The Inexcusable Language of Old Men

My father grew up in the slums of Utica, his father selling bananas on street corners, if he wasn’t in the synagogue, ignoring the welfare of the six children he spawned.

My father escaped, via the Civilian Conservation Corps and the University of Michigan, after which he had a productive career in organic chemistry.  He made an economically secure life for his family and retired as soon as he could—at 65.

Our house was one where “culture” was available for those who wished to partake.  My mother was always reading something literary, while my father was partial to paperbacks, where he always ripped off the covers before we could see them.

My parents aimed for sophistication.  We were all inclusive.  What changed for my father?  I have no idea.

Language was always something I have noticed.  One day in elementary schools, I had confused words; and the word I said was disparaging to an ethnic group.  My mother explained to me that we never disparaged anyone because of their race, religion or ethnicity.

And yet—there was dear old dad.

As he became older, he became angrier.  We used to consider the Palisades Parkway our own highway to the heaven that was Bear Mountain, where we would “ski” and ice skate.  But that all changed when people in the city discovered that same parkway and drove out for a bit of country heaven, “despoiling” the landscape as we knew it.

My father would get on the parkway, pass cars full of families, and come out with the most vile ethnic slurs that I will never repeat, even to make a point.  I would just stare at him in shock.  My assumption was that he was reverting to type, as in, Utica slum-boy.

It wasn’t as if my father hadn’t been subject to prejudice himself.  The CCC’s were the escape he needed from the desperate poverty of the depression.  While working as a sculptor down South, he had to deal with Southern boys and their opinions, vis a vis, Jews.  So how then could he cast aspersions on others, when he knew how hurtful such language was?

Well, my father is long gone, and he wasn’t the President of the United States.

Has anyone listened to Donald Trump talk?  We can’t help it, can we?  He’s omnipresent in our lives like the fat baby Trump balloons flying high in our skies.

This is a man who casts aspersions on everyone and everything because he has nothing other than “bad words” to defend his actions.  His offense is to attack because he has no defense.

This is a man who is truly evil.  Day after day he grinds more lives under the heel of his oppressive regime.  He considers himself a master builder, but the only thing he’s building is destruction.

It’s one thing for my father to become an angry old man, whom people should avoid.  It’s another thing for an angry old man to be President of the United States.  At least my father had brains.  Shouldn’t someone check on the president’s brain?  We already know his heart is missing.

I think about July 4 lately, when this unpatriotic American will be presiding over the festival of our freedom.  What a sad state of affairs we’re in.

But we can’t despair.  He can continue to insult every single one of us.  And we can continue to fight as our forefathers and mothers did for the United States of America that can still be the dream of that Golden Medina.