An Ounce of Prevention

July 26, 2018 (637 words)

As a charter remember of the “never been sick a day in his life” club, the last few years have been a humbling experience for me. The decline started innocently enough, as it usually does, with fading eyesight and the inability to hear. These afflictions are commonly known as “they keep making the type smaller,” and “everyone is starting to mumble.”

Lately I am also experiencing an intermittent and unnerving loss of balance, no longer the fairly athletic and reasonably coordinated specimen of earlier days. My endurance and stamina, a source of inordinate pride for so long, has now dwindled to practically nil. And my once steady gait has turned into an awkward hobble. Just the other day someone said “you look like an old Amish guy walking around.”

The case of shingles I contracted earlier this year is still with me. One effect of this lingering (minor) ailment is the way the bottom half of my torso feels disconnected from the top half. There is a horizontal band of mild stomach/back pain that is separating my body in two, a most peculiar sensation.

Now comes word that I have a condition that will probably require surgery. What exactly is going on here?

Well, nothing new or revelatory, as it turns out. My corporal shroud is merely going the way of all flesh. Years ago I remember hearing the elderly writer Mary McCarthy remark that “the deterioration of the organism is not pleasant.” I am beginning to understand what she meant.

One is also reminded of the observation made by that great American philosopher, Rodney Dangerfield, who said “I figure if I take real good care of myself eventually I’ll get sick and die.”

This is, more or less, the theme of Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book, Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, The Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer. At seventy-six years of age, Ms. Ehrenreich has concluded, among other things, that she is old enough to die.

She no longer bothers with annual exams, cancer screenings, or any other measure “expected of a reasonable person with health insurance.” For this best-selling author there will be no more mammograms, no more tedious lectures, and no more pawing physicians.

“Not only do I reject the torment of a medicalized death,” Ms. Ehrenreich tells us, “but I refuse to accept a medicialized life.”

Many of us feel the same way. And it’s not grounded in any disrespect or lack of appreciation for our dedicated healthcare professionals, who knock themselves out to keep us going. It’s just that not everybody has longevity as their number one goal in life.

I am told my long-ago best friend, Jim Gillis, who passed away in March, had contracted some form of cancer but decided not to do anything about it. We had fallen out of touch, as they say, and I only learned of his death a month after his funeral Mass.

Jim’s response to his diagnosis immediately flashed across my mind when I was informed recently of an uninvited mass that has taken up residency on my kidney. But unlike my old friend, I guess I am not quite ready to check out just yet. Give me another twelve years, though, when I would be rounding the bend on seventy-six, and I may be aligned perfectly with Ms. Ehrenreich’s sense of being more than ready to depart this mortal coil, thank you very much.

At this rate, considering the accumulation of physical defects I seem to be acquiring, I certainly can’t see myself making it to eighty-five the way my father did. Or to eighty-eight, the way the Italian woman who raised me did. But then who knows, fate may prove me wrong.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.
July 26, 2018

Conservative Confusion Continues

July 16, 2018 (1,303 words) The inability of conservatives to properly delineate the historical fault lines of our cultural problems is why we find ourselves in such disarray. They continue to misdiagnose its origins, and mash together categories that should be separated. They lack discernment, and this leaves them toothless, repeating the same slogans over and over again. When what they should be doing is engaging the citizenry, and shedding light on the situation. The latest perpetrator of confusion who has crossed my path is David D. Corey, PhD., a Professor of Political Philosophy at Baylor University. His essay The Paradox of War and Culture Wars is featured in the latest edition of Principles, the bi-monthly publication of Christendom College that arrived in yesterday’s mail. Mr. Corey explains: “On the very front lines of the culture wars, we find two groups of elite soldiers arrayed against each other in heated combat. On one side is the Progressive Secularist who stands for liberation from the chains of traditions, especially religious tradition.” Here we are, just two sentences in, and already the good professor has steered us into a gapping pothole. “On the other side stands the orthodox Christian. He is for preserving the institutions and practices that have for untold generations kept humans stable, healthy, and holy.”

