I’ve been posting less frequently this spring. Why? Partly because everything political is propaganda. It’s increasingly hard to know what is true; so why comment on the unknown? But there’s something more. This is a moment when I choose to step back and look at the world as an overall whole. Here I am, surrounded by a million trees, have I seen the forest? Have you?
One part of the forest I have seen is this:
For some individuals it is spring, for others it is autumn. Everyone’s clock runs differently. The grasping and myopic think it all ends with them. In their autumn, they cruelly infect the vigorous with their own decrepitude.
Many years ago I coined a phase of mismanagement. I observed it in the Soviet Union’s decline:
“The boss is fit and healthy right until he was dead two weeks ago.“
I can’t remember which of the many geriatric geezers piloting the USSR’s empty husk in circles brought about that observation. Maybe it was Nikita Khrushchev or Leonid Brezhnev? It was a long time ago. I remember videos of men who were at best teetering. These were narrated by newscasters uttering words as if the paper thin beings on the screen were lions. (In modern times nobody sane gets “news” from TV. If you do; stop.)
Even now, if you Google Khrushchev or Brezhnev you’ll see a photo of their handsome youth. You won’t see their weakened and declining state. (That applies universally, if you type Dianne Feinstein into Wikipedia you’ll get a carefully composed photo that’s 19 years old.) As for Khrushchev or whoever it was. I’m remembering his autumn and it was a very bitter one. In just a few years their 70 year old Marxist bullshit-fest would collapse for good.
For me, it was spring. I was a youthful American Curmudgeon enjoying Pac Man and Cola Wars. All through that fine spring I was told I’d get incinerated in unavoidable nuclear hell. Why? Because geezers had deemed it necessary.
It didn’t happen.
Nobody apologized for spending the first twenty years of my life bitching at me about geopolitical destabilization. Why did they do it? Did they think some kid on a Huffy bike was somehow responsible. Did they think I’d weep when they shuffled off their mortal coil?
For that matter I’ve been bitched at about “the end of the world” my entire time in the world. It never happens… or rather it ends for some and is born anew for others.
Younger generations know nothing of my youthful “end of the world”. “Mutually assured destruction” is just a plot device in that old move where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a bad ass robot… you know the first one, before they made a fake and gay CGI / geezer remake.
Today’s youth have their own “total upheaval”. Their school was shut down, they were socially isolated, they never got to swig a cold brew illegally by the campfire, and if they notice a girl is hot they’d better watch their ass if HR is around (assuming of course they have a job at all). They were injected, masked, and spent two years pretending to learn by laptop. Fauchi dumped theoretical hellfire on them just as much as Russkie nukes dumped on me.
For the weak and evil, their declining cold dark autumn is always looking for a sunny spring day; in hopes of ruining it.
The assholes that do it never recant. As nobody apologized to me, nobody will apologize to Millennials or Gen Z.
Back in my springtime I felt the pity at the very old when they seemed, for want of a better word, driven or unfulfilled. The end of Pope John Paul II’s time seemed tragic to me. I’m not a catholic, I’ve got no horse in the race. Maybe the guy was awesome. Maybe he was a jerk. Not my call. However, I remember feeling sad when they wheeled an obviously very very tired man around. I felt like maybe he was in hell.
I pictured a Pope’s job to be contemplating God’s wonders. Shouldn’t he be resting peacefully in a garden, enjoying the wisdom of religious understanding and passing on what benevolent knowledge he could? Whenever I saw him it looked like the poor bastard had just spent all week in a board meeting sorting out administrative squabbles. Suppose you’re the direct conduit to the almighty, in your last years should you be in a garden or harnessed to a desk? This was in the time of widespread sexual abuse within the church (or at least when it became known). Did he know? Was it the same as the travails at the Kremlin. “It’s all a house of cards… God help us.”
What do I know? I’ve more humble life goals than ruling the Soviet Union or the Vatican.
Because I’m Gen X, I have to mention Fidel Castro. He spent the last decade of his life sending out press releases that he was fit as a fiddle. Everybody and their dog knew he was barely kicking; it was embarrassing. More recently Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a rock star of “Judicial Activism” was actively castigated by her faithful… for dying in office. A few years before that, Robert Byrd and Strom Thurmond burned through a human lifetime to more or less die on the job. If the grim reaper hadn’t clocked them out they’d still be there; human dust grasping power at a committee meeting.
The boss is fit and healthy… no matter what.
I see that cycle again. Consider President Biden, of whom it’s is legally unquestionable that he won more votes than any other candidate in history.(It is literally unquestionable, as in you risk finding your ass in jail should you ask too many questions.) The man is in excellent health and guiding things with the mental acuity of a chess grand master. Everyone looks forward to his upcoming 18 months of many popular campaign events before adoring crowds. This will be followed by 4 more years of wise and successful service.
Suuuuure… Look at him. Does he look happy? He looks like he shit his pants and got lost looking for the podium. No pleasant time to relax in the garden for that guy.
A small shadow of a bigger shadow, U.S. Senator John Fetterman is in the same boat. He suffered a stroke before his election and spent a good portion of February in the hospital. Some people’s clock runs fast. Such a shame. Fetterman can barely read a sentence and he stumbles in ways that would get you a C- in “public speaking 101”. It is his autumn. As our Chief Executive demonstrates, oration is not necessary; a pulse and a ballot is enough.
Fetterman is a train wreck. Dude just stands there like Lurch, dressed worse than a college freshman, looking confused, and likely just as confused as he looks. Like I said, he’d barely pass a required freshman public speaking course at a flyover state agricultural college. Yet there he is, a Senator. Or rather a supposedly fit and healthy meat puppet in the service of whomever does his thinking. If my head were scrambled I might want to stay off stages. Perhaps go fishing or just sit on the beach watching the waves; but that’s just me.
Senator Dianne Feinstein was hospitalized for “minor” issues and emerged looking remarkably like Darth Sidious; except more confused. We pretend this is totally normal. I’d pay good money to watch Biden, Feinstein, and Fetterman have a conversation amongst themselves.
My point is, at least some of a person’s fate is made by their own hand. Part of that is to let go of the wheel when you can no longer drive.
We are to be “led” by geriatric meatheads who refuse to accept time. It results in the absolute dipshit leadership were seeing. People who haven’t had a new idea since the internet was a toy for nerds aren’t going to suddenly rise above. If they had wisdom, they’d have already used it. They’re going to create problems and then use the same damn solutions they’ve been using since they were sentient.
What’s worse is that they’re broadcasting their futile struggling against mortality onto the rest of the world. We, who are living and thriving and growing, must wriggle our way through the human mulch. As we do, it’s important to learn what not to do. Remember the old decaying sad being that shit on the young? Don’t be that guy. Be the one that smiles at children and appreciates the trees.
The trees are flowering. For them… it is spring.