...This Old Gray Head....

     As a child, I often wondered why old people were so crabby.  In hindsight, the main reason was probably that I was a particularly annoying child.  But next on the list was a wider issue: so much of the world was annoying to anyone who'd seen a long span of it.

     It still is.  As a culture and as individuals, we make the same mistakes, over and over.  And so do our elected officials, ever willing to clutch for short-term gains and downplay the long-term costs.  It's irritating.  How can they be such fools?

     The answer to that, of course, is because they're human.  We're not very good at long-term thinking.  Farmers get a little better than most, needing to look to harvest, to planting, to the next year -- but you won't find many Jeffersonian yeomen (or women) holding high-level public office; they're too busy trying to keep their heads above water, financially and sometimes literally.*

     It's enough to make a person grumpy -- and it often does.

     So shoot, if you must, this old gray head, but maybe try not to be such a nitwit instead.
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* Unless they're too short of the stuff.  Or have both too little and too much, a trick California's weather and infrastructure are managing to accomplish far too often of late.