We are all settled down in the back room of Bert’s diner for our weekly Monday breakfast of the Mumblers and the occasional guest. It was another gray, cold February morning with a coating of fresh snow over the foot or so that had fallen in the last week then turned rock hard with zero-degree temperatures. Nothing like a Midwest winter when the winds come down from Canada. I was wondering if maybe this winter was punishment from the Canadians for our president’s insults. If so, we will take it like men. We deserve it.
When Alice had plopped our universally unhealthy greasy and bread-laden breakfasts down in front of us Roscoe Clampett broke the silence of chewing.
“Well, I guess we’re done,” he said, dragging a bit of toast through the yellow of a couple of eggs over easy.
“Say what?” Will asked.
“Well, Obama said it. He said it was time for all the old farts to get the hell out of the way and turn the Democrat party over to young people,” Roscoe said.
“That is not what he said,” Walter Campbell said. “He did not say it was hard and fast that older folks did not have a place. He said they should let go of the controls and make room for younger people, and I assume that would be anyone from high school to 65 given how old some of the leading Dems are.”
“Yeh, he said we aren’t capable of knowing what the Zeitgeist is,” Will Sturgill observed. “I reckon he pegged me because I had to look it up. It’s a fancy way of saying we don’t know what the hell’s going on with most folks and their lives today.”
“That would true,” I said. “I saw the video. He said younger people face a whole different set of challenges than we did. They are facing a planet dying, an economy that doesn’t look like it’s ever going to let them buy a house or save for a kid’s college or hell, pay off their own college debt.”
“I have to admit, that every time I’d see Chuck Schumer come on with his glasses down on his nose I figured I was looking at someone who should have gone out and sat on the front porch,” Herb Stratton said. “But I notice he’s got them pushed back up on his nose now. Someone must have said something to him.”
“Yeh, but what about Bernie?” Reuben Barnes asked. “Young people were all over him in 2016 and even 2020 and 2024. He got the Zeitgeist. Hell, I voted for him in the primary.”
“I happen to agree that we ought to get out of the way,” Walter said. “You will recall my advice from earlier that we all ought to be independents, that political parties are places power-seekers go to drink wine and get their butts kissed. I know the reality is the two parties are going to rule things for a while at least, but I think the one that can form coalitions within itself is going to win.
“To form a coalition, you have to park egos, and even some issues, along the curb and figure out what the long game is,” Walter said. “I think we are a part of that coalition, but we are not going to be in the pilot’s seat at our ages. If this were earlier times, back before what we egotistically call “civilized times,” we would be the respected elders. We would sit under a tree like the Buddha and dispense wisdom. We would sit at the evening fire and pass on the history, the stories to the young who would go out and fight the wars and bring us back food.”
“All sounds good,” Dean Etheridge said. “But do you really think all those older folks who have their hands on party power are going to give it up? Look at the Dems and Republicans in this county. You have people who have been around forever, who have appointed people to all the precincts, who won’t let go. I grant you there isn’t much energy there for anything other than wine parties and fund raisers. It doesn’t work. But how the hell will younger folks get in there if older folks don’t get out? And what’s to say once in, the younger folks won’t be as big a bunch of self-centered do-nothings as the older ones?
“Well damn, Dean,” I said. “That’s a dark and hopeless view. I think the reality is that we don’t have to worry about young people taking over the party because I talk to young people at the college, I have grandchildren and they think both parties are bull shit. If they vote for one or the other it’s because they feel they don’t have choice. It’s the lesser of two evils.”
I looked over at Walter, who was smiling smugly, no doubt enjoying us making his earlier point about the folly of parties.
Roscoe weighed back in.
“Pretty simple, really. Old folks need to decide if they care more about the country than they do about their own selves. That’s going to be the test in the next couple of years. If we are going to put a stake through the hearts of these MAGA vampires then Dems and Independents need to get their shit together and win come November, in 2028 and again for quite a while after that. MAGA is like the living dead. You got to kill it about 10 times just to make sure you got it and us old farts don’t have the staying power for that anymore.”
By the time we got done thrashing all that out Alice had taken the plates away and damn near every one of us had a prostate dragging us down the hall to the rest room. Don’t know if we came to a conclusion, other than that we are old, the world we knew is in the rear-view mirror and maybe at some point we’d have to defy the instincts that were keeping us hanging on to what isn’t there anymore.
Outside it had started to snow again.