Mitch McConnell’s “freeze” has brought in the inadequately-despised experts of global media for yet another feast of navel-gazing at someone else’s navel. Everyone’s older – In an aging population. Some people are older than others.
Well, ain’t you just peachy-keen observant?
Let’s start with the “freeze”. That’s classic anxiety. When you get trained in emergency services work, one of the first things they tell you is that someone frozen is having a case of anxiety, usually shock, or perhaps an ongoing condition of anxiety. It’s an extremely well-known reaction to circumstances pertaining to an individual in crisis.
…So someone who’s been working with absolute raving nutcases for nearly a decade has no reason for anxiety, right? Nobody was calling to hang people on January 6, either, right? The guy has nothing on his mind but the lilacs in the Republican convention, right?
Age isn’t a factor in freezing. You can do it in elementary school. The point here is that any diagnosis of anyone is subjective, by definition. I find it hard to believe that genius-overloaded American media in particular is well qualified to diagnose anything.
Having selectively misread one person, we can now move on to the Trump-Biden dichotomy. “How old is too old”, cranks out the media Tedium Machine. This is a sector using business models based in the 1800s, by the way.
Some points for consideration:
- People take time to get to that level of political seniority. You can’t just go to kindergarten and pick a new president. It’s been tried quite recently and didn’t work.
- Contacts, networks, and personal associations build political careers, not a stopwatch.
- American media’s own visual infantilism isn’t an issue. I saw a picture of Biden stumbling on plane steps repeated endlessly. Every single human being on Earth has stumbled on steps of some kind at some time. Yet that’s a political issue?
- A person who stumbles over every single word in a litany of lies, however, isn’t “old” or “past it” according to someone.
- Mental competence is also subjective. You can be an idiot at any age. You can’t be immune to questions about competence at any age, either.
This is not to say that age isn’t a real issue for other reasons. Most people think “old white men” are out of touch. That’s not a baseless accusation. It’s highly debatable whether the Class of Whenever is up to speed.
Let’s talk relevance. The sheer scale of outdated irrelevance in American political circles is mindboggling. Everything BUT practical solutions to America’s issues is a topic. Who’s senile, would you say?
Conservatives or more accurately the grifters claiming to be conservatives, use an image of the Good Old Days before most of them were born as a platform. This is Senility by Default as a selling point. As a matter of fact, it’s the definitive form of senility. No short-term memory. You see the double standard.
Progressives can be just as bad in one way – Everything translates to 1970 or something. No, it doesn’t. Get over that. You can’t be “progressive” and be trying to get back to the Stone Age.
Which brings us back to age as any criterion for anything. If you’ve been around long enough, you should know the answer to one question in particular – “Can you do this job, yes or no?”
Biden-Trump; Frankly, I’d prefer someone coherent to someone whose focus is non-existent. Age has nothing to do with it.
What’s really wrong with the age argument is that younger people aren’t getting involved. Their perspective is missing. That’s a very serious age problem.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