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… continuing to repeat a superficial analysis

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Repeating this superficial yet morally-charged analysis does us all a disservice. We need to peel back the onion a little further. “Liberation from the chains of tradition” is something the entire modern world is guilty of, not just the Progressive Secularist. But orthodox Christians such as David Corey have gotten very comfortable ignoring their unique contribution to the rebellion. They are content to assume the moral high ground and leave it at that. To properly discern the penumbral totality, we need to widen our lens to encompass the last five hundred years, instead of a tight focus on the last two hundred and fifty years our academics and journalists seem to favor. Before “liberal” and “conservative” ever came into being, there were believers and apostates. This was back when all believers were of the Catholic persuasion, since that was the only game in town. While putting belief into practice had always been an uphill battle, there was nevertheless a general societal consensus the struggle was worth the effort. But the apostates continued to chip away at the consensus. They insisted it was belief itself that was to blame for the dire state of mankind. And the hierarchal Catholic Church, as primary administrator of said belief, was unanimously designated as public enemy number one. Thus the only “chain of tradition” we were ever liberated from was religious. There were not multiple chains of tradition, as in Professor Corey’s opening formulation.

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… the only “chain of tradition” was always religious

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Or to be a bit more precise, we were all liberated from having to hue to the tenets of the Catholic Church. Such as that old chestnut about how our will should be used to steer our emotions and desires away from an unfortunate tendency to indulge in one or more of the seven deadly sins. After the revolution, what took the place of Catholicism as the accepted operating system of society was an ideology known as “classical liberalism.” In place of the Catholic emphasis on the common good, classical liberalism gained adherents by focusing on emancipating the individual from authority, custom, law, and tradition. To apply a few broad strokes, this is what the Renaissance was all about – rejecting the Christian (Catholic) ethos in favor of a return to a pre-Christian, pagan ethos. The Protestant Reformation filled in a few important details, by establishing “individual conscience” as the only arbiter of right and wrong. Adam Smith’s Enlightenment version of capitalism provided a fresh, new intellectual justification to the pagan preference of looking out for number one. And so modernity was off and running. What distinguishes us from the Middle Ages in the minds of most people today is the expansion of “personal freedom,” of course, but more specifically how all that new-found freedom has led to a remarkable increase in the material well-being of average citizens. It is an economic yardstick we use to measure history. And it is the economic question that has created all our cultural problems.

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… we all rebelled against tradition

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Before we morphed into opposing camps of liberal and conservative we were all together as one. We all were busy promoting Professor Corey’s “liberation from the chains of tradition.” For hundreds of years this liberation expressed itself most readily in the way we turned our backs on a concern for the common good. We were all quite happy doing our own thing, with no one or nothing looking over our shoulder to hold us back. Under this scenario the favored and the advantaged, always in the vanguard of every era, used the new breathing room to accelerate their material advances. In addition to the raw barbarism and brute force applied in earlier times, the advanced technique of leverage was now employed to nudge things their way. This kept the proceedings on the up-and-up, making everything feel so much more civilized. But the admittedly smoother style still amounted to a raw, unmitigated exploitation of those less fortunate, or less intelligent. All this came together in a special way with our country’s founding, which institutionalized the tenets of classical liberalism. The rougher edges of the radical ideology, as promoted by the likes of Franklin, Jefferson, and others, were glossed over with a patina of watch-maker Christianity favored by the likes of Adams and Washington.

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… coming together in a special way at our Founding

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Eventually, here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, the disenfranchised rabble awoke to how their modest pursuit of happiness was being severely constrained by the familiar forces of exploitation, greed, and selfishness. The negative impact of these old stand-bys had not subsided one little bit under the new world order. The Progressive Secularist we today cast aspersions on actually began life as a 19th Century reaction to an untenable economic situation. The early Protestants saw their material advancement as a sign they were saved and would be going to heaven. This pseudo-religious justification soon burned off, however, and the national pastime reverted to the age-old desire to do as well for oneself in this life as possible. The “haves” eventually started to justify their success in Darwinian terms of inevitability. The first “liberals,” then, were those who objected to the economic injustice being perpetrated by the first “conservatives.” The latter group came to see themselves as traditionalists, preserving and implementing the enlightened ideas of economic freedom and religious freedom enshrined in our great Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Yes, it’s true, as modernity rolled into the 20th Century, “liberals” adopted the litany of wayward causes they have come to be associated with, such as reproductive choice and marriage equality. That’s unfortunate, to say the least. It allows the casual dismissal of their long-held, principled concern for social justice. Guilt by association is a powerful influencer over those unable to parse things out and think clearly. What has hamstrung today’s high-minded conservatives is their unexamined acceptance of economic concepts such as enlightened self-interest. They don’t seem to realize that buying into “maximum personal freedom” when it comes to economic behavior is what gives free rein to a well-established deadly sin such as greed. So in their own misguided way they are as guilty of moral turpitude as the liberals they hold in such contempt. Needless to say, this oversight undermines the integrity of otherwise laudable conservative positions on such things as traditional marriage and the sanctity of human life. How is it that so many political theorists have no understanding of this? Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr. July 16, 2018

