“I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now…” Bob Dylan.
I’ve always loved Dylan’s song, My Back Pages, that I quoted from above. The song speaks to his personal evolution. I’ve looked back at my own life often but didn’t entirely draw the came conclusions. I attribute that to my opinions as to what constitutes truth, justice, and right are not dependent on the winds of society were his.
While I loved the message of wisdom with age, however, I never truly came to appreciate it until this year. My real childhood has been many years in the making. It has leaped to the forefront over the last decade.
In my older years, when I was a child, I was free to roam the world outside my parent’s door, inventing games of imagination like “Paratroopers” in which jumping off the garage roof with a towel for a parachute was a fun time.
Saturdays, when I had fifty cents, I’d walk a couple of miles to the movies and sit in the theater all day before wandering back home through the town of Torrance, California—a suburb of Los Angeles. If I happened to fall along the way and skin a knee the great worry was over the ruined pair of jeans. Knees healed fine and I could take care of them, jeans, on the other hand…
I hope the picture I am drawing for you is sufficient to show the autonomy of life and action that I enjoyed as a youth. I look back now and wonder, “Where did it go?” When did I suddenly become unable to care for myself, or think for myself, or go anyplace to which I was big enough to find my way?
I was so much older when I was learning to look out for myself with my parents in the distant background. I have lost that ability with the turn of the century. Now, my Uncle Sam and his governors must look out for every facet of my life to be sure I don’t do anything “risky”. I have ceased to be the adult I was raised to be and am become the child of this grand village.
Stand on this “X”, shop this direction, wash your hands, wear your mask—don’t take chances. You have a “condition” take this pill we made for you because we know what you need.
Worst of all, in the private gatherings of those once tasked with the country’s defense, soldiers have been reduced to children under the instructions of the blind followers of the blind. A friend of mine, a lifetime member of the VFW, was refused service at his local post by a band of unmasked self-appointed enforcers because he wore no mask.
We have been divided and reduced to infancy by fearmongers while they laugh with glee at how well their plan is going. Do you doubt there is a plan? May I suggest a course in American history and politics from the 1880s to the present? Read the steady course of Progressivism with its rule by “experts” and drive by the winds of social change. They are not bashful about stating their vision of America removed from the hindrances of the Constitution.
In the process, we have become children, they who must be cared for and shepherded like lost sheep into the fold of a loving Big Uncle. Ah, I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.
If you can get permission—have a Merry Christmas!
Maranatha
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