Happy Fourth of July. I can’t say I feel much like celebrating given the current state of our society but we’re not done for yet so I suppose I will get myself up and out of the condo this evening and find myself a place from which I can see the civic fireworks as they explode over the statue of Vulcan, about a half mile down the ridge from me. Those of us over the age of sixty are, I’m sure busy comparing the state of our patriotic celebrations of today to those of the Bicentennial of fifty years ago. Those went on non-stop for over a year and everyone participated. American flags were plastered everywhere you could think to put one. The fire hydrants were specially painted to look like Uncle Sam. We had a Bicentennial Minute every evening on CBS. Of course, it was a much easier time to keep the country united. Everyone watched the same TV shows on the same three networks, comity existed in governance, and the news was limited to half an hour at six for the national and another half hour at 5:30 (repeat at 11:00) for local. If you want a look at the bicentennial in all of its mid-seventies kitschy excess, try to find the 1990 film The Spirit of 76 in which time travelers from the future led by David Cassidy (!) are sent back to 1776 but, due to a glitch, end up in 1976 instead.
The summer of 1976 was a summer of transition for me. I was fourteen and had completed middle school and would be going on to high school in the fall. I was a bit nervous. My parents had decided that I would do better at a private prep school then at the local public high school that most of my friends would be attending. So I was very much in an excited and scared mode. I also finally began to grow. I was just about five feet even when I graduated 8th grade that June and, about five foot five when I started 9th grade that September. We’re late bloomers in my family. The boys don’t grow until age 14. I was very much gawky awkward what with my legs and arms being different sizes from week to week and I began a career of orthostatic hypotension and fainting when I got up from lying down as my blood pressure was not yet used to my brain being somewhat higher than it had been and tripping every time I went up a staircase as my legs were longer than my brain understood and I wouldn’t pick my feet up high enough. It all evened out by about the middle of 11th grade but it did leave some psychologcal quirks. I was a tiny child, usually the smallest boy in my grade level all through elementary and middle school. Even though I topped out at above average height for a man, I still feel somewhat small inside and don’t always understand my height. It does, however, give me certain advantages in terms of looming.
Now in my mid 60s, I’m starting to lose my height in the way everyone does as they age and their spine changes and settles. I’m down about a half to three quarters of an inch. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. I shall not run around, in my older years claiming a height and weight I obviously do not possess unlike a certain chief executive. I have many personality traits but narcissistic personality disorder is not among them. I’m a few pounds heavier than I want to be. (It’s come creeping back a bit since I lost ten pounds with my March illness). But in general, I feel like I am in reasonable shape going into retirement. My major concern is that I do not balance as well as I should so once I get some time back, I’m thinking I need to sign up for yoga or pilates to work on that before I fall over, hit my head on a random piece of furniture, and become a meal for the cats. Speaking of going down at home. Mitch McConnell was apparently found down at home and had CPR in the field before being transported to the hospital. Mr. McConnell is 84 years old and has obviously not been in good health for several years. He appears to have survived the rescussitation but statistically, essentially no one of that age who receives field CPR ever recovers to their prior function. He will not be returning to the senate. I shall not miss him.
The shenanigans in DC are too fast and furious for me to keep track of these days. There’s some sort of State Fair on the mall which appears to be sparsely attended (and which people are being carried out of with heat stroke as you can’t bring in your own food and drink and water is $11 a bottle and there’s a heat index of well over 100). I caught one of the vapid blonde MAGA commentators (I don’t know which one – they alll look the same) stating that the Democrats had geoengineered the heat wave to make Trump look bad. Where do they find these people and why are they given air time? They’re busy arresting people for touching the Reflecting Pool claiming the botched repair job is being vandalized by nefarious actors (with no proof offered). There are plans to bulldoze the oldest part of the famous cherry trees along the Tidal Basin for a golf course. The ballroom boondoggle keeps having new grifts and taxpayer burden revealed.
When government and civic life become entirely about profit and the grift and monetization of the commons to enrich the well connected, there is a hollowing out of society and a fraying of the bonds that hold us together, united in purpose. A few more years of this, and the whole edifice may come crashing down on our heads. The young have already figured this out and are abandoning both the Republican party and the traditional neo-liberalism third way that has been the mantra of the Democratic Party for the last forty years. More than half the population can no longer afford health care. The age of first time home buyers has risen to forty. Forty percent of women of child bearing age have considered emigrating. More and more young people are foregoing children as they can’t afford them We’re trashing our future by continuously adopting policies which harm younger generations and this has never been a recipe for long term societal stability. Democratic Socialists like Mamdani are trying to create a new way of formulating progressive politics. MAGA land simply calls anything that might actually help our young people communist. It’s as if Eugene McCarthy has returned.
The next twenty-five years (also known as the rest of my life span) are going to get awfully interesting. The Boomers will start their die off in about five years and will cease to become a political force. Their hoarded societal wealth will transfer as they aren’t taking it with them but much of it will transfer into the bloated health care system as they desperately try to maintain youth and health far beyond what the dictates of biology allow. We were the one Western nation that was headed into the mid 21st century in reasonable shape demographically due to our welcoming of immigrants (pretty much all of our population growth over the last few generations is from immigration – native born fertility statistics are low). But we’re busy destroying the American Experiment which for several centuries which has always said that anyone can be an American. Come here, work hard, assimilate. The horrific stories that energe from the insta-gulags ICE has been huilding are such that I’m hoping that quite a few of the private contractors responsible end up frog marched into the Hague or some such equivalent. ICE has really upped its numbers in recent months (but have spread their operations out so they aren’t as visible. They learned a thing or two in Minneapolis). There’s something like 100,000 in custody, half a million lost their temporary protected status, and some of the loudest voices want a third of the country deported. I’m just waiting to see what happens when all of the Haitian workers in East Coast nursing homes can no longer work. Then there was the declaration that Venezuela should be made the 51st state. I can’t wait to see what MAGA land says when we have thirty million new Spanish speaking citizens who will be free to move anywhere in the US they choose.
I think it’s time for hard cider and barbecue
Life, The Universe, and Everything 