OLD FOOL

I found the house I am now residing in on April Fools' Day five years ago. Unlike today's dismal wintry weather, the sun shone brightly on flowering gardens that day. The real estate agent who was hosting the open house was tidying up in preparation to leave when I arrived. The house had as many flaws as pluses, but it spoke to me like the eyes of a scruffy puppy through the bars of an animal-shelter cage. I saw potential. When I called Peter and told him that I thought my seemingly endless search for a place had ended, he laughed and said, "I know. It's April Fool." 

Fooling people has become a regular methodology in our society. It is governed by liars and thieves. An oil company executive now determines our embassy policies and covert activities in the world. A climate-change denier runs the Environmental Protection Agency. A casino-hotel mogul is President. Our economy is firmly in the hands of scheisters on Wall Street, who own our most vocal Progressive politicians. No fooling.

I have been a fool. I foolishly allowed my parents to rule my life for far too long. This cost me an assured Ivy League education in favor of a continuation of a Roman Catholic education, which had its intellectual value but lacked the social provenance/confidence of an Ivy degree. I went to dental school post-grad to please those same parents, even though I knew in my heart that I would never be a dentist. I foolishly thought pleasing them would get them off my back. It was displeasing them that actually worked. They disowned me for the first time when I left dental school after one semester. They disowned me the second time a few months later when I came out to them as a gay man.

I learned to embrace the lessons that came from foolish failures. I had help from some worldlier peers and far worldlier older men whom I met along the way. I was lucky to become an adult gay man at a time when our subculture still valued the wisdom of older gay men. We didn't see them as trolls, today's dismissive framing of all old gay men by spoiled youth. My mentors ranged in age from 45 to 85. One ancient had been a silent film actor and bum boy to a German archduke. Others were CEO's and high ranking public servants. At high-tea soirees and between the sheets, I polished my formal heterosexual education with the healthy cynicism of their lessons. 

The faux-Progressives at Google have now apparently decided to prevent children, defined in different ways in different places, from viewing any gay content on YouTube. I don't mean pornography. I mean anything that makes references to homosexuality. Their censors are reportedly planning to restrict certain "unacceptable" political and social commentary as well. I wonder if they will protect children from gender reassignment information or anti-White racism. In other words, You Tube will become a propaganda tool for creating generations of brainwashed fools to come.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. This is old wisdom. However, it is based on the assumption that I have free access to the information necessary to avoid being fooled a second time. I feel so fortunate to have come along at a time when I was able to access information freely in libraries and on line. Future generations may have to fight hard for that access to truthful information. The door on the light of truth is closing rapidly. Once closed, the key to that door will be held by the 1% who rule. And they themselves may become fools by eventually believing the fabricated lies they foster to maintain their own power. This has happened in human history over and over again.