I turned eighty on June 15th, 2020 and nobody is more surprised and delighted than me.

On the way, I’ve learned a couple of things that I want to take the opportunity to pass on. When I say I’ve learned a couple of things, I mean I’ve learned a couple of things relatively recently. I also want to point out that learning something new at anywhere near eighty generally includes unlearning an old belief so it is not all that easy. It involves saying “I was wrong” and often that includes “for a long time”.

Perhaps the most recent thing I’ve learned is something I should have known earlier but I’ve spent a lot of energy trying to resist. Even now, I want to qualify this or make excuses but the truth is We are not the good guys. I am not the good guy.

I grew up in an America that was the shining beacon on the hill (and, yeah, it was called America back then). I grew up in an America in which we were welcomed as Liberators when we marched into Paris (we even let the French go in first). I grew up in an America that taught Democracy to the defeated Fascists (and now, I’m sorry to say, most of them are our moral superiors). When I was a child, I was taught that America is the greatest, kindest, most generous, country on earth, and I believed it all the way down to my bones. When we escalated the killing in Vietnam, I thought it was an anomaly but, it turns out, it wasn’t; when I read about how we treat our fellow humans who are not white, I thought it was only in the south, certainly not in California, but it is here. Yeah, sure, I knew we had built our country on the enslavement and degradation of black people but I thought that was in the past, just like the lynchings, just like Jim Crow. But the bad things we do to our fellow citizens and our fellow human beings everywhere, are not only part of our heritage, it is part of now. It is by design. It makes me sad and I want to pretend otherwise but we are not the good guys anymore.

There is no such thing as enough money. Even after we pass the threshold of having enough money to eat healthily and have decent, safe, shelter – and TV, I guess – more money is never enough money. No matter how much money was make or have, we think life would be better, easier, if we only had a couple of bucks more. For an extreme example, take Jeff Bezos, who is reputed to be worth $145B (that’s after paying his ex-wife $47B). That is a lot of money – at $10 per second, it would take about 460 years to amass that much money but he is still striving for more. He still pays the majority of his employees a sub-living wage under terrible conditions so he can have more. I suspect everybody would admire Bezos more if he led the way in paying well and providing decent healthcare – if Amazon was the best place to be an employee – but that would cut into his almost infinite money, so he doesn’t.

Cars go through an awkward phase as they age and it is worse the more stylish they are when new. They are like teenagers in that regard and it happens at about the same time. A sixteen-year-old car is an old car, a thirty-year-old car is a collector item.

Graffiti and outside wall painting are art. Much of the current art we are shown in museums is academic and is only relatable to the cognoscenti, in many ways it is sort of the equivalent to an inside joke. Often it is inferior to the wall art outside the museums. Compare Jeff Koons and Banksy. Banksy clearly has more to say and says it better.

Every ostracized group thinks they’re better than the ostracizers; as far as I can tell, they are right. I first realized this when I did a redevelopment project in Union City and the contractor who built the houses was a former Marine, Ed Dieden. When I was in the Army, way back in the 60s, we looked down on the Marines, we were told they were too dumb for the Army and the Marines were people the country used when we needed bodies for cannon fodder. We were told that Soldiers were smarter and the Army used them in smarter ways. But Ed was proud of being a Marine and he was smart. He knew the Marines were elite troops who were much better trained than the Army (and they didn’t wear unit badges on their shoulders like Cub Scouts because they were all one). It is interesting. BTW, that the first military officer to publically break with Trump was former General John Kelly, a Marine.

Growing up, there was a “best” Golf Club in town but they didn’t allow Jews and my Jewish – nonpracticing, but by heritage – dad assured me that we were better than them. (Interestingly, my Gentile mom did think they were better.)

Where I see it most clearly now is in relation to the Black Community. Michele thinks I’m being presumptuous here and have no right to speak for Black people, so I’ll let Reverand Al Sharpton say it, “George Floyd’s story is the story of black folks. You kept your knee on our neck. We had creative skills, but we couldn’t get your knee off our neck. It’s time for us in George’s name to stand up and say, ‘Get your knee off our necks.’” Black people think the problem is the White Patriarchy that has been enslaving, repressing, lynching, jailing, and now shooting them. We and I say we because I’m part of that White Patriarchy, have just been generally fucking over Black People since 1619 A.D. And during that time, they have persevered and have gone on like any other good citizen, making the best of a terrible situation; in any field where merit can be measured, Black people thrive. They thrive because they are smarter and work harder than most white people. Maybe counter-intuitively, the more Black people are put down, the more they think they are better than their oppressors.

Everything comes around again but in a slightly different form so you can’t use it. Like narrow ties from the sixties or mechanical watches from the same era.

Lastly – for now – I have my opinions, I definitely have my preferences but that is only what they are, my opinions and my preferences and they are not better or truer than yours. I am not morally right because there is no objective morality. I used to think there was, I used to believe in Socrates’ Allegory of the Cave and its reliance on an outside Objective Reality and Morality. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a Materialist, I don’t think everything is dependent upon physical processes we can see and measure. I believe that the Universe is Alive and Evolving and there is more to It than we can see or feel. I do believe in The Mystery but, hard as I try, I don’t believe in a personal God or god who cares what I eat or how I have sex and, of course, who reinforces my take on what is moral (and whose supposed morality has been used to justify everything from the divine right of kings to all men are created equal). I do not believe that God exists and without that God, there is no Moral Law Giver.

But, on the other hand, that’s just my opinion.