly mumble, “Thank you” in response to being handed change.
How did the clerk develop this inexplicable resistance to the practice of thanking the patron on behalf of the owner for the purchaser’s business? Why is it so hard for a person to get his lips around the syllables, “Thank you?” It is an enigma that requires time on the planet to fathom.
In the mind of the cashier a “thank you” is an acknowledgement of participation in the sales event. It suggests that he/she bears some responsibility for your satisfaction. It opens him/her up to criticism if you have a problem with the splendid service you have been given or the exorbitant price you have been charged for the air you used while on the premises. There is no “thank you” forthcoming because the employee considers him/herself NOT RESPONSIBLE for anything taking place during your visit, so there will be no acknowledgement of participation as might be implied by a “thank you.” In this way an employee can leave at the end of the day with a clear conscience. It was not his fault that you registered your displeasure over indignations you suffered in a voice above a whisper. He was only doing his job when he called the police and had you led away in cuffs for the criminal act of abuse.
The truth about old men is that what happened at the convenience store would be an endurable affront if the attitude of indifference to customer satisfaction was confined to the convenience store. But once he has made bail over speaking too loudly to the clerk and is again free on the streets, the old man may go to purchase an appliance of some sort. When he looks to see what guarantees the manufacturer offers about performance and parts, the attitude he encountered at the convenience store will be recalled upon noticing the manufacturer requires the customer to pay additional monies for a guarantee that the item actually does what it was purchased to do.
In the old man’s mind the private thought that taking a consumer’s money in exchange for a useless item is tantamount to theft, extortion or fraud. But complaints to the place of purchase will be referred to the manufacturer and there he will be asked if he paid the manufacturer the necessary fee to insure that the item works. “May I have the number on your service contract?” the customer service representative at the manufacturer will ask.
“I didn’t buy a service contract.”
“Then how do you expect me to refund your money or repair the item?”
“I expect it because I gave you money for a blender and you gave me a nonfunctioning piece of shit in return for the money I gave you.”
“I wish I could be of help to you,” the customer service representative says, “but without a service contract there’s nothing I can do.”
“But you have $34.32 of my money and I have nothing to show for it.”
“Sorry.”
“But....”
“Have a nice day.”
“.................Thank you.”
One of the major challenges faced by seniors living in the new millennium is posed by the metamorphosis through which commercial etiquette has traveled in the course of a respectable lifetime.
A trip to what we are calling the “convenience store” where gasoline is now purchased is rife with opportunities to examine these refinements in the way commerce relates to the people upon whom it depends for its livelihood.
In a more genteel time the landscape was punctuated by gas stations and the regimen for consumers was virtually effortless. It was not even necessary to exit the car. Simply drive up to the pump. A cherubic but somewhat soiled young man would approach the driver’s window smiling broadly and ask, “Fillerup?”
A “yes” nod to the attendant opened the driver to a virtual cornucopia of care. The costumed agent began by asking if you wished to keep the garden hose section dangling from the gas tank and, once it was removed from the orifice, he inserted his instrument and activated the automatic filler upper mechanism on his pump. While the refueling was in progress, the agent sprayed your windshield with solution and wiped it free of road debris, working hard to avoid spending too much time staring up your girlfriend’s skirt as he cleaned the passenger side.
“Pop the hood for me, sir?” he’d ask when the glass was done. Then the rag in his rear pocket would be used to clean your dipstick so your oil level could be checked. Battery cables would be given a quick wiggle to insure they were secure, belts would be jiggled to test their health and the radiator cap would be given a brief inspection. These courtesies were as productive for the owner of the station as much as for the driver, because any malfunctions discovered by the attendant would be called to your attention, and you would be offered parts and service necessary to repair or replace them. This could be done by the station’s on-duty mechanic while you waited.
At the conclusion of this process a predictable ceremony took place during which you would give the cashier some money. Two words would then leave his mouth designed to express the owner’s gratitude that you chose his shop to make your purchases. These words were, “Thank you“.
Now....in the glorious and progressive 21st Century, you will make a mental note to speak to your neighbor’s children about the section of garden hose dangling from your gasoline orifice as YOU insert the pump nozzle and fill up your tank AFTER using your bank card to pay a price that would have bought you a new set of tires in years gone by.
Any inspection of what lies beneath the hood will be done by you and any problems will be discussed with employees of the dealer, because the only employee of today’s gasoline station does not speak your language and knows less about automobiles than he does about acquiring American citizenship. The visitor from another nation who you meet at the cash register can be differentiated from the occasional American you encounter with ease. If you are old enough to be his grandfather, the American cashier will address you as “dude,” or, if you register any dissatisfaction, “geezer.”
Any air going out of the store through the dispenser and into your tires will cost 50-cents and be inserted in the tires by YOU. Any air coming into the store through the vacuum cleaner will cost you 75-cents. You pay no matter what direction the air is going.
The process has its benefits. Debit and credit card purchases can be handled at the pump, speeding up the gasoline purchase. When you reach for the receipt you will see an LED display instructing you to ask the cashier for the receipt. To obtain the receipt you will fall in line behind those purchasing lottery tickets and wait.
At the conclusion of the process you will hear four words from the retailer’s representative. These are, “Have a nice day.” You will answer, “Thank you.”
Young purchasers of gasoline do not realize the cashier has been instructed by the owner to thank customers for choosing to spend their money in his establishment. They believe it is good etiquette for the CUSTOMER to thank the CASHIER for allowing them to shop there. But the old man bites his tongue every time he hears “Have a nice day.” and nearly gnaws it off when he, sometimes, hears himself absent-mindedly mumble, “Thank you” in response to being handed change.