Tariffs and Trade Wars

July 13, 2018 (1,658 words)

Given the contentious nature of our adversarial political system, the custom has always been for the opposition party, the one not currently in power, to go out of its way to find fault with the ruling party.

Over the course of the last few administrations, however, the 24/7 news cycle and the advent of social media has turned the occasional bit of pointed criticism into a barrage of non-stop scorn.

The rabid base of our two major parties may thrive on this high-decibel mud-slinging, but most of us are worn thin by the screeching and constant strife.

The unusual way President Trump conducted his 2016 campaign, and has executed his office since being inaugurated in January 2017, has only exacerbated the partisan caterwauling. And you have to admit, the man does make an easy target.

His liberal critics, even when foaming at the mouth, usually have a point. And his conservative apologists are often terribly unconvincing, as they try to normalize our President’s impetuous rants and spin his off-the-wall actions as the work of just another praise-worthy statesman.

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… the man does make an easy target

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But given all that, and given Mr. Trump’s awkward attempts to bluster his way through complex subjects he appears to have little-to-no feel for, he did strike a chord during the campaign with average wage-earners who responded to his occasional populist forays. Those forays prompted many such average wage-earners – me included – to roll the dice and take a chance on a pointy-elbowed political novice.

As our President now attempts his first concrete policy initiatives aimed at addressing the enormous trade deficit the U.S. racks up every year, it’s easy to write this off as just another misstep on his part, just another bumble. The consensus on both sides of the aisle seems to be that international trade is yet one more area where Mr. Trump is proving to be in over his head.

But then even a blind squirrel finds the occasional chestnut, and a broken clock is right at least twice a day.

By which I mean, the problem with digging in our heels and unequivocally writing someone off – in this case, a President – is that we deny ourselves the opportunity to parse out each individual situation as it presents itself, where some truth might just be concealing itself in what appears to be full-blown error.

Yes, we can all agree in today’s world of international supply chains, everything is connected to everything else in an unprecedented fashion. Slapping tariffs on “imported goods” is not the straightforward solution to improving a domestic economy it may have once been in earlier times.

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… considering the national interest

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But does that mean we should allow the enormous trade deficit we incur annually to go on, and continue to grow, ad infinitum? Is there nothing we can do to create a more balanced exchange with our various trading partners? Isn’t trying for a better balance in the national interest?

Ah, yes, the national interest. If you think about it, the learned commentary we have heard so far amounts to a defense of the status-quo on the part of the international business community. And that’s fine, as far as it goes. But there is more to this picture than meets the eye.

CLICHÉ #1
Assigning tariffs on imports will cause consumer prices to rise. Fair enough. What price would you, the average consumer, be willing to pay to strengthen the domestic economy? A detailed evaluation of this question should be made part of the discussion.

CLICHÉ #2
Since so many American manufacturers sell their products abroad, and also have plants in various other countries, any tariff the U.S. applies to imports will hurt the bottom line of these American manufacturers. Okay, but are reduced sales and/or reduced profits the massive problem we are being told they are? Must we continue to sacrifice our domestic market to enhance the profitability of international corporations?

CLICHÉ #3
The repercussions of import tariffs will be a reduction in sales, which will lead to a reduction in jobs. This should probably be listed as cliché #1, since the threat of “job losses” routinely gets bandied about to strike fear in the heart of the average voter.

