August 12, 2015 Article

The Old Coot says, “Old Guys Rule,” finally.

By Merlin Lessler

Once in a while, you’ll see one of us old coots parading around in a T-shirt that says, “Old Guys Rule!” I never really believed the statement, but still, I wore mine proudly. It was an ego thing. A way to strike back at a youth obsessed society. That was ten years or so ago, back when the Old Coot persona was taking over my mind and body. Old guys didn’t rule then, but they do now. All because of our phones.

We’re the last vestige of landline telephone users (our names are in the book too). Now we’ve taken control of the whole country. It’s all about polling. Pollsters don’t, for the most part, call people with cell phones; they call old guys (and gals) with landlines. Gallop, for example, conducts a running phone survey that measures what people think about where the country is headed. In the year, 2000, 37% of those polled said they were dissatisfied with the direction we were headed. Now, in 2015, the poll indicates that a whopping 69% are dissatisfied. Old guys rule! We’re the ones responding to the calls. Everyone else has discarded their land lines. Corporations, politicians, government bureaucrats, all use polls to run their affairs. And stupidly, are getting their input from “Old Guys.”

Sixty nine percent are dissatisfied with where the country is headed? That’s us! All we do is complain about the state of the world: - It’s not like in the old days when I was growing up. -  We had to do chores.  - We played outside, not in the house in front of a TV. - We were taught that children were to be seen, not heard. - A bottle of soda cost 10 cents. -  A pizza was a dollar. -  You could fix your own car. -  You controlled the speed of your lawn mower, not some engineer at the EPA. Gallop polls say that most Americans are dissatisfied, all because of old guys.

Look what we’ve done for Trump. Sent him to the head of the class. We see him shoot off his mouth; say what he thinks, not what some pollster tells him is politically correct. And the polls (our voices) put him in the lead.  He’s all over the place politically: liberal on some things, conservative on others, moderate, and yes nutty. Just like us. So when a pollster calls, we say we’re voting for Trump. It doesn’t mean we will. We just like having a loud mouth in the arena messing up the talking heads on TV and the other candidates. Candidates, who seldom dare to be candid.  And, it’s confounding to the “creeps” pulling the strings behind the scenes, the people who bankroll candidates out of the goodness of their hearts? Oh my! But, the strings they pull aren’t working. Old guys rule now. Don’t agree? Give me a call; I kept my land line and I’m in the book.