Maybe a bunch of old men hollering, standing up even with canes can do some good….
I am an old man. Probably a grumpy old man. Definitely an old man walking around with a mantle of shame, which is why I decided to start up this page where I, and other old men, could mumble, grumble, bitch and moan.
I am a Midwesterner. I grew up mostly Republican back when the differences between the parties, at least in a small corn-bean-pig county didn’t amount to much. I am a baby-boomer. The generation that destroyed the United States.
Never thought I’d think that last piece, but as I sit here looking out on picked-over cornfields covered in white as the sun dies behind a steel gray wall of clouds, it’s damn-well true.
We are the generation that did not understand history, never did realize that evil is never destroyed. It’s pushed back, driven underground, but it never goes away. It sits there, and it waits. It is a part of the human cycle. We didn’t get that.
We (and the “we” included Republicans then) marched for Civil Rights. Got it, checked it off. The War in Vietnam was a blood-sucking horror show that is still taking lives but back then, we boomers got it stopped so checked that off the list. Done. Pollution, which later would become the death of the planet, done. We got the EPA, from a Republican president. So, we checked that off the list then turned to making money.
We, because of either our ego or ignorance of evolution into don’t-give-a-damn, set the stage for where the county is today. The Civil Rights Act has been decimated. The EPA is gutted. We are at war again. Hate has been turned loose across the country.
We who made so much of our kids having everything have created a world where they will have less and less, and our grandchildren and great-grandchildren may not have a livable planet, let alone a democracy.
It is on us that Donald Trump, the most twisted, sick, despicable, evil man who will go down as either the worst president in our history, or the last, sits in what is left of the White House.
So, that’s why I’ve decided to get off my ass, up out of the rocker, and speak my mind and maybe bring a few of my cronies in on it. No one I sit with at the diner or pub likes what’s going on and I told them they need to do something. A couple said they might take me up on my offer to write here, to take the mumbling and grumblings out of Bert’s Diner and onto the internet.
Maybe nobody will give a damn what we say but at least we will have said it. Small consolation for all the damage we’ve done, but maybe enough to count as some level of atonement. – by Sterling Fields, retired teacher, sometimes poet.