Look, I realize this is a very complicated subject, the solution to which is far above my pay grade. But even a casual observer can deduce things are not quite as connect-the-dots simple as the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers makes them out to be. Consider remarks it made to the U.S. Commerce Department on June 27:

”Tariffs will lead to increased producer costs, increased producer costs will lead to increased vehicle costs, increased vehicle costs will lead to fewer sales and less tax receipts, fewer sales will lead to fewer jobs, and those fewer jobs will significantly impact many communities and families across the country.”

This presumes that everything is hunky-dory with our communities and families as things stand now. The problem, if I may be so bold, is that our learned commentators are still presuming “what is good for General Motors is good for the country,” as it was thought to be in the early 1950s. Well, my friend, a lot of water has gone over the dam since then.

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… a lot of water has gone over the dam since the 1950s

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This same trade group for domestic and foreign automakers fears any new levies could end up “isolating U.S. businesses like G.M. from the global market that helps preserve and grow our strength here at home.” Just whose strength is under discussion here? The auto industry, like so many others, is quick to warn of job losses from policies it doesn’t like, but is slow to reward workers when times are good.

This group predicts a twenty-five percent tariff on imported cars, the high end of what has been proposed, could increase the average price of a new vehicle import by $5,800.00. That sounds like a lot of money, right? But if you keep that new car for five years the feared increase amounts to approximately $100.00 per month, which now sounds more like “coffee money.” And that’s at the high end of what is being proposed. So what’s the big deal?

The handy refrain of “increased consumer costs will mean fewer sales which will result in job losses” is being trotted out once again, as a reliable public relations cover. As if the auto industry, among many others, has as its primary concern the American consumer and wage-earner.

When in fact what we have is a system which exhibits a relentless focus on the maximization of profits and return to investors. This is paramount, sacrosanct even, while the percentage of a successful corporation’s working capital spent on wages and benefits for average American wage-earners is the last thing these organizations take into consideration.

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… slow to reward workers when times are good

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This is the unspoken reality we never hear about. This is the reality being carefully avoided by the standard free market chatter which is designed to nip in the bud any discussion of bringing down our trade deficit in general, or in applying any sort of tariff on imports, in particular.

In case you are wondering, I have no idea how to fix all this, how to balance the scales a little better between corporate profits and community/family well-being. But I do know we need to take a different approach. And the first step forward in that journey is backing away from the familiar libertarian talking points we can all recite in our sleep.

Just for the record, I stopped being enamored with politicians a while ago. Some are better than others. Most have their good days and their bad days. I have come to the conclusion the underlying problems we face cannot be solved by either of the standard political proscriptions of “liberal” or “conservative” we invest so much of our energy in.

Only when we address the adversarial nature of enlightened self-interest that is our country’s Holy Grail will we start to experience true relief.

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… seeking true relief from an adversarial system

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Those of us who still watch a little broadcast television are currently being treated to an appealing commercial featuring a handsome British actor by the name of Clive Owen. In the course of this short presentation Mr. Owen informs us that successful businesses make the world a better place. I absolutely believe this to be a true statement. A successful business can indeed be a boon to society.

Now those successful businesses must tackle the challenge of managing run-away profit expectations on the part of Wall Street analysts, and those of their owners, executives, managers, board of directors, stock-holders, or equity investors. So that other, more humane considerations can enter into the picture.

President Trump may indeed be feeling his way along on this tariff thing, as he seems to be doing in so many other areas of national and international policy. And, you may have noticed, applying a light touch is not what he does best. He seems to relish being the proverbial bull in the china shop.

In this particular instance, though, maybe we should rejoice and be glad our unconventional leader is causing a ruckus in the arena of international trade.

Who would have thought such a well-known friend of Wall Street and the world of high finance would return to one of his loose-lipped campaign promises and attempt such a thing?

