The Old Man On The Mountain

A View From the Backwoods of NH

I Blame Elizabeth Warren

There are so many issues today, with so much finger-pointing going on (right or wrong) that I’ve decided to just generalize like so many others. Rather than fighting over who-did-what anymore, I’m just going to blame Elizabeth Warren. Since it doesn’t matter if I’m right or not, as long a I screech it out for the masses to hear, just like Elizabeth, I’m OK.

Ever since someone paid attention to her during the last presidential election, she now believes that everyone wants to hear what she has to say. I mean, everybody has an opinion about something, but Elizabeth has an opinion about everything. They say that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but Elizabeth sounds like the bearing’s been run dry and then rubbed in sand.

Teddy Roosevelt once said “Speak softly and carry a big stick”, but it almost seems like Elizabeth heard it as “Screech loudly and maybe it’ll stick”. I’ll tell you right now, whether she has a valid point or not, I’ve stopped listening. And maybe that’s wrong – but wrong or not I blame Elizabeth Warren.

I’m ashamed to say that I have relatives that support her “because she’s a woman”. Now, if I told these same women that I voted for Donald Trump “just because he’s a man”, they’d fire-bomb my house. Voting someone into office just because of race, gender or physical appearance is just wrong. And having people out there that have and would do just that, well, I blame Elizabeth Warren.

So I stop and I ask myself, “Why is she grabbing as much of the spotlight as possible? Is she hoping to run for President in 2020?” And as a cold chill creeps down my back at the possibility (much like the one I had for Hillary, but for far different reasons), I shiver – then I blame Elizabeth Warren (hey, she wants the spotlight, right?).

The last decent politician to come out of Massachusetts, to me, was Bobby Kennedy. Whether you liked his policies or not, there were two things you couldn’t deny – he wasn’t a crook, and he wasn’t in politics for a paycheck. I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I’ve been when the Dukakis’, the Kerry’s, or the Romney’s for that matter, failed to attain the nation’s highest office. Because I KNEW who they were – I’d experienced them first hand.

When my daughters were growing up, I always told them that they could be “whatever they wanted to be”. Throughout my life, I’ve always been a supporter of gender equality. And I have to think that any man worth anything, that has a mother, daughter, aunt or cousins would support and wish nothing less for them. But when you have women like Carly Fiorina or Hillary Clinton representing their gender, it’ll always be an up hill battle. And moving forward it’s not going to get any easier, because of people like Elizabeth Warren. Yup, I blame her for this too – big time.

Not living in Massachusetts anymore, I don’t pay close attention to “everything that she’s done for the Commonwealth”, but from where I sit, the only thing I’ve seen is that she’s good at spending other people’s money. And, with the exception of the millennials (who’ve developed spending other people’s money into a new art form), I can’t believe that anyone sees that as a “talent that the world can’t live without”.

She’s a woman that spews the same rhetoric about “equal rights, equal pay, equal, equal, equal”. But who’s listening? I know I’m not. I know she’s right, just as all those before her were right. And just because she’s a woman doesn’t make it “more right”, at least not to me. Much like a fine meal in a restaurant, the presentation matters just as much as the substance. But her presentation is horrible, and for that I blame Elizabeth Warren.