Reality Check: Ageism and Issues with the Old

"I'm stuck in my ways, and I like it that way." "I'm the older wiser person, and you should just accept what I say as true." "You should be seen and not heard." "You are a know nothing child who has been taught wrong by the liberal college you're attending." "You're blind to the truth and it is my right as your grandmother to show you the right path." All of these are direct quotes from my grandmother, and they aren't even the harshest ones that I have in my email. The question is, what does this say about my grandmother and what does it say about the generation she comes from?

Looking back on the numerous disagreements I have had with my grandmother I think I have come to a decent conclusion as to where I stand. It is simple, really, she will never listen to a word I say, regardless of what facts I regale her with, what sources I provide (even when they are the very sources she thinks she is quoting from), and I will never convince her otherwise of the position she so adamantly protects.

Maybe, just maybe, this is the problem in the US today. We have a group of people who have maintained control for so long, through traditions that no longer work, of which they have passed down to their children, and this whole process has finally come back and bitten us in the back side. My grandmother blames President Obama for the current state of the economy, and ignores the fact that it was former President Bush's administration under which the collapse actually occurred. It was under his administrations' watch that people started losing their homes because of poor oversight and management of loans at the bank level. It's under the last administrations watch that people started losing jobs at a record rate not seen since the great depression.

So why does she blame Obama, or "the Swamp Monkey" as she likes to call him? I think it is because she needs and wants someone to blame, and she doesn't want to blame someone of the same background of thought and "class" as herself. She wants to pin the mop on someone else, someone who is perceived to be different from and below her, whom she can look down upon with a snub nose and parade about how she is better than he is. Of course let us not blame her for this snide attitude, no let us blame it on the era from which she comes. "It's how it was back then" we'll say "she was raised to be a racist" will be the excuse.

Of course there are also the snide remarks about my being bisexual. How I'm a dirty queer and how it is wrong of me to be this way. Yet again we'll chuck it up to social climate of the fifties and sixties as the excuse for her to be this way. She's old, stuck in her ways, just ignore it, right? Then she'll bring out the big guns, religion. Oh the religion, how Christianity is the end all be all truth to the world. "Buddhism is evil, Wiccans consort with the devil, and gays will go to hell. Oh the end times are near and the socialistic regime of Obama marks the sign of the devil and the rapture." Oh woe is me, the mythical end times from Revelation, which has been proven time and again by scholars to be about Rome in the forth century and Caesar.

Piety, respect for one's elders. How far can this go, before the idiocy and decadence of our elders overwhelms the supposed wealth of wisdom that they are supposed to possess? Should we not remind them that the very mess we're in right now is the result of their blind hard work, their greed, and their serendipitous retreat from reality? Isn't this separation of the people, and lacking education to the very workings of our economy and government, what Jefferson warned about? As part of the new generation how can we allow our futures to slip away because of pious ignorant allegiance to old methods that have already been shown not to work?

To me it is simple enough, out with the old and in with the new. Loosen the bonds of piety, remove the chains that tie us to yesteryear, and let us examine those bonds of the past so we can fix them for a brighter future. Be damned the excuses we push on ourselves to protect the marginalized relics of a time long since past. Disbar the conventional, disallow yourselves to be marred and netted by the corrupted and diluted past precedents our elders believe themselves to be aspired to. It is time for new heights, new goals, better methods, and broader more inclusive ideology.

As for my grandmother and all other old people who are like her, let me remind you as I have said before, those of you who relish your supposed class, demure stature, and assumed greatness in comparison to the other "races and classes" not of your perceived social rank. Enough is enough, climb down from your high horses, you can no longer ride them on the ascent we now must face. You can no longer relegate your burdens, financial and social, on to the shoulders of the new generations. It is time for you to get down and work again. It is time for you to listen to new generation and work to change things for the better. You can no longer lounge about at our expense; you can no longer treat us as your social slaves, electing people into power that will only perpetuate your own greed. We can no longer live in the climate of corporatocracy that you believe to be capitalism.

Stop labeling change as "evil socialism", quit believing only one source of information to be true and arguing that "you don't have time to do the research, listen to only Fox News they are right!" Stop putting religious rhetoric on the tap during a time when it is least needed. When we have people fighting to stay in their homes, fighting to keep their jobs or find jobs, fighting to pay off huge medical bills created by a pork filled medical system that is supplemented by a health care system that is about getting away with murder, we have no time for religious preponderance, we need direct and applicable action. Prayers will not be answered for those who are living in their cars, in their friends' basements, and coach surfing. It is not my generation that is blind and unwise, it is yours.

Here is a new term, Social Greed. What is social greed; it is when a group of people greedily assert their beliefs upon a whole. A fancier term for this is egocentric socialism, monoarchaicness. In this case it is the old believing in an ageist ideology, that by virtue of age you are better and smarter than the new generations. That your wisdom is for profit, to be taught to whom you deem able, and those you believe inferior are meant to go to the wayside, "to be seen and not heard". Your social greed is unacceptable and I for one will no longer compensate for it. This is your reality check.