How did the clerk develop this inexplicable resistance to the practice of thanking the patron on behalf of the owner for the purchaser’s business? Why is it so hard for a person to get his lips around the syllables, “Thank you?” It is an enigma that requires time on the planet to fathom.
In the mind of the cashier a “thank you” is an acknowledgement of participation in the sales event. It suggests that he/she bears some responsibility for your satisfaction. It opens him/her up to criticism if you have a problem with the splendid service you have been given or the exorbitant price you have been charged for the air you used while on the premises. There is no “thank you” forthcoming because the employee considers him/herself NOT RESPONSIBLE for anything taking place during your visit, so there will be no acknowledgement of participation as might be implied by a “thank you.” In this way an employee can leave at the end of the day with a clear conscience. It was not his fault that you registered your displeasure over indignations you suffered in a voice above a whisper. He was only doing his job when he called the police and had you led away in cuffs for the criminal act of abuse.
The truth about old men is that what happened at the convenience store would be an endurable affront if the attitude of indifference to customer satisfaction was confined to the convenience store. But once he has made bail over speaking too loudly to the clerk and is again free on the streets, the old man may go to purchase an appliance of some sort. When he looks to see what guarantees the manufacturer offers about performance and parts, the attitude he encountered at the convenience store will be recalled upon noticing the manufacturer requires the customer to pay additional monies for a guarantee that the item actually does what it was purchased to do.
In the old man’s mind the private thought that taking a consumer’s money in exchange for a useless item is tantamount to theft, extortion or fraud. But complaints to the place of purchase will be referred to the manufacturer and there he will be asked if he paid the manufacturer the necessary fee to insure that the item works. “May I have the number on your service contract?” the customer service representative at the manufacturer will ask.
“I didn’t buy a service contract.”
“Then how do you expect me to refund your money or repair the item?”
“I expect it because I gave you money for a blender and you gave me a nonfunctioning piece of shit in return for the money I gave you.”
“I wish I could be of help to you,” the customer service representative says, “but without a service contract there’s nothing I can do.”
“But you have $34.32 of my money and I have nothing to show for it.”
“Sorry.”
“But....”
“Have a nice day.”
“.................Thank you.”
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The truth about old men is that no one would have them who knew the truth about them. That's why none of them ever write it down. That's why most of them deny it or say it's an over-simplification, and those who don't deny it outright say men are not all alike. It's true men don't all drink the same beer. They don't all use the same after shave or hate French food. But there are some things they all have in common, and it's those things that shape the truth about them. The small differences between them are inconsequential, except that they help keep advertising agencies in business and, thereby, create jobs.
One of those characteristics common to all men is testosterone levels much higher than in the female body. Testosterone is an amazing and powerfully influential chemical that makes the human race possible. Without testosterone there would be no mating, and we would never have survived long enough to discover ways to perpetuate the species like laboratory dishes and sperm clinics that did not involve mating. Therefore, we would not exist. This is a fact acknowledged by everyone, except members of the National Organization for Women and certain elements of the Democratic Party, most of whom enjoy French food.
Younger people require simpler formulas in order to recognize the scope of a statement such as, “Without testosterone there would be no human race.” So, for these bewildered souls, here is a words-of-one-syllable declaration: Testosterone is the chemical that causes males to mount females, against their most strenuous objections, and pollinate them, thereby facilitating a next generation of human beings. If this process were taken out of the human story, there would be no human being.
The irony of testosterone is driven by its duality of nature – chiefly, its dark side. This propensity for mounting the female and imposing his will upon her is played out in the every-day life of a typical man in ways that quickly disguise it, preventing us from celebrating it as indispensable to the species. This irresistible urge to dominate the female is manifest in mixed company as a need to dominate and conquer all things. These include riddles as small as “How can I cross an ocean,” “How can I alter a tree into a split level suburban home” and “How can I get from here to there without a horse” all the way to large challenges such as “what secrets lie within the eye of a microscope” and “what mysteries lace the stars above?”
Man’s indefatigable need to face a challenge and subdue it is not only responsible for pollinating the female of the species and, thereby, making the human race possible, but it is also responsible for all the human progress we have enjoyed since coming down from the trees and out of the caves. Testosterone!
Of course, the chemical is manufactured in the male of other species, but only when it is coupled with the enormous potential of a larger human brain does it result in the magnificent difference between us and the other creatures. What we all too often miss or willfully dismiss is that the larger brain would never have produced human life as we know it without the need to confront challenges, conquer them and enrich our quiver of achievements. Testosterone – the fuel that powers the vehicle of human progress!
The old man can recall younger days, during which he lusted for the challenge of battle on the field and in the foxhole, jousted for upward mobility in the professional arena, engaged the mysteries of science and hungered for dominion of all he surveyed. But only in the eve of his time on earth, when testosterone levels have subsided, does he recognize the profound impact the chemical has had upon his will, his mind and his spirit. Only when it is gone does he begin to understand why the women without it have gone almost completely unnoticed in the ledgers of scientific achievement, invention and human progress.
