Elaine Meinel Supkis
As people age, the brain ages. And often various sorts of dementias set in. As the proportion of elderly grows, thanks to the benefits of modern medicine and first world comforts, the dangers caused by old people insisting on doing activities such as driving cars, grows. We will see more stories of barely functional people driving insanely, for example. Not to mention our visibly demented President driving us all into WWIII.
They can't believe they are unable to control a car.
EL MONTE, Calif. - An elderly man drove a car onto a patio at a Starbucks on Friday night, injuring 10 people, two of them critically, authorities said.
The driver, who was believed to be 80 or 81, was trying to park in a handicapped spot just after 9 p.m. when the car surged forward and hit the customers sitting on the patio, said police Lt. William Fetner.
The car plowed through the patio and back into the parking lot, coming to rest on top of another car, Fetner said.
I remember when this happened in Midtown Manhattan. An elderly lady mistook her gas pedal for a brake and in her insane attempts at trying to stop the car, she pressed harder and harder on the gas pedal while screaming as she plowed through crowds on the sidewalk and didn't stop until she slammed into a building.
This happens all over the place. Often, the aging driver is on an empty street so they plow into trees, telephone poles or houses where no one is killed. These don't make the news although I see this periodically with my own eyes. Attempts at preventing this sort of carnage always fails because the elderly vote and anyone suggesting they be tested for dementia is fiercely defeated.
This brings me to the sober problem of how to explain to people they are going insane due to dementia which is the process whereby the brain physically deteriorates. This is a very important topic, it is life and death for nations and empires for throughout history, the worst things that could happen to any country or kingdom was to either have a very young child ascend the throne or much worse, the king or emperor gets older and older and goes totally insane.
Sometimes, it takes the efforts of a dozen sane successors to undo the mad ravings of an eldery despot like Stalin or Mao. When Mao went senile, for example, he launched his infamous and destructive 'Cultural Revolution' which killed millions of Chinese and nearly destroyed the nation. Luckily for the Chinese, he finally died, but not before reducing their living conditions and forcing them to live really bizarre lifestyles!
America is grappling with this, too. Bush is demented. Literally, his brain, shrinking physically, is malfunctioning in horrible ways. Reagan was bad enough when he went senile while in office but Bush is by nature, a psychopath, so he is setting the remaining functions of his deteriorating brain on creating the Apocalpyse. This could kill a billion or more people.
His inappropriate touching of people has shot up, for example. Just this last month's time, he has grabbed the shoulders of the Prime Minister of Germany while she was in negotiations, he 'playfully' slapped the face of a black Democratic politician at a political gathering, he rubs the heads of bald men without asking, and of course, the biggest sign of his rising mental confusion shows up in his fractured speech.
This man needs medical attention and a reduction of his duties! Why can't he be examined by doctors who specialize in treating dementia?
This problem of stopping people who are obviously going insane from running things is across the board. Most humans love to pride themselves on the false belief they are 'sane'. I say, there is no such condition, we are all potentially insane, it is part of being a human with a too-big brain. Madness lurks inside of every head at all times which is why one has to be alert to the situation and realize when insanity is taking over.
Proud of being 'sober and sane', obviously demented people will go about the place, making excuses for themselves as they wreck everything. In the case of auto drivers out of control, they all claim they were trying and trying to control their cars but the cars insisted on being out of control. Even thinking this shows they are insane and they are too insane to realize that excuse is completely unreal and downright stupid.
The loss of intelligence irks anyone suffering it. Especially the elderly who often can point, with pride, to a lifetime of sane achievements. The greater the monuments of the mind, the more destructive the pride as very intelligent people age. A very few, and I do mean few, elderly retain their mental prowess as they age, but this is an extreme rarity. The vast majority don't.
It is all very sad, going into the sunset of life, knowing one will probably lose the fine functions of the mind. People who not only hold college degrees but are considered geniuses are in particular, in a bad place when they lose their minds. I see this, over the years, within my own family. There are many geniuses within my family tree and growing on this tree are the fruits of dementia.