What’s that you say? This is nothing more than the latest in an ongoing stream of mad-cap pandering to a deplorable base? If the current salvo ends up cutting into the trade deficit even a little bit, and restores even a semblance of balance between corporate profits and community/family well-being, then the blind squirrel will have found a chestnut.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.
July 13, 2018

The Big Pay-Off

July 10, 2018 (1,037 words) For the last forty-five years religious conservatives distraught over the legalization of abortion have employed a three-step approach to national politics. Elect a pro-life Republican as President. Hope he or she will appoint like-minded Supreme Court justices when the opportunity presents itself. Then hope a critical mass of such jurists will eventually overturn the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 that has been a scourge upon our land. This strategy has proven to be less than flawless, as not all of those past Republican appointees have panned out as planned. Certainly one would have to include the just-retired Justice Anthony Kennedy in that group of disappointments. Yet here we are, a mere sixteen months into the most unlikely and unconventional of Republican administrations, on the verge of a second straight seemingly iron-clad nomination that might make the long-awaited reversal possible, and secure a solid conservative majority on the high court for a generation to come. The expectation that now exists in certain quarters is palpable. This suddenly-within-reach outcome would make the awkward, impolite presidential posturing generated to this point by our learning-on-the-job, narcissist-in-chief worth all the aggravation and embarrassment, wouldn’t it? One can be sure every religious conservative worth his or her salt will no doubt answer that question in the affirmative, without hesitating for a moment. And to be clear I, too, long for the day when Roe v. Wade is overturned, and hope it might be happening on the morrow. But I no longer see this single, earth-shattering legal maneuver as the decisive end game I once thought it to be. Or as many pro-life warriors apparently still consider it to be. To my mind things have gotten muddy, from a philosophical point of view. All the wires are crossed.

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… all our wires have gotten crossed.

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Certainly the first job of a responsible government is to “legislate morality,” contrary to what liberal critics say. But in a pluralist democracy the government can only legislate a morality the majority willingly agrees to. This is the essence of pluralism. We all get to weigh in on what constitutes right and wrong, on what laws we will allow ourselves to be ruled by. Our current socially-acceptable notion of “reproductive choice,” while appalling to some of us, is merely an extreme version of the bedrock concept known as individual emancipation our great nation was founded on. What complicates this particular matter even further is the way so many of us, schooled as we are in the logic of personal freedom, can’t bring ourselves – especially after forty-five years of legal access – to demand abortion be outlawed, even if we would never consider such a grisly procedure for ourselves. “A woman’s right to choose” is a powerful argument, given our unique heritage of rugged individualism. Of course this appeal to individualism is most often deployed by conservatives when calling for limited government. Yet it’s the liberals who are referencing the need for limited government in this instance, specifically wanting to “keep government out of the bedroom.”

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… conservative arguments, now being employed by liberals.

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Religious conservatives especially decry the “lifestyle” abortion. That is, when the decision is made to terminate a pregnancy so as not to interfere with educational or career goals. But again, these types of abortions are the product of an “enlightened self-interest” that seeks “the pursuit of happiness” above all else. These are principles cherished by conservatives who worship the founders who first articulated them. We need to unravel these unacknowledged contradictions if we ever intend to get at the heart of the abortion debate. And if our new-and-improved Supreme Court does find a way to reverse Roe, we should all be prepared to launch into our best, most compassionate converting-hearts-and-minds mode, to avert the civil war that is sure to ensue. America has become fertile ground for abortion. One reason why is the way the aforementioned emancipation of the individual now means we each get to define for ourselves the very meaning of life. Justice Kennedy eloquently elaborated on this theme in a famous 1992 decision in which he sided with the liberals to create a majority. This squishy, hippy-dippy worldview happens to dovetail nicely with an embrace of the still-with-us sexual revolution, and with the promotion of that revolution among our young people. Our liberal opinion-makers have confidently told us this about-face in how we should conduct ourselves will lead to a happier and more psychologically-mature existence for all concerned. Who needs modesty, when you can let it all hang out and have fun. But more than any intellectual claim abortion may make on our minds, it is the gut-check that is one’s economic reality that drives the majority of women who seek an untimely end to a pregnancy.

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… economic anxiety drives the majority of abortions.

