What happened to Mitch McConnell yesterday and to me 35 years ago.
An insightful article by Robert Reich, who experienced something similar.
While I'm sure that I'm beating a dead horse on this, this is yet again evidence that we do come with a wear out date, and we ought to accordingly be careful. So should society. A huge amount of our societal deposit of power is in the truly ancient.
Mind you, I don't agree with Reich on much of McConnell's record being repugnant. He did a great job, in my view, with the Supreme Court. That's one of the things that Reich now doubt feels is skunking up the room. And by this point, McConnell's presence may truly be necessary as a brake on what would occur if Donald Trump regains the White House, as McConnell seems to be able to control Senate Republicans, which in part has kept the Senate from becoming the circus that the House of Representatives currently is.
McConnell is 81.
Our senior Senator is 71. Our junior Senator is 68. Our Congressman is 60.
The world is enduring a really hot summer this year. This is hard to ignore.
Sixteen young Montanans have sued their state for embracing fossil fuels in the face of climate change. Nothing like that has happened in Wyoming. I don't know what the average Wyomingite under 30 feels about this issue, or believes about it, but I'll bet it's not the same for Wyomingites who are 60 and over. We probably worry about it, if we do, in the context of our children and their children. Of course, if you are our youngest member of Congress, which isn't to say young, you have no children to worry about.
It used to be wars that caused this sort of observation. Old men started them, it was claimed, and young men fought them. Now it seems that really old men start them and young men and women, given that we've grown more barbarous in recent decades and included women in this horror, fight them. The "old men" of the 1940s mostly weren't all that old, in comparison to what we have now. Anyhow, I really wonder what approach to many things we'd be taking if people who were at least under 50 years of age were at the wheel.
Would that this was so.
On a somewhat related item, I've really been noticing recently that collapses that should be obvious to those close to collapsing aren't, at least to some extent. I guess if people have relied upon somebody for a long time, they'll just ride that horse until it collapses, and then they're surprised. Even the warnings that the metaphorical horse gives, as it stumbles or becomes blurry eyed, don't mean much. The horse is just whipped into carrying on. When it rolls over and dies, the rider is surprised.
I've been noticing recently that certain people turn everything very much to themselves.
Maybe everyone does to some degree. People are told a story, and they want to show it's relevant to them as well, so they tell something related.
That's not really what I mean.
Rather, because for most of us our own frustrations and sufferings are the ones we really understand, it's hard for some not to use those as an absolute yardstick.
Indeed, I've witnessed recently somebody who fits into the category above, they're heavily burdened and collapsing, and they're pretty much trying to get some support. However, when they seek to get it, they instead get tales, mostly repeats, of the other persons' frustrating, but not really epic, work life. While it would be a poor comparison, it would be like a person going into the emergency room and telling the receptionist that they have a gunshot wound, only to get a really detailed reply like "I know, let me tell you about how slow the lunch line is here".
In this case, the suffering soul is pretty much the plow mule for the household, and the mule is on its last legs. It's pretty obvious, but it must not actually be within the household, or they're so used to it, it goes unobserved. But the signs are sure there. The collapse is coming, and I don't know how to stop it. Only the people driving the mule probably can, and they don't seem to believe it's going to happen.
Of course, it's really hard to appreciate that giants fall. Some big tree grows in the forest, and It's always there. It gets old, starts to die, and then one day a windstorm comes by and knocks it over. People are surprised until they look at the photos of it when it was in its vigor.
Some people are horrible about keeping secrets.
I don't mean that they can't keep them, I mean that they love secretes too much.
There are things in the world that need to be kept secret. Some occupations have secret keeping as a feature of their nature, such as doctors, priests, and lawyers.
But other people just adore secrets. They make secret information solely for the sake of making it secret.
My long-suffering spouse is one of these people. She loves secrets.
I was reminded of this recently as I have a medical procedure coming up. It's not a secret, why would it be? But she was keeping it a secret from her family. That's really nifty, of course, for me as I don't keep stuff like this secret at all, and I don't have any concept why a person would do that. Of course, it caught up with me when I was texting to my father-in-law, as he was at a cattle sale. I mentioned it as I thought he knew. My mother-in-law was calling in an instant, to my wife.
Why was this a secret?
I don't know, but that was bullshit, and I have repeatedly told my wife that I hate this "this is a secret" crap. It's so ingrained in her character, however, that it's impossible to break. Minor routine information is secret to outside parties.
This is aided by the fact, however, that she's good at keeping secrets, a fact that's further aided by her being bad at conveying necessary information. I'll often get really important news about somebody weeks after it's conveyed to her.
"Bob is dying of the Grip", I'll learn. Oh, when did we learn this? Weeks ago.
Or, "don't forget, this weekend we're hauling cattle". Eh? I've already committed myself to working this weekend, when did you learn this? Yeah, weeks ago. "I forgot to tell you".
On the other side, I guess, I've come to absolutely detest secrets. Only things that legitimately need to be kept secret. I guess having lived a life of professionally keeping secrets, while watching lots of people keep stuff they shouldn't keep secret until it blows up in their face, has made me detest them.
Oh, well.
