"No Country For Old Men"

The 1928 poem by W B Yeats is called "Sailing to Byzantium."  Its first line is "That is no country for old men."

Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing‐masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Belen Fernandez has told her own personal story from this poem, and her dying father's recitation of it.

The US is no country for old men (msn.com)

I sign petitions every day, sometimes more than one a day, complaining about the pharmaceutical industry's abuse of sick people, and their money.  The petitions are very much along the lines of Fernandez's article.

But it's not just the pharmaceutical industry, or even about American "health care."  There's a broader, underlying problem which supports this whole dysfunctional scheme.  It's the mindless fixation on money, or, if you will, capitalism.

Today, I watched yet another episode of "The Twilight Zone."  This one was about a ravenous man about whom it was said that having all the money he did didn't have much meaning to him.  His addiction was getting the money, not just having it, and the sense of endless control, and crushing the people whose money he could get.  An addiction to getting money is certainly a powerful driver in this country.  But even that isn't enough.  Not only do some people feel a need to get as much as they can of other people's money, but they also want to control other people's lives.  They want to get your money, control your life, and determine your sense of history, and reality.

It's not just old men who wither under such relentless, and ruthless, pressure.