In an alternate tale, seen through a different filter, shaped by a different agenda the lack of female participation in enterprises that have marked the human journey is viewed as a result of male suppression. So for the benefit of those who naively buy into this absurd paradigm, let’s share a truth perhaps only visible to the old man – there is no male conspiracy to ignore valuable contributions made by female people. Electricity, the printing press, the airplane, the locomotive, the automobile, the radio, the foundry and the impact of gravity would have been just as quickly embraced by the world if they had sprung from the minds of women. But they did not. Testosterone – the chemical that compels the brain to mount…that is what drives all human beings who face an insurmountable challenge with the determination to conquer it. It is what propels a man from the foot of a mountain to its summit with no greater explanation than, “It was there.” It is what causes him to sail into uncharted waters to discover new worlds and it is what launches him from the rocket pad in an incomparable cloud of confusion into the deepest reaches of space to the precipice of clarity.
How is it possible, the old man wonders, that such a beneficial chemical can be so roundly maligned and so often overlooked in examinations of the human dynamic. It is because two things are necessary to see the truth of it clearly -- a wrinkled brow and a drooping pecker.
The impact of high testosterone levels has never been felt in the bodies of half the human race, so its power is entirely hidden from the females. The younger males cannot imagine being without it, so its impact on their minds is imperceptible. Only the old man, who has known it and now is without it can weigh its significance with a clear mind; can examine dispassionately the difference it makes in the spirit and focus of a human being.
The preponderance of old men who grow into understanding become like wilting tulips strangled in a sea of weeds, suffocated by the vibrant agenda of an ill-advised feminist protocol, which seeks to muffle the roar testosterone evokes, to torture truth and shape it to service in the doctrine of equality. But the truth cannot be hidden from the old man. He knows it first-hand. He has simply become too weak to protest, too indifferent to care and too feeble to resist.
From the ranks of these old men comes a small cadre of malcontents who refuse to go quietly to their graves. They have no weapons. They have no power. They have no voice. They have only their discontent. They are dismissed, disregarded and roundly ignored. They are called…curmudgeons.
The truth about old men is that no one would have them who knew the truth about them. That's why none of them ever write it down. That's why most of them deny it or say it's an over-simplification, and those who don't deny it outright say men are not all alike. It's true men don't all drink the same beer. They don't all use the same after shave or hate French food. But there are some things they all have in common, and it's those things that shape the truth about them. The small differences between them are inconsequential, except that they help keep advertising agencies in business and, thereby, create jobs.
One of those characteristics common to all men is testosterone levels much higher than in the female body. Testosterone is an amazing and powerfully influential chemical that makes the human race possible. Without testosterone there would be no mating, and we would never have survived long enough to discover ways to perpetuate the species like laboratory dishes and sperm clinics that did not involve mating. Therefore, we would not exist. This is a fact acknowledged by everyone, except members of the National Organization for Women and certain elements of the Democratic Party, most of whom enjoy French food.
Younger people require simpler formulas in order to recognize the scope of a statement such as, “Without testosterone there would be no human race.” So, for these bewildered souls, here is a words-of-one-syllable declaration: Testosterone is the chemical that causes males to mount females, against their most strenuous objections, and pollinate them, thereby facilitating a next generation of human beings. If this process were taken out of the human story, there would be no human being.
The irony of testosterone is driven by its duality of nature – chiefly, its dark side. This propensity for mounting the female and imposing his will upon her is played out in the every-day life of a typical man in ways that quickly disguise it, preventing us from celebrating it as indispensable to the species. This irresistible urge to dominate the female is manifest in mixed company as a need to dominate and conquer all things. These include riddles as small as “How can I cross an ocean,” “How can I alter a tree into a split level suburban home” and “How can I get from here to there without a horse” all the way to large challenges such as “what secrets lie within the eye of a microscope” and “what mysteries lace the stars above?”
Man’s indefatigable need to face a challenge and subdue it is not only responsible for pollinating the female of the species and, thereby, making the human race possible, but it is also responsible for all the human progress we have enjoyed since coming down from the trees and out of the caves. Testosterone!
Of course, the chemical is manufactured in the male of other species, but only when it is coupled with the enormous potential of a larger human brain does it result in the magnificent difference between us and the other creatures. What we all too often miss or willfully dismiss is that the larger brain would never have produced human life as we know it without the need to confront challenges, conquer them and enrich our quiver of achievements. Testosterone – the fuel that powers the vehicle of human progress!
The old man can recall younger days, during which he lusted for the challenge of battle on the field and in the foxhole, jousted for upward mobility in the professional arena, engaged the mysteries of science and hungered for dominion of all he surveyed. But only in the eve of his time on earth, when testosterone levels have subsided, does he recognize the profound impact the chemical has had upon his will, his mind and his spirit. Only when it is gone does he begin to understand why the women without it have gone almost completely unnoticed in the ledgers of scientific achievement, invention and human progress.
In an alternate tale, seen through a different filter, shaped by a different agenda the lack of female participation in enterprises that have marked the human journey is viewed as a result of male suppression. So for the benefit of those who naively buy into this absurd paradigm, let’s share a truth perhaps only visible to the old man – there is no male conspiracy to ignore valuable contributions made by female people. Electricity, the printing press, the airplane, the locomotive, the automobile, the radio, the foundry and the impact of gravity would have been just as quickly embraced by the world if they had sprung from the minds of women. But they did not. Testosterone – the chemical that compels the brain to mount…that is what drives all human beings who face an insurmountable challenge with the determination to conquer it. It is what propels a man from the foot of a mountain to its summit with no greater explanation than, “It was there.” It is what causes him to sail into uncharted waters to discover new worlds and it is what launches him from the rocket pad in an incomparable cloud of confusion into the deepest reaches of space to the precipice of clarity.