It is so striking that I have, over the course of my own life, taken measures with myself to deal with this. Now that I am 55 years old, I give myself frequent written as well as verbal instructions to heed the judgement of my loving children and to have them tell me what is going on if they see things going wrong. For I can't see it, myself. This is the tragedy of dementia: it is, by nature, invisible to the person suffering from it!
Over the years, I have noticed that people who have worked all their lives at physical labors tend to be more accepting of dementia when it afflicts them. I had one aquaintance cheerfully tell me, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease so he is now going to take more naps and let his wife do all the driving. 'I am retired,' he said, 'So I get to finally stop working!'
But very intelligent people don't want to stop 'working' especially professors. They spent their lives being the smartest one in the room, pushing students along, being published, having people flatter and adore them for being so smart. When a child of theirs comes to them with a concerned face, telling them they are going insane, fury rises. 'Out of my sight! How dare you! I just have a short time memory problem. What did you say? I can't remember.'
Then, seeing the gravity of what they just said, fury rises higher. 'I never want to see you again!' roars the professor, rushing away.
I have seen this happen to more than one professor for all my friend's parents were professors and collectively, we all have the same problem. My guiding light in this dark matter was a very fine geologist who nursed his elderly family members and attended to their dementia. Seeing his own fate, he made preparations with his son and instead of fighting it fiercely, he simply handed off his affairs, one by one, to his son as his son suggested periodically. He had promised his son, for example, that when asked to hand over the car keys, he would not object.
So the transition not only went smoothly, the family stayed intact.
Most families that have many children can't do it so easily. A demented parent can always find some child who is 'better' than the rest who will say, 'My brothers and sisters are insane, only you and I are sane. Disown them.'
Ahem.
What on earth can one do in such a situation? This is where the state does have to step in. If insane people want to live at home and endanger themselves, this is their own choice. But the minute they get behind the wheel of a car, they become everyone's problem. And the baby boom dementia is coming up. Not only will many mentally incapacited people drive, they will vote in huge numbers. And con artists will use them for their own ends so instead of seeing a brighter tomorrow, I am quite skeptical of my own generation. So far, we seem more than very prone to fall for scam artists such as politicians promising tax cuts while running huge deficits.
In ancient Rome, at peace except for inner political turmoil at the top, for three hundred years, the birth rate collapsed just like the first world's birth rate is collapsing. People at the top ranks had virtually no children and the pollution from lead and other contaminants made them even more infertile just like our pollution is screwing up our ability to have children. And overall senility set in. Creativity collapsed, the ability to think clearly disintigrated, everyone wanted to keep the status quo going no matter what and this whole thing spiralled down the drain until much more active and younger (proportion of young to old) population of barbarians swept in effortlessly and put the entire, senile mess to the sword.
One of the things that disturb the increasingly senile first world today is the agitation and youthfulness of third world populations. In particular, the seething masses in Muslim countries deeply disturb us. In the past, I have pointed out that senior populations that have 25% or more over the age of 65 years, can't go to war with anyone that has a senior population of under 5%. In the aging G8 countries, the percentage of youth is under 30%, often under 25% now and if you exclude the children of illegal immigrants and Muslim or Hispanic Americans, in many countries the ratios have nearly collapsed.
Japan, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Greece, just for example, the birth rate is falling to half the replacement rate. In many countries, people from more fertile populations are invading, trying to enter to fill the gap but in places like Japan, they have successfully kept out most immigrants so the collapse will simply accelerate until some more powerful barbarian race invades and puts the survivors to the sword.
Collective as well as individual senility is a grave danger to world peace for the increasingly senile nations have nukes and can retaliate on the less senile by laughing insanely and then launching WWIII and killing billions of people. We have seen world leaders do this in the past who didn't have such powerful weapons!
I do hope all parents in America promise their children they will step aside when dementia sets in. And this goes double for the President of the United States. Look at how the present occupant of that fine office is destroying not only America but the world!
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