My rant against gerontocracy (which flirts with idiocracy) turned out to be timely, as various events reminded people that the organizers of our little conflagration are angry oldsters with complexes. Russian and Ukrainian youth are in dreams deferred mode, whereas US youths aren’t facing a draft at least. There’s empathy all around for the subjugated youth at the hands of tyrannical geriatrics.
During militaristic times, advances in civil rights bog down, because the people freeze into military hierarchies, become top down. Bottom up reforms get stymied as the commanders get bossy and send grunts to the front. If you had wanted more egalitarian democracy and more privileges and rights for both minors and adults alike, then outward war was misbegotten.
We’re looking at the civil right, the human freedom, to not be abused by ideologues who believe it’s their job to hatch and execute plans for all the rest of us. We’re the extras. If you’re not of a mind to be stuffed in a nasty old tank and sent into some stupid old fashioned tank battle, I understand. You’d rather not have your life ruined by morons, I get it.
I’m not typecasting all old people as misguided. A lot of them live according to obsolete thought patterns, true, but oldsters also have more hindsight, more experience, and in many cases more time to ponder and rethink. A good way to get out from under gerontocracy is to listen to oldsters telling how. Remember how MAD magazine used to leak the secrets of PR gurus (ad men, mad men of Madison Avenue), making allies among kids like me, just starting across the minefield of adulthood.