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Many such women are “unattached.” They worry about their own lack of economic stability, the lack of economic stability on the part of their significant other, or of the casual acquaintance responsible for leaving this calling card behind. Many women in sound marriages and stable relationships also suffer from severe economic anxiety. In their minds (and the minds of their husbands), given their present family circumstances, they simply cannot afford a child – or another child – at this time. This is the major disconnect in the conservative opposition to abortion. While convinced they occupy the moral high ground, these erstwhile believers fail to account for a simple fact. The laissez-faire economic agenda that promotes “every man for himself” has exacerbated economic injustice exponentially over the last forty-five years. It favors the clever go-getters, while leaving the slow-but-steady in the dust. Liberals may rightly be assigned blame for the loosening of social mores that has led to promiscuity, resulting in unintended and unwanted pregnancy. But it is so-called conservatives who are to blame for the economic anxiety that fuels the majority of abortions performed in this or any other country. By all means we should seek high court decisions and other legislation that limits access to abortion. But let’s not kid ourselves that such fancy footwork will solve the larger problem. Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr. July 10, 2018

Great Falls, Montana

July 6, 2018 (778 words)

Ever since Budd Schulberg’s lacerating 1958 screenplay for A Face In The Crowd, and the 1968 Joe McGinniss bestseller, The Selling Of The President, and the 1972 vehicle for Robert Redford, The Candidate, we’ve all been hip to the idea that public figures are not always what they seem.

We have known for some time that politicians, in particular, are sold to us like any other consumer product. Images are shaped and molded by teams of handlers who whisper sweet nothings into the ear of the current contestant. The primary objective is always to convey sincerity. Being able to fake that is the well-known key to success in political life.

Meanwhile the public yearns for even a glimmer of authenticity, the unrequited search for which reluctantly brings us to a consideration of our current president, Mr. Donald J. Trump.

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… in search of a glimmer of authenticity

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One thing even his fiercest critics have to admit about President Trump is that his prickly public persona cannot possibly be the work of a professional image maker. We may recoil at his rather uncomfortable brand of authenticity, but there is no denying we are experiencing the real man, as he has proven to be thoroughly incapable of filtering himself in any way, shape, or form.

It just so happens that the current leader of the greatest nation in the free world held a rally in Great Falls, Montana yesterday afternoon, which was broadcast live on several cable news outlets. The time difference meant the telecast was happening in prime time on the East Coast, where I live. Presumably this rally was being held to promote a local candidate who is on the ballot in this fall’s mid-term election.

No doubt this is the standard type of pre-election appearance every sitting President has made in the past, as the busy presidential schedule may allow. But I doubt any previous president conducted such a local political rally the way Mr. Trump choose to do so yesterday.

In the few minutes I could stand to watch, our President was once again reliving the triumph of his come-from-behind rookie campaign of two years ago. To hear him speak you would have thought it all went down last month. He started the roll call of “important states we unexpectedly won” by reminding everyone he was the first Republican to win Montana – and its game-changing three electoral votes – since Eisenhower did so in the 1952 campaign.

This is not to belittle the sparsely-populated state of Montana, which is a stunningly beautiful place everyone should try to visit at their earliest convenience. Or the historic city of Great Falls, which is still a good town to hang one’s hat and make a life. I happen to know the current mayor there, an old high school hitch-hiking buddy by the name of Bob Kelly.

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… emulating the altruism of an old hitch-hiking buddy

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Mr. Kelly, you should know, is a retired municipal bond trader who is dedicating his second act to public service, trying to make his corner of the world a better place for all its residents. Even though my old friend was an avid supporter of Hillary Clinton in the last election, one can say without hesitation we would all do well to emulate his altruism.

President Trump, on the other hand, has a well-documented tendency toward preening and pettiness in his public appearances that is a) embarrassing to behold, and b) utterly beneath the office he holds. How did this man get to such an advanced stage of life without having some of his rough edges sanded smooth by the school of experience? Where are all those media-savvy handlers and image makers when you need them?

Whatever you may think of their politics, the Trump children at least seem to be capable of maintaining a semblance of decorum in public, and that respectful composure has to come from somewhere. It can’t all be the product of their mother’s influence.

Most of them work for their father and are therefore in fairly close contact with him, one would assume. So he has more than likely imparted something of positive value to each of them, no matter how improbable that may seem to those of us on the outside. True, some of these now-adult children may be showing signs of the trademark defensiveness, but they are rank amateurs at best, when it comes to mimicking their dad’s more regrettable traits.