How is it possible, the old man wonders, that such a beneficial chemical can be so roundly maligned and so often overlooked in examinations of the human dynamic. It is because two things are necessary to see the truth of it clearly -- a wrinkled brow and a drooping pecker.
The impact of high testosterone levels has never been felt in the bodies of half the human race, so its power is entirely hidden from the females. The younger males cannot imagine being without it, so its impact on their minds is imperceptible. Only the old man, who has known it and now is without it can weigh its significance with a clear mind; can examine dispassionately the difference it makes in the spirit and focus of a human being.
The preponderance of old men who grow into understanding become like wilting tulips strangled in a sea of weeds, suffocated by the vibrant agenda of an ill-advised feminist protocol, which seeks to muffle the roar testosterone evokes, to torture truth and shape it to service in the doctrine of equality. But the truth cannot be hidden from the old man. He knows it first-hand. He has simply become too weak to protest, too indifferent to care and too feeble to resist.
From the ranks of these old men comes a small cadre of malcontents who refuse to go quietly to their graves. They have no weapons. They have no power. They have no voice. They have only their discontent. They are dismissed, disregarded and roundly ignored. They are called…curmudgeons.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I live in the country now. When I go to the big city I cross a short mountain, the top of which is often shrouded in a thick cloud during the early morning hours, even on an otherwise sunny day. I, sometimes, think of my childhood as I’m going up the mountain.
In many ways, trying to make sense of life as a child is like entering a fog bank – one cannot move forward without becoming more and more bewildered. As the headlights go on, the GPS begins to find relevance and the radio helps one keep a sense of “place.” Those electronic accoutrements become a bit like all the advice and guidance one receives from the world as life begins to push one through the decades.
Reaching middle-age is a little like reaching the top of the mountain – you think the hard part is over. You have your bearings. Your eyes have become accustomed to the light and your speed has been adjusted to a safe standard. You are supported all around you with electronic assistance that reminds me of all the supportive opinions suggesting you’re on the right path as you hit that middle-age marker.
The reality of reaching the top of the fog-enfolded mountain is that you’ve become so completely swallowed by the confusion and ignorance around you that you are lulled into a sense of safety by the vast numbers of other people who are equally clueless.
It is in the moments when I leave the fog bank on the downhill grade and emerge from the confusion into the clear light of day that I realize how much like life the trip across the mountain is and how different the world looks to the old man who has finally cleared the fog.
It was on just such a trip one morning that I found myself considering the sad decline of America and wondering what, if anything, could spare us the same fate that has befallen all truly great empires in the past. We were, to follow the analogy, at the top of the mountain when I was a boy. We led every category of considerations that measure a great society. But in that fog of confusion and self-delusion we made a critical mistake. We ignored a principle of physics that will stand against all arguments to the contrary. Simply put: Nothing stays the same. The one constant truth in the universe is change, itself.
This principle was demonstrated to me once long ago when a radio station I was hired to lift from the bottom of the ratings pile reached the end of a survey period with a number one ranking. Champaign corks were popping, parties were being planned and there was high celebration throughout the building on the morning the numbers came out. That afternoon the owner called me to his office for a meeting. I expected major praise and a bonus. Instead, he asked me what my forecast for the next survey was. I was speechless with indignation.
“I’ve taken your miserable piece of junk radio station from nothing to number one overnight,” I told him. “And you have the brass to call me in here and ask me what I expect in the next book. I can’t read the future,” I explained in a heated mood. “All I can ever deliver is the best I can do, you ungrateful asshole.”
“Relax,” he said. “Let me help you.” That’s when he explained the nature of change to me. He finished by saying, “Since nothing stays the same, all those without a plan to get bigger have only one fate awaiting them – they grow smaller, weaker and, eventually, die.”
My boss went on to explain that we may fail in our plans to grow, but that is an inherent risk in life. Having a plan for growth does not guarantee the plan will be executed in a way that produces growth. Often, the attempt to grow, itself, produces failure, and that will always come because it was undertaken with inadequate planning or insufficient considerations. But pointing to examples of companies that have failed in their attempt to grow does not remove the one inherent law of matter that will prevail whether one plans for growth or not – nothing stays the same and those without a plan to get bigger will end up smaller.
While the U.S. was on top of the mountain, enjoying the fruits of supernation status, we did not acknowledge that one static law of matter. Our only design for growth was from within, hoping each quarter for an improved GNP. A nation cannot exist as an island. Its strength must be measured against the strength of its enemies, not against its past accolades.
There was a time…way up on the mountain, when we might have had a 51st state, and a 52nd and a 53rd, working toward a time when the United States of America would become The United States of Earth. We might have moved on the world stage to take smaller countries in as a part of regulated, studied growth. Instead, we went from nation to nation bringing “liberty” and justice to the citizens as if we were missionaries bearing some divine plan for salvation and then beginning a plan for withdrawal before the job was even finished.
Today, we don’t even consider a plan like the invasion of Iraq without a plan for withdrawal when our “mission” there is complete. This thinking has become so prolific and so universally embraced by Americans that it is not even questioned. Anyone who suggests we should annex countries we conquer is dismissed as a Hitler clone. And the dismal future that faces America in the year 2009 is what becomes of lost souls in the fog surrounded by other lost souls in the fog.
