Boomers Are?

Last night sucked. I’m taking a woodworking class in Winona and the “class” has turned out to be a woodshop free-for-all. Nothing wrong with that, although I’d have appreciated a little more instruction and structure. Most of the “students” are 50+ year-olds who have taken the “class” a dozen times for the access to the tools and are building a variety of furniture bits for their homes. Considering how far I’m driving for this class, I’m not learning nearly as much as I’d hoped. I suppose that’s how education is supposed to work.

The class starts at 5PM and ends at 9PM with a break at 7-7:30. Last night during the break I had to listen to a trio of crackers (including the instructor) jabber about how much they hoped someone would assassinate President Obama and the current Pope. Obviously Faux News drones, but not the kind of people I’m used to being around.

And that’s for a reason. My tolerance for stupid has vanished in the last decade. I don’t do well with superstition/religion, racism, cowards, chicken hawks, or ignorant crackers who think the United States is a territory of the Israeli nation. Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin debating with them. Their knowledge base is so limited, perverse, and arrogant that they barely seem human to me. A couple of short conversations with those people and I start thinking about my dream retirement home in the side of a Montana mountain. It’s not all that comfy, but I never have to worry about visitors and the ones who make it past the “trespassers will be shot sign” discover that I’m not kidding. When I move into that abandoned mine shaft and set up house, do not come visiting.

To be fair, these three old white guys are somewhat likeable if you can keep their minds focused on work. They are moderately helpful, reasonable skilled carpenters. One of them is a retired 62-year-old rich farmer, who is mostly trying to prove how hip he is by playing with the school’s state-sponsored tools while complaining about having to pay taxes for stuff. He’s a southern boy who considers himself to be hip because he likes black blues musicians but hates President Obama and black people in general. He’s convinced he’s going to “heaven” because he’s reborn and really gets testy when I mention the camel through the eye of a needle thing. He contributes $22/month to some crippled vets thing and a larger pile to his politically-based church and that’s his guarantee to an eternal life at the right hand of one god or another.

The instructor is just a simple, small-town, working-class racist. He thinks he’s hiding his racism behind a political ideology, but his take on the US Constitution is so demented that he couldn’t out-debate a smart ten-year-old in a fairly managed civics discussion. He’s pissed off about Obamacare/Romneycare because he thinks his state-provided health insurance has been degraded by the ACA. Like many of the folks who are on the public dole pretending to be “public servants,” he’s against all parts of the government except the ones that provide him with a middle class life.

The third leg of this unstable stool is a religious nutbag who is convinced the Apocalypse is coming “because gays.” Yeah, that sentence doesn’t make sense, but either does this doofus. Like too many Boomer males, this idiot is pissed off that the world doesn’t have to bow to his perverse version of Christianity and that people can’t be made to behave in a manner that doesn’t make him uncomfortable. Just like my decision to assume that everyone who “doesn’t like Obama” is a racist, I’ve decided that everyone who freaks out about gays is in the closet. Everyone.

A good bit of the breaktime conversation was about how much better off the world would be if someone assassinated President Obama and the Pope. Then, they got into a heated, ignorant discussion about how far off base Pope Francis is getting and my comment that “he’s awfully Christian, isn’t he?” went right over/under their heads. The crazy third leg went off on gays and lesbians and the Apocalypse and the loony rich guys started babbling about being reborn as the only path to heaven, regardless of his wealth, greed, and general uselessness to humanity and nature. The instructor just muttered about how much he hated Obama and barely kept “niggar” out of his ranting. (Fuck you and your “n-word” bullshit. We all know what you assholes want to be saying and don’t because you think it proves you are civilized.)

The interesting part of the crazy guy dialog was when the rich asshole started ranting about how Obama wasn’t taking the ISIS “threat” seriously and the religious nut joined in with insane talk about nuking ISIS. The rich guy pretended to be questioning modern patriotism and asked if any of us thought US citizens would “pitch in” against a common enemy, like we did in WWII. I’d checked out, by then, but I should have said, “Nope. No way the 1% would allow a 90% top tax rate to pay for a war. Rich people mostly take from society. They get pissed off when they are asked to contribute more than voluntary tips to the servant class.”

I drove my 60 miles back home last night thinking, “this is a waste of my time.” I hauled the bits of my project back with me, thinking I’ll finish it up on my own equipment. I’m still waffling on deciding if I’ve had enough of this or if there is more I could learn for my money. One thing is for sure, there are way too many people like this from my generation and if people under 40 don’t vote like no American generation their ages have ever voted, they and we are all fucked.