Let’s hope in this case not all the sins of the father will be visited upon the sons and daughters.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.
July 6, 2018

Easy Living and Ruination

July 2, 2018 (962 words) Summertime and the living is easy, according to the lyricist Ira Gershwin. This is especially true for those lucky, early-retirement people, for whom life has unfolded in a most agreeable fashion. Even if they haven’t exactly scaled the heights of success, their later years now find many of them in a happy valley of ease and comfort. The financial stress of earlier times has faded away. They no longer need to worry about covering the essentials. In fact, their primary concern these days boils down to which material desire they will choose to satisfy. Their health is relatively good, all things considered. And they enjoy an unprecedented freedom of movement, able to travel to far-off ports of call at the drop of a hat. The world, albeit perhaps only on a very modest scale, is their oyster. So given such proportional largesse, the idea of “ruination” might be the furthest thought from such an individual’s mind. Fair enough. To those who see their present state as the happiest of landings, despite the partisan political squabbles in the public square that never seem to subside, far be it from me to disturb your late-in-life equilibrium.

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… doing more than basking in one’s good fortune

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But our advancing age and agreeable circumstance could also lend itself to something more than simply luxuriating in one’s own good fortune at having survived the gauntlet. Letting a little mature reflection seep into the picture wouldn’t hurt. Even though at times such reflection can sound an awful lot like good, old fashioned grousing. There is a breed of geezer who is given to looking over his shoulder and instinctively finding fault with how the world has changed while he has been in it. And now that I am firmly ensconced in that crotchety demographic, I must admit to being less than thrilled with certain aspects of the passing, contemporary scene. Though I appreciate the financial breathing room fate has bestowed upon me at this time, as I too near the end of my working days. For starters, isn’t it blatantly obvious to all of us by now that the overt sexualization of the culture has ruined the relationship between men and women? This was accomplished quite effortlessly in the name of pleasure and profit, and we willingly acquiesced as it was happening. Since, after all, what’s not to like about pleasure or profit?

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… tackling the male half of the equation first

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Men, to tackle that half of the equation first, have been quietly granted permission to forgo the respect that was once routinely extended to the fairer sex. We now overtly ogle any and all attractive females as exquisite “machines of voluptuousness,” to quote that well-known man of manners, the Marquis de Sade. Granted, down through the ages it may have always been difficult for males to view females as anything other than sexual “objects,” but we at least attempted to maintain a semblance of decorum. Just as forsaking all others within the covenant of marriage has always been a supreme challenge for many of us, right from the jump, but we nevertheless managed to mind our p’s and q’s. Now, though, under the banner of sexual liberation the giving in to our every sexual impulse without hesitation or restraint has somehow been reinterpreted as being a positive character trait, as a mark of healthy psychological development, and a measure of sophistication and independent-mindedness. In another vein, isn’t it also obvious that the technological seduction of our youth has ruined the relationship between parents and children? Yes, rebellion has always been a hallmark of the young. But with our kids’ faces buried in their hand-held screens 24/7, parental influence has been reduced to an all-time low.

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… hoping for a renaissance between the generations

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One can only hope for a renaissance between the generations at some point in the future, perhaps when serious adult responsibilities like the child-rearing of those hoped-for grandchildren starts to kick in. And finally, hasn’t the monetization of all of life’s activity ruined our sense of meaning and purpose? Obliterated our ability to enjoy simple pleasures? Our immediate forbearers never realized the financial independence many of us have now achieved, yet they did not obsess over the lack of it. They merely sought a modicum of money in order to live. Now the equation has been reversed, as we seem to live for the pursuit of money. It’s the only thing that matters in most of our lives. Getting it, and spending it – it’s all we ever think about anymore. Even as we age into our golden years there is no relief from this pre-occupation. From a practical standpoint, we are relentlessly told how we must plan for retirement, so as not to inflict ourselves on our family. As we approach the finish line the most important thing has become making sure we exit this mortal coil without “being a burden” on those we love.

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… shouldering burdens as the business of life

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But isn’t life all about shouldering burdens, in one form or another, to benefit the ones we hold near and dear? Isn’t that what most of us have spent our lives doing? Letting our children and grandchildren see our physical and mental deterioration in an up close and personal way, and allowing them to participate in our elderly care in some manner or fashion, is possibly the last contribution we can make to their eventual development into caring and empathetic human beings. Preserving their bubble of self-absorption, by sparing them this frequently awkward exposure to how things will inevitably end for all of us, is not necessarily the gift we think it is. Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr. July 2, 2018