The wisdom of age

The voice of experience, or senile dementia? 

From Prange’s At Dawn We Slept:

As soon as Colonel Dunlop could snatch a moment, he returned home to satisfy himself about the safety of his wife and his eighty-one-year-old mother-in-law, Mrs. Lucy Ord Mason, who resided with them. A living link with America’s past, she had lost her husband as a result of the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890. She refused point-blank to seek shelter in the basement. These young Japanese whippersnappers did not scare her, and she would not abandon her twelve canaries, which she loved dearly.

I’ll let you know which it is when I get there. If you are still willing to believe me at that point.

I wish our present administration had this attitude. I wish the previous administration had had this attitude. Instead, Janet Incompetano tells us “the system worked” then puts the lie to her words by slapping down even more useless and insulting regulations on air travelers.

I don’t read B.O.’s refusal to let this interrupt his vacation in Hawaii as “these young Muslim whippersnappers do not scare me.” I read it as “I have my own plane and an entire Secret Service to guard me, so why should I care.”

Perhaps it is significant that B.O. is the youngest President elected in my lifetime.