What to Do About Grandpa

by Wilson Krause

Old folks’ homes are not the most pleasant of places. For one thing, they’re so sterile that they more closely resemble hospitals than houses. They’ve got that hospital smell, the one that makes me want to stay home and snap my compound fracture back into place by myself.

I went to The Pines nursing home in Lyndonville a few years back to entertain the elderly and it was downright miserable. Too many clicks-and-buzzers. Medical equipment and that disgusting half-liquid food that these poor toothless people have to eat, it’s more noble to die on your own terms than to go out living in that sort of pathetic stasis. If I had to die, a nursing home is last on my wish list of locations. Surrounded by people who don’t know names or faces or what day it is or who’s the governor. It’s the holding cell before you’re transferred to death’s private prison system.

People in these places are long gone. The eventual end is not just a given, it’s a formality. But their families actually pay for them to live there. Unbelievable. Accepting the inevitable would be a lot easier on your soul and your wallet. But without these, the American medical industry would lack a very important way to wring your balls for some extra dollars. It’s this people’s obsession with making their lives as comfortable as possible that allows them to be duped like a bunch of chumps. It’s just another racket.

Now, when you look at these wizened faces, the missing teeth, the sightless eyes, you think “These are people with precious little left in them. They don’t have more than a few years.” The strength of body and of mind has completely vanished and created this shell, this simulacrum of life. Artificially preserved.

God, we love our artificial preservatives. I wouldn’t trust them to drive a car or go grocery shopping, let alone make important decisions about my life. 

Despite the helplessness that comes with your whole body breaking down, some of these folks still have their wits about them. And shrewd, mean little wits they are. Old enough to begin losing function, but not old enough to count themselves out of the race just yet. Now, if it were up to me, we would have a fresh crop of young people cycling into office right about now. But it isn’t up to me. It’s up to the people in charge, who have historically been not too keen on removing themselves from power at the appropriate time. 

It’s a real fantastic system we have. By the time we realize that these people are no longer doing their job, they’ve gotten so entrenched that it’s like trying to yank up a tree by the roots. By hand. Before it falls on the power lines and cuts out the whole town’s electricity. 

And now we get to the tree. The 46th President of the United States. 

 Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., unlike the Joseph of “& The Technicolor Dreamcoat” fame, has been struck by the Lord with a frankly remarkable lack of charisma. Unfortunately for us, he has been struck with a great many other things. The man is 78. The man was already 22 by the time that segregation was repealed and let me tell you if you don’t already know, it shows. He talks like so many people of his generation, so consistently that to call them “gaffes” at this point would be (predictably) dishonest to the American People. If America’s poor kids were truly as smart as white kids, they would’ve cottoned onto this tertiarily racist spew that emanates from that man’s creaking jaws. It’s a wonder we haven’t invaded Iraq again to steal enough oil for President Biden’s joints. 

It would be a non-issue for me if he was harmless. Hell, it’d be the funniest thing in the White House since the early days of his disgraced predecessor, when Trump was the butt of late-night comedy instead of a fucking maniac with his finger on the triggers of every racist from sea to shining sea. The problem is that Joe Biden is far from harmless. He lacks the manic instability of Trump, the gormless yes-man attitude of Bush (who had Cheney’s hand so far up his ass that the Haliburton exec could pick Bush’s nose for him), or the numerous colorful qualities that give rise to our virulent (and appropriate) hatred of R.M. Nixon. No, Biden has a curious situation all his own.

What do you do when you’ve got a coalition president whose mind is so far gone that he doesn’t realize that he’s a coalition president? What do you do when a man who campaigned solely on the basis of being “electable” is finally elected? Simple answer: you pretend everything is fixed.

Many have said what they will about Senator Sanders of Vermont, but at least there you have a man with principles. I have talked with Senator Sanders on several occasions and being told that “Change starts with helping those around you” is a lot more inspiring than getting called a “Dog-faced pony soldier.” The mere accusation of Socialism (God forbid we have someone who isn’t a soulless capitalist in any position of power) is enough to get the American people to put their hearts and souls behind Captain Dementia and his Wonder Team.

Biden is always damned by the fact that he’s this fucking incompetent buffoon with a team of the Left’s best and brightest behind him. God! At least Trump was a shit storm of his own creation. I’ll give him sole authorial credit on that.

It’s the Democratic Party’s fault for putting this man on the ticket and muscling out his competition, but it’s still our fault for voting for him. Christ, can we not choose between the greater of two goods? Why the hell is it always the lesser evil that everyone’s pushing you to support? “A vote for Sanders/Anyone-besides-our-man is a vote for Trump!” Well, a vote for either evil is still a vote for evil. 

There’s one thing that Biden has said that I can wholeheartedly get behind. “The buck stops with me.”

This phrase, co-opted from Truman the Great Bomber, makes things a hell of a lot easier for me when I start piling all this shit on Biden personally. Good on him for taking responsibility for the deadly Afghanistan fiasco. And I am more than happy to blame him for it. Watching the whole thing unfold, I felt a deep sense of “What the hell is this old geezer doing?” I was reading the news with a friend from back home, and I kept looking at the facts in disbelief and looking back at him to ensure that he was indeed seeing what I was seeing. 

“Why did he pull out the troops first?” I said. “Even I know that’s the worst possible decision! What the hell is this guy’s plan? Jesus, people are going to die!”

And die they did. The Marines that we all know and have varying opinions about, and those other 180 Afghani civilians that I am not surprised the Right’s media ignores, but I am surprised how the Left’s media ignores them too. If the Orange Man was still in office, they would pounce on that like wolves on a dying elk. Instead, they let Biden off with a slap on the wrist, and another little tap for those other 10 civilians he blew up because he thought they were terrorists. What a send-off. We’re leaving, but not before we launch a missile at some more kids. For old times’ sake. 

    Joe Biden is the old guard, who remains at his post long after his watch should have ended. The average age of a US citizen is 38. The average age of a US Senator is almost 60. We are being led by the blind and lame, by the antiquated and outdated. If I can’t trust my grandfather to split wood safely anymore, I can’t trust these dinosaurs to run our country. Biden may have been hot shit in his day, but he is no longer king of the racial jungle he doesn’t want his kids growing up in. 

Maybe, when they throw him in a home, they’ll appreciate his service enough to gift him with an air freshener that smells like little girls’ shoulders.

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