Frequently in discussions about this issue, I hear examples introduced by debaters citing the failure of other empires that have sought growth and the ruin that has befallen their unrealistic ambitions. These attempts to expand globally are all marked by a simple flaw in thinking such as befell Alexander. One cannot rule an empire effectively beyond a size to which communication and transportation are sufficient to the task.
No such restraints face America in the 21st century. Advancements in technology make the entire world instantly accessible in the realm of communication and no spot on earth more than hours away in terms of transportation. The flaw in Alexander’s plan was that he outgrew his capabilities to govern a land as vast as he conquered. In principle, this is what my boss was referring to when he told me a plan for growth will often fail because it was undertaken with inadequate planning or insufficient considerations.
I’ve read that General George Patton was mortified by Ike’s refusal to move on Russia while it was weak at the close of WWII. With the benefit of retrospect, this appears to be a pivotal moment in history when the U.S. had the brass ring within its grasp. If Ike had taken Patton’s advice, there might have been no cold war and by now the entire world might be one big happy democracy called The United States of Earth with no more or less unrest between regions than is suffered by states in our system.
Nuclear war might no longer loom as a possible future for the planet. We might arise each morning as citizens of Earth devoted to the universal goal of settling other planets, expanding the living environment and, thereby, solving the challenge of over-population. Our global resources in a world where hundreds of armies have been distilled to one peace-keeping unit might have enjoyed savings that could have been spent, instead, on research into the inevitability of death that awaits us all and life expectancy might, by now, have increased by thousands of years.
There is no end to the glory that might await the human unit in a world where national boundaries were dissolved and but one flag was saluted on Independence Day.
But while we were on the mountain, the fog overcame us. And history may yet record that, instead of emerging whole into the clear light of day on the downgrade, we tumbled into a guardrail and fell into an abyss so deep we were, like Carthage, never heard from again, except as a footnote in history.
I’ve tried to explain this on the radio. It can’t be done. Audiences are populated by fog dwellers and there is no room in mass media for unconventional thinking that resists the tidal wash of propaganda which keeps the young and limber intellectually imprisoned. Praise be to those who make it down from the cloud and into the pristine realm of reason on the downgrade. Only there in the light of day can the truth sadly visible only to old men be plain.
I live in the country now. When I go to the big city I cross a short mountain, the top of which is often shrouded in a thick cloud during the early morning hours, even on an otherwise sunny day. I, sometimes, think of my childhood as I’m going up the mountain.
In many ways, trying to make sense of life as a child is like entering a fog bank – one cannot move forward without becoming more and more bewildered. As the headlights go on, the GPS begins to find relevance and the radio helps one keep a sense of “place.” Those electronic accoutrements become a bit like all the advice and guidance one receives from the world as life begins to push one through the decades.
Reaching middle-age is a little like reaching the top of the mountain – you think the hard part is over. You have your bearings. Your eyes have become accustomed to the light and your speed has been adjusted to a safe standard. You are supported all around you with electronic assistance that reminds me of all the supportive opinions suggesting you’re on the right path as you hit that middle-age marker.
The reality of reaching the top of the fog-enfolded mountain is that you’ve become so completely swallowed by the confusion and ignorance around you that you are lulled into a sense of safety by the vast numbers of other people who are equally clueless.
It is in the moments when I leave the fog bank on the downhill grade and emerge from the confusion into the clear light of day that I realize how much like life the trip across the mountain is and how different the world looks to the old man who has finally cleared the fog.
It was on just such a trip one morning that I found myself considering the sad decline of America and wondering what, if anything, could spare us the same fate that has befallen all truly great empires in the past. We were, to follow the analogy, at the top of the mountain when I was a boy. We led every category of considerations that measure a great society. But in that fog of confusion and self-delusion we made a critical mistake. We ignored a principle of physics that will stand against all arguments to the contrary. Simply put: Nothing stays the same. The one constant truth in the universe is change, itself.
This principle was demonstrated to me once long ago when a radio station I was hired to lift from the bottom of the ratings pile reached the end of a survey period with a number one ranking. Champaign corks were popping, parties were being planned and there was high celebration throughout the building on the morning the numbers came out. That afternoon the owner called me to his office for a meeting. I expected major praise and a bonus. Instead, he asked me what my forecast for the next survey was. I was speechless with indignation.
“I’ve taken your miserable piece of junk radio station from nothing to number one overnight,” I told him. “And you have the brass to call me in here and ask me what I expect in the next book. I can’t read the future,” I explained in a heated mood. “All I can ever deliver is the best I can do, you ungrateful asshole.”
“Relax,” he said. “Let me help you.” That’s when he explained the nature of change to me. He finished by saying, “Since nothing stays the same, all those without a plan to get bigger have only one fate awaiting them – they grow smaller, weaker and, eventually, die.”
My boss went on to explain that we may fail in our plans to grow, but that is an inherent risk in life. Having a plan for growth does not guarantee the plan will be executed in a way that produces growth. Often, the attempt to grow, itself, produces failure, and that will always come because it was undertaken with inadequate planning or insufficient considerations. But pointing to examples of companies that have failed in their attempt to grow does not remove the one inherent law of matter that will prevail whether one plans for growth or not – nothing stays the same and those without a plan to get bigger will end up smaller.
While the U.S. was on top of the mountain, enjoying the fruits of supernation status, we did not acknowledge that one static law of matter. Our only design for growth was from within, hoping each quarter for an improved GNP. A nation cannot exist as an island. Its strength must be measured against the strength of its enemies, not against its past accolades.
