David McElroy

“I’m really not in a hurry to go home to my wife,” said Jim. “We don’t really understand each other, so I spend most of my time now that I’m retired looking for reasons to get away from home during the day.”

I’d seen Jim before, but we’d never spoken until Tuesday afternoon. You know how older men like to congregate in certain community gathering spots, frequently for breakfast? There are some guys like that who sometimes hang out in the afternoons at a hamburger joint where I often go to write.

Jim normally hangs out with some other older guys who come into this place in the afternoon, but none of his buddies were around. He’s 74 years old, so he’s been retired for years now. I don’t remember how many he said it had been.

Jim is bored. He used to be a partner in a construction supply business that was absorbed by a larger company. He didn’t get rich when the company sold, but he said it was enough for him to retire in style and do whatever he wanted. The only problem is that he had spent his entire life doing things that weren’t especially meaningful — just to arrive at retirement and wonder what he had been doing for all these years.

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Have we become a society that has no regard for human life? Or have we always been that kind of callous society? Are we becoming more civilized over the centuries? Or are we hopelessly fallen savages who are fooling ourselves by pretending to be more civil? I can’t decide.

There’s a game that certain thuggish teens in Chicago play called “Pick ’em out and knock ’em out.” (Maybe it’s played elsewhere, but I’ve never heard of it until now.) Three Chicago teens ran across a 62-year-old man last Tuesday when they decided to randomly play this sick game.

“I think I’m gonna knock out this (expletive),” said the 16-year-old who started it, according to prosecutors. They say he started the video recorder on his cellphone and handed it to a 17-year-old to record the attack. He and an 18-year-old took turns recording the beating.

The three thugs surrounded Delfino Mora, an unemployed, partly disabled man who was in an alley collecting cans for recycling. The 16-year-old asked whether Mora had any money. When Mora didn’t respond, he punched him hard enough to knock the older man down. When his head hit the concrete, there was a loud crack that can be heard on the video recording, according to prosecutors.

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When I was a kid, I was pretty sure of whatever conclusions I came to. This used to irritate my father, who would say with exasperation when we disagreed, “You just think you’re right.” I found that an odd thing to say. Of course I thought I was right. Why would I have said it if I hadn’t thought I was right? Why should I question myself now?

My 12-year-old self would have really understood Barack Obama and various other politicians who seem puzzled when people want them to pinpoint the things they’ve been wrong about. I was reminded of it again a couple of days ago when I read these quotes from Obama when CBS News asked him about his mistakes as president so far. He sounded like a job applicant struggling to find an answer to a question about what he biggest weakness is.

“When I think about what we’ve done well and what we haven’t done well,” Obama said, “the mistake of my first term — couple of years — was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right. And that’s important. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.”

See? He hasn’t actually made any mistakes. He just hasn’t sold his actions well enough.

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