Senior Centers and Moral Hazardry

SENOR CENTERS were not common until a few decades ago, owing to the propensity of the American people to ignore older people, and to idolize youth. Traditionally, the elderly have been relegated to the rocking chair on the front porch, in front of the fireplace, in the back bedroom, or worse. Le them wash dishes or can vegetables if able, but above all else, get them our of the way, make sure tehy do not interfere with teh urgent matters of young parents and children and their active lifestyles. We do much the same now, except that we have transferred responsibility for stockpiling the elderly to corporate oversight, warehoused in cookie cutter assisted living facilities, where the help is poorly paid, the rents are exorbitant, and the billionaires owners wealthy beyond measure, sucking in a steady stream of enormous profit from their investment rackets. Yes, nursing homes are a racket in america. If for no other reason, the advent of the senior center is among the nation's greatest innovations. but they too come at a price. The price is that they get the senior out of the home, and into public, often at great peril to American culture. Senior citizenry is the realm of homespun wisdom and knowledge accumulated over a lifetime, to be sure. You don't have to explain cholesterol, colonoscopies to most seniors. They know the difference between baking and broiling, and that often, the best response is silence. The Achilles heel is the standard one: religion and politics. With age, religious dogma and political inanity tend to become ever more deeply entrenched, unnourished by new knowledge or thinking. On these, the most sacred of all realms of human endeavor, people tend to dig in and entrench, rather than expand, evolve, and elucidate. At my local small town southern senior center, the Director and I, both progressives, permit ourselves to discuss politics only before eight A.M., then, it must stop, by mutual agreement. Fifteen joyful minutes of disparaging Trump, then we're dong, and it on to coffee and donuts with the Republicans and Pentacostals. Recently I made the mistake of making a morning comment to her within earshot of one of the latter. "Keep an eye on Mitt Romney", i advised; "He's in the Senate now, a Republican A Mormon elected by Mormons, and loaded for bear, despising trump, and not afraid to show it." One of the fire and brimstone right wing octogenarian morons, of whom we have many, overheard, and intervened with" "Mormons lie about the Word of God". He didn't stop there, quite naturally, but you get the drift. The Director ran away, and I, left alone to deal with the mess, replied, innocuously I thought: "so do I". By that I merely meant to offer that the actual "Word of God" assumes an infinite variety of forms, and that we all lie about this, by making questionable or unverified assumptions about the nature of reality, if only accidentally, because no matter what one believes, there are other beliefs available, and one's beliefs will seem like a lie, or "wrong", inevitably, to many other people. Somehow, I knew it was useless, and he proved it when he later stuck a finger in my chest and spewed: "I hope you don't keep lying about the Word of God". No, I neither shot him nor responded, to my credit. I've learned how to deal with these people. I still think seniors centers are a good idea, despite the prevalence of Muslims don't believe in God, liberals are communists, Trump is a true Christian, climate change and evolution are hoaxes, Obama was a Muslim. among other manifestations of senior wisdom. Senior centers are a good idea, but barely, which can make an educated person long , on behalf of others, for the comfort of the rocking chair and fireplace.