If
you’ve been reading my blog, you know that I abhor politics and
politicians.  That said, my perspective
is colored by all those same factors that color your views:  my age (and the memory of what seemed like better
times); my education (B.A. in English and a J.D.); and my personal history (I
have worked since I was a child, I have survived serious illness, and I have
achieved a modicum of professional success).

If
one is alive in contemporary America, the so-called issues of the day bombard
one daily.  An "issue" is a problem to be debated.  It is easy to get caught up
in what I call faux issues:  the economy; the war(s); political
posturing.  These are not real issues
because they are, unhappily, fundamental elements of our life: before,  now, and ever after.  Real issues honestly debated get resolved, but problems that are ingrained in our social fabric never do.  They persist, despite debate, despite laws, despite politics.  The economy goes from bad to worse and back
again all the time and has been doing that for generations; our history
includes one war after another; and politics is always the same:  shallow, self-promoting, egoistic, pompous
asses living off the rest of us.

The
real issues are what I believe drive
contemporary disgust: 

      A. The civil
society that we remember from our youth has disappeared and been replaced by
strident polarization.  Different
interest groups push their often dubious agendas and it has become politically
incorrect to even suggest they ought to shut the hell up and crawl back down
their rat hole.

n      B. We are inundated
constantly by a relentless torrent of data (and I use this word – data – in its most negative sense) from the Internet,
on computers and handheld tech devices including even “phones.”  Our lives are trivialized by these
phenomena. 

n      C. The media has
replaced the educational system as the “learning” mechanism du jour.  As teaching in the classic sense was lost to the pressure of such
contemporary programs as No Child Left Behind, the study of the old-fashioned
Three Rs (readin’ & ‘ritin’ & ‘rithmetic) was replaced by the Big E
(electronic devices).  The intellectual
void was filled by the media, thriving upon all the idiocies and irrelevancies
of our day, from the cult of celebrity to the deterioration of our language and
our ability to think for ourselves.

So
here I sit, an old man with old views. I have become my grandfather, except
that I am spending over three dollars a gallon for gas instead of thirty
cents.  But now, as then, one of the few
delights of advanced years is the curmudgeonly satisfaction of complaining
about how crappy things have become.  Although I wouldn't say that I am disgruntled with life, I am far from being gruntled.