There was a time…way up on the mountain, when we might have had a 51st state, and a 52nd and a 53rd, working toward a time when the United States of America would become The United States of Earth. We might have moved on the world stage to take smaller countries in as a part of regulated, studied growth. Instead, we went from nation to nation bringing “liberty” and justice to the citizens as if we were missionaries bearing some divine plan for salvation and then beginning a plan for withdrawal before the job was even finished.
Today, we don’t even consider a plan like the invasion of Iraq without a plan for withdrawal when our “mission” there is complete. This thinking has become so prolific and so universally embraced by Americans that it is not even questioned. Anyone who suggests we should annex countries we conquer is dismissed as a Hitler clone. And the dismal future that faces America in the year 2009 is what becomes of lost souls in the fog surrounded by other lost souls in the fog.
Frequently in discussions about this issue, I hear examples introduced by debaters citing the failure of other empires that have sought growth and the ruin that has befallen their unrealistic ambitions. These attempts to expand globally are all marked by a simple flaw in thinking such as befell Alexander. One cannot rule an empire effectively beyond a size to which communication and transportation are sufficient to the task.
No such restraints face America in the 21st century. Advancements in technology make the entire world instantly accessible in the realm of communication and no spot on earth more than hours away in terms of transportation. The flaw in Alexander’s plan was that he outgrew his capabilities to govern a land as vast as he conquered. In principle, this is what my boss was referring to when he told me a plan for growth will often fail because it was undertaken with inadequate planning or insufficient considerations.
I’ve read that General George Patton was mortified by Ike’s refusal to move on Russia while it was weak at the close of WWII. With the benefit of retrospect, this appears to be a pivotal moment in history when the U.S. had the brass ring within its grasp. If Ike had taken Patton’s advice, there might have been no cold war and by now the entire world might be one big happy democracy called The United States of Earth with no more or less unrest between regions than is suffered by states in our system.
Nuclear war might no longer loom as a possible future for the planet. We might arise each morning as citizens of Earth devoted to the universal goal of settling other planets, expanding the living environment and, thereby, solving the challenge of over-population. Our global resources in a world where hundreds of armies have been distilled to one peace-keeping unit might have enjoyed savings that could have been spent, instead, on research into the inevitability of death that awaits us all and life expectancy might, by now, have increased by thousands of years.
There is no end to the glory that might await the human unit in a world where national boundaries were dissolved and but one flag was saluted on Independence Day.
But while we were on the mountain, the fog overcame us. And history may yet record that, instead of emerging whole into the clear light of day on the downgrade, we tumbled into a guardrail and fell into an abyss so deep we were, like Carthage, never heard from again, except as a footnote in history.
I’ve tried to explain this on the radio. It can’t be done. Audiences are populated by fog dwellers and there is no room in mass media for unconventional thinking that resists the tidal wash of propaganda which keeps the young and limber intellectually imprisoned. Praise be to those who make it down from the cloud and into the pristine realm of reason on the downgrade. Only there in the light of day can the truth sadly visible only to old men be plain.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
This chapter of our helpful compendium of insights seeking to illuminate citizens on the thinking of venerable gentlemen was months in the making. It will only take a few minutes now that the writing has begun. The months of preparation have been spent in pursuit of a word. It must be just the right word. There can be no room for ambiguity or misinterpretation if the gravity of this issue is to be made clear.
Until just now, the word needed to describe the insidious characteristic this chapter addresses has escaped the writer. The word will be used to identify a characteristic exhibited by certain groups of people who influence our quality of life, chiefly government agencies, politicians, corporations advertising products, political action committees who seek to shape our thinking and news organizations.
The illusive word is EFFRONTERY.
Before choosing “effrontery” other choices such as brazen boldness, presumptuousness and impudence were considered and rejected. They didn’t quite hit the mark in the struggle to express the angst suffered by the old man when he is treated by these groups of people as if he is wholly unable to think. The way in which we are spoken to by people who presume to shape our thinking is rife with examples of this effrontery, but nowhere is it better demonstrated than in the debate about health care.
New numbers out today...according to CNN's "Anderson Cooper Live" over $200 billion a year in health care is "wasted" on obesity. The reporter just announced this is wasted on such obesity-related medical problems as heart conditions, and another astronomical figure is "wasted" on lung diseases related to smoking. The NEWS reporter says, "If we would just take better care of ourselves, this money could be saved."
This makes perfect sense to people under 60-years old, despite the fact that the “reporter” should be admonished for inserting his naive conclusion into the story. Reporting it as "news", especially when it's done by the network's anchor man, alleges the statement is considered to be a "fact" by the reporter. That's a weighty statement coming from a venerable news gathering unit such as CNN. It causes viewers to actually believe a substantial savings could be realized in health care costs if people would just stop overeating and smoking.
However, Cooper's opinion peddled as a fact makes perfect sense to an UNenlightened mind. Regrettably, the old man is getting no such comfort.
It’s hard to tell if some of the human units spewing the following nonsense are surreptitiously organizing their arguments in a way that intentionally hides and obscures otherwise obvious truth, or if they are really as profoundly stupid as their argument suggests.
Personally, I don’t think anyone this thick should be allowed to walk around free on the planet, so I believe they are intentionally twisting reality in order to profit from what they believe is the stupidity of the American people. That is true effrontery.
