Mitch McConnell has lost it again.

One need not reference a Feinstein, Pelosi, or a Brandon — or any of the other dozens of septua- and octogenarians currently entrusted with writing legislation.

This is definitely not a rant against the elderly — my entire life has been characterized by a drive to seek out my elders and learn what I can from them.  It has even been a shortcoming of mine, as I have also sought out their respect as more legitimate and therefore desirable than "respect" from the kids.  It took me decades to recognize that many of them aren't respectable.  Wisdom can come from age — it is not automatic.

There is a serious problem that goes beyond mere medically obvious cognitive failure.  Although this is a real issue — many of our "leaders" would not be allowed a driver's license in many states due to their frailties — it is one of perspective more than anything else.

The generation who coined the mantra "Never trust anyone over 30" horrifically became the same individuals who loudly complained that "kids these days have no respect," but I have labored in vain to find the time when these same people recognized and confessed that youth ages.  I have yet to meet one of them who will honestly recount coming to understand — some time in their thirties or forties — that the ideas, opinions, and beliefs that we all have in our teens and twenties are best left there.

Maybe it was all the lead in the gas?  Maybe it was the permissiveness of their parents as a result of being tired from killing Nazis?  Maybe it was all the cocaine and just a little too much Jagger?  For whatever reason, the "aged elite" with the power do not seem to realize that the world that they think exists does not in fact exist — if ever it even did. 

I raise my daughters to replace me — such that I work myself out of a job.  If I do well, they will continue to need me less, and this seems to be the point.  My parents' generation, however, did the exact opposite, and the horrifying increase in tax-funded-pension-type-entitlements proves this conclusively in my mind — to say nothing of "Cold War 2.0"^TM.

I don't know Mitch McConnell — he may be the very image of a kind, wise old grandpa — but his and his cohorts' refusal to pass the torch is simply arrested adolescence, to my mind.

Spencer D. "I normally wear pants" Miles; Emeritus Guy, Super Important Director of Things and Stuff, FAS, MDBS, FPDHA (hons), Hominus notimportantus atallii.

Image: PxFuel.