When a public figure is heard suggesting obesity should be taxed because it leads to a strain on the health care system, the speaker is guilty of this effrontery. When he says cigarettes should be taxed for the same reason, he is, again, guilty. To be sure, such behavior as over-eating and cigarette smoking results in doctor visits and any visit to the doctor for any reason places stress on the health care system. By the logic these public figures are using, a tax on dangerous behavior of all types should be levied or, perhaps, applied according to severity.
What this argument does not consider is that dangerous behavior not only results in visits to the doctor, but it shortens the life span of those exhibiting the behavior. The argument also presumes that those spared premature death by smoking and obesity will live forever without visiting a doctor or die while healthy. It can happen, but what happens to the argument about smoking and obesity when it does not?
Heckle and Freckle were identical twins, doing business at the same DNA bank. Heckle lived a clean and sober life practicing all potentially dangerous behavior in moderation. He did not smoke. He did not drink, except where his wife made it impossible to resist. He did not drive over the speed limit, avoided extreme sports and never shouted obscenities at other drivers during rush hour. Heckle did his best to live as long as possible.
Heckle’s brother, Freckle, was a reckless thrill-seeker. He smoked a pack a day, got drunk wherever it was possible, did drugs frequently and enjoyed romance without the interference of Polyurethane or latex third parties. Freckle drove up the cost of health insurance with doctor visits about his lung cancer, rotting liver and sexually transmitted diseases until he finally died at the age of sixty from a drug overdose.
Meanwhile, Heckle was healthy through the same sixty years, stressing the system with nothing more severe than an annual checkup. But in the twenty five years after his brother’s premature death, Heckle ran up thousands and thousands of dollars in doctor visits for the brain tumor that would have affected Freckle if he’d lived long enough. The “system” took care of additional thousands of dollars in assisted living care as Heckle became frail and infirm. Taxpayers and health insurance subscribers paid for years of Heckle’s treatments for Alzheimer’s disease as he entered his eighties. It paid for special doctors, clinics, social workers and expensive drugs his brother did not live long enough to need. At the heart of the twin tragedies of Heckle and Freckle is one inescapable reality. Both eventually died as surely as they lived. And the truth about health care is that the longer one lives the greater stress he will put upon any system of health care.
The glaring reality, the undeniable truth cloaked in cleverly constructed arguments that punish people for dangerous life styles is that the quicker the citizen dies the smaller burden to the system he is. If we wish to relieve the burden on the health care system we should not punish smokers and heavy drinkers or discourage snow-boarding and bear wrestling. We should give tax breaks to smokers and drunks.
In the pale light of uncompromised reason it is plain that the more frivolously and dangerously one lives, the more savings will be enjoyed by insurance companies and, therefore, policy holders. And until at least one of us manages to completely escape death and the infirmity that precedes it, this fact trumps all the inglorious effrontery demonstrated by morons and branding wizards arguing otherwise.
An old man who has sorted all this out in the twilight of his thinking life may stare at his television and the twelve year old commentator beaming at him through perfect teeth while spewing arguments about how heavy smokers over-tax the health care system and mutter, “You monolithic idiot. Are you entirely incapable of sober deduction?” He may wonder how the government allows this person to spread such twisted thinking on public airwaves, which it presumes to safeguard from things as innocuous as dirty words. But this is an error made by the old man. He leaps to the generous presumption that the speaker does not understand how absurd his thinking construct is. He believes the speaker is merely stupid.
But what’s to be said about the millions of morons who support such muddy thinking? The answer is that they are composed almost entirely of citizens who have not lived long enough to make their way through the fog of confusion that youth produces. How does the old man, twitching with uncontrollable shakes, slobbering all over his bib and hitching up his diaper address an audience of bewildered sheep and explain they are only stupid because they have not been thinking about the problem long enough to reach the truth that resolves the rebus.
Instead, we climb aboard our wheelchair assisted SUV (made possible by a tax payer supported program for the elderly), drive to the grocery store and park in our special space (paid for by government mandated considerations for the handicapped,) mount our motorized shopping cart (financed through higher prices for the food being sold there) buy our vitamin supplements and other drugs with the assistance of insurance money supplied by young people paying premiums and pay for our food with stamps supplied by confused tax payers who think they have profited by helping us live longer. We need the stamps. Our worldly goods were auctioned off years earlier to pay doctors for health care that would never have been required if we had died of lung cancer at sixty like our infinitely more patriotic twin brother.
This chapter of our helpful compendium of insights seeking to illuminate citizens on the thinking of venerable gentlemen was months in the making. It will only take a few minutes now that the writing has begun. The months of preparation have been spent in pursuit of a word. It must be just the right word. There can be no room for ambiguity or misinterpretation if the gravity of this issue is to be made clear.
Until just now, the word needed to describe the insidious characteristic this chapter addresses has escaped the writer. The word will be used to identify a characteristic exhibited by certain groups of people who influence our quality of life, chiefly government agencies, politicians, corporations advertising products, political action committees who seek to shape our thinking and news organizations.
The illusive word is EFFRONTERY.
Before choosing “effrontery” other choices such as brazen boldness, presumptuousness and impudence were considered and rejected. They didn’t quite hit the mark in the struggle to express the angst suffered by the old man when he is treated by these groups of people as if he is wholly unable to think. The way in which we are spoken to by people who presume to shape our thinking is rife with examples of this effrontery, but nowhere is it better demonstrated than in the debate about health care.
New numbers out today...according to CNN's "Anderson Cooper Live" over $200 billion a year in health care is "wasted" on obesity. The reporter just announced this is wasted on such obesity-related medical problems as heart conditions, and another astronomical figure is "wasted" on lung diseases related to smoking. The NEWS reporter says, "If we would just take better care of ourselves, this money could be saved."
This makes perfect sense to people under 60-years old, despite the fact that the “reporter” should be admonished for inserting his naive conclusion into the story. Reporting it as "news", especially when it's done by the network's anchor man, alleges the statement is considered to be a "fact" by the reporter. That's a weighty statement coming from a venerable news gathering unit such as CNN. It causes viewers to actually believe a substantial savings could be realized in health care costs if people would just stop overeating and smoking.
However, Cooper's opinion peddled as a fact makes perfect sense to an UNenlightened mind. Regrettably, the old man is getting no such comfort.
It’s hard to tell if some of the human units spewing the following nonsense are surreptitiously organizing their arguments in a way that intentionally hides and obscures otherwise obvious truth, or if they are really as profoundly stupid as their argument suggests.
Personally, I don’t think anyone this thick should be allowed to walk around free on the planet, so I believe they are intentionally twisting reality in order to profit from what they believe is the stupidity of the American people. That is true effrontery.
When a public figure is heard suggesting obesity should be taxed because it leads to a strain on the health care system, the speaker is guilty of this effrontery. When he says cigarettes should be taxed for the same reason, he is, again, guilty. To be sure, such behavior as over-eating and cigarette smoking results in doctor visits and any visit to the doctor for any reason places stress on the health care system. By the logic these public figures are using, a tax on dangerous behavior of all types should be levied or, perhaps, applied according to severity.
What this argument does not consider is that dangerous behavior not only results in visits to the doctor, but it shortens the life span of those exhibiting the behavior. The argument also presumes that those spared premature death by smoking and obesity will live forever without visiting a doctor or die while healthy. It can happen, but what happens to the argument about smoking and obesity when it does not?
Heckle and Freckle were identical twins, doing business at the same DNA bank. Heckle lived a clean and sober life practicing all potentially dangerous behavior in moderation. He did not smoke. He did not drink, except where his wife made it impossible to resist. He did not drive over the speed limit, avoided extreme sports and never shouted obscenities at other drivers during rush hour. Heckle did his best to live as long as possible.
Heckle’s brother, Freckle, was a reckless thrill-seeker. He smoked a pack a day, got drunk wherever it was possible, did drugs frequently and enjoyed romance without the interference of Polyurethane or latex third parties. Freckle drove up the cost of health insurance with doctor visits about his lung cancer, rotting liver and sexually transmitted diseases until he finally died at the age of sixty from a drug overdose.
Meanwhile, Heckle was healthy through the same sixty years, stressing the system with nothing more severe than an annual checkup. But in the twenty five years after his brother’s premature death, Heckle ran up thousands and thousands of dollars in doctor visits for the brain tumor that would have affected Freckle if he’d lived long enough. The “system” took care of additional thousands of dollars in assisted living care as Heckle became frail and infirm. Taxpayers and health insurance subscribers paid for years of Heckle’s treatments for Alzheimer’s disease as he entered his eighties. It paid for special doctors, clinics, social workers and expensive drugs his brother did not live long enough to need. At the heart of the twin tragedies of Heckle and Freckle is one inescapable reality. Both eventually died as surely as they lived. And the truth about health care is that the longer one lives the greater stress he will put upon any system of health care.
The glaring reality, the undeniable truth cloaked in cleverly constructed arguments that punish people for dangerous life styles is that the quicker the citizen dies the smaller burden to the system he is. If we wish to relieve the burden on the health care system we should not punish smokers and heavy drinkers or discourage snow-boarding and bear wrestling. We should give tax breaks to smokers and drunks.
In the pale light of uncompromised reason it is plain that the more frivolously and dangerously one lives, the more savings will be enjoyed by insurance companies and, therefore, policy holders. And until at least one of us manages to completely escape death and the infirmity that precedes it, this fact trumps all the inglorious effrontery demonstrated by morons and branding wizards arguing otherwise.
An old man who has sorted all this out in the twilight of his thinking life may stare at his television and the twelve year old commentator beaming at him through perfect teeth while spewing arguments about how heavy smokers over-tax the health care system and mutter, “You monolithic idiot. Are you entirely incapable of sober deduction?” He may wonder how the government allows this person to spread such twisted thinking on public airwaves, which it presumes to safeguard from things as innocuous as dirty words. But this is an error made by the old man. He leaps to the generous presumption that the speaker does not understand how absurd his thinking construct is. He believes the speaker is merely stupid.
But what’s to be said about the millions of morons who support such muddy thinking? The answer is that they are composed almost entirely of citizens who have not lived long enough to make their way through the fog of confusion that youth produces. How does the old man, twitching with uncontrollable shakes, slobbering all over his bib and hitching up his diaper address an audience of bewildered sheep and explain they are only stupid because they have not been thinking about the problem long enough to reach the truth that resolves the rebus.
Instead, we climb aboard our wheelchair assisted SUV (made possible by a tax payer supported program for the elderly), drive to the grocery store and park in our special space (paid for by government mandated considerations for the handicapped,) mount our motorized shopping cart (financed through higher prices for the food being sold there) buy our vitamin supplements and other drugs with the assistance of insurance money supplied by young people paying premiums and pay for our food with stamps supplied by confused tax payers who think they have profited by helping us live longer. We need the stamps. Our worldly goods were auctioned off years earlier to pay doctors for health care that would never have been required if we had died of lung cancer at sixty like our infinitely more patriotic twin brother.
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