All Hail the Gerontocracy

After his second brain freeze, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, 81, is prompting the question of whether he’s too old for the job. California Senator Dianne Feinstein and President Joe Biden, who both seem too long in the tooth for their jobs, highlight the possibility that we’re descending into gerontocracy.

Non-Partisan Man

In an age where political partisans pick and choose their own facts, we need a defender of reality who forces Republicans and Democrats alike to face up to the harsh truth.

Only Biden Can Stop This Political Dumpster Fire Redux

8-5-22

          Grover Cleveland beat Benjamin Harrison in 1884. The same men faced off in 1888, with the opposite result. A second rematch took place in 1892, and Cleveland was restored. If you died in 1892, you didn’t miss a thing during your first four years of death.

What could be drearier or more indicative of calcified politics, save for four consecutive terms of FDR?

            Since Joe Biden’s milquetoast Democratism basically make him Hillary Clinton not-in-a-pantsuit, we now face the dreadful possibility of a third Trump run and a second Biden run that feels like his third. This could be a presidential campaign between two eldercoots we would have been better off never having seen run for, much less achieve, control of the executive branch in the first place. And it could happen all over again.

A Trump v. Biden rematch, of course, is the exact opposite of what we want.

            Two years from now, on Election Day 2024, Donald Trump will be 78 and Joe Biden will be nearly 82. Nancy Pelosi will be 84. There’s nothing wrong with old age per se — wisdom, experience, blah blah blah — but Biden, 78 at the time, didn’t have the energy to run a full-fledged campaign last time. What is he going to do when he’s 82, campaign from someplace even more convenient than the basement of his house? Will he Zoom in from bed?

A nation with this many octogenarians at its helm feels more like the Soviet Union during the bitter-end pre-collapse 1980s (Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko all died in short order) or Zimbabwe at its most wildly dysfunctional at the conclusion of Robert Mugabe’s endless reign. A country doesn’t have to be governed by Millennials to be vibrant or successful. Too many young people in charge can lead to disaster — look at Twitter before Musk swept in. Still, a repeat contest between two incredibly old white guys is algorithmically engineered to generate a tsunami of apathy.

            Nobody needs this retread. Well, Trump needs it; he thinks prosecutors will be reluctant to indict him for one of the myriad of crimes he has committed now that is a declared candidate for president, and he is right. But two-thirds of the voters, to the extent that they matter anymore, don’t want Trump to run again. Here, finally, we find bipartisan common ground: two-thirds of Americans also don’t want Joe Biden to run again!

True, they are different two-thirdses. But there’s overlap. Millions of Americans sing in perfect harmony that they want something or someone or two someones different. That has to count for something — even if it will take a week or two to tally in Arizona. A nation cries as one: Don’t run, baby, don’t run!

            Like all politicians, Joe Biden says a lot of things that aren’t true. Unlike things that people actually want, like abortion rights and student loan forgiveness that he lies about, Biden is almost certainly lying when he says he’s running again. And most Americans believe and hope that he’s lying about that.

            But he may be telling the truth.

            Insanely.

            Democrats lost the midterms. But they beat the point spread. So they’re declaring victory. Even as Biden goes from a Democratic House and Senate to a Republican House and Democratic Senate, he is upgrading his report card like a kid using a pencil to change a D to a B. After such a magnificent pyrrhic victory, maybe he really should run again! The New York Times and at least part of the White House staff seems to think his “victory” has earned him another shot at the White House. “[Biden] regularly notes that he is the only person who has ever defeated Mr. Trump, implying that he would have the best chance of doing it again,” the newspaper reports.

            I don’t see the logic. Then, neither does Biden.

            The United States has a pretty lame voter participation rate. In a country where it is already hard to convince people that they should care about politics and engage in the electoral system, nothing could be less exciting than recreating the 2020 presidential election—a race that only became exciting after Trump lost and tried to overthrow the government.

Which he did lamely. A younger despot’s putsch would have had more oomph.

But, as referenced above, Trump will stay in, do or die. He must, to stay out of prison. Perhaps Ron DeSantis or some other evil Republican will win the nomination instead. But right now, it’s Trump’s to lose.

            Biden, therefore, is the only human who can spare us from the horror of a 2020 replay. If he really loves America, if he cares about the American people, he will do the right thing and refrain from running again.

            Thus clearing the field for Hillary.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

The Democracy We Deserve

A lot can and will change between now and 2024, but currently the frontrunners for the Democratic and Republican nominations are the same exact septuagenarians who ran last time. And one of them is about to become an octogenarian. Whatever else the United States is, it’s not a great example for the rest of the world. Either, or both of these guys, could easily die on the campaign trail.

Graying, Gen X and Generational Leapfrog

3-3-93

            Youth culture lives. But some women are aging against the machine.

            It means more than you think.

            Girls can go gray as young as age 13. Teens who go prematurely silver are abandoning what would have been the standard shame-based response of the past, racing to buy hair dye. Now gray-haired teens and twentysomethings are joining their black- and red-haired, blonde and brunette brethren—and what would have prompted stares a decade ago suddenly seems normal.

Letting natural silver and gray grow out predated the pandemic by several years, but what Glamour calls “the gray-hair revolution” exploded during the 2020 lockdown. “I do remember just feeling like that was a silly thing to be concerned about right now,” a 39-year-old Texas woman who’d previously dyed her mane every three weeks told The Washington Post. Countless women dye so often that they can’t imagine what natural would look like. “The curiosity took over. I think one of the things that has surprised me is that I actually like it.”

            Inspired by the decade-long trend, Millennial women in their 20s and 30s who haven’t yet gone naturally gray have also adopted the “granny gray” look. In Manhattan, where I live, gray-haired young women are so commonplace that no one gives them a second glance. Ironically, these hairstyle Benjamin Buttons are using toxic chemicals to achieve a natural look.

            Now the “grannycore” dress is all the rage. (Synonyms include grandma chic and an offense to the English language, grandmillennial.)

            Anti-style has become high style. Young urban professionals are paying top dollar for long shapeless floral print dresses with prints reminiscent of a 1930s feed bag. Dorothea Lange meets Saks.

            You don’t need a doctorate in cultural psychology to suss out the nostalgic impulse here. COVID-19 prompted numerous people to rethink their priorities, to opt out of the rat race. Millions are dropping out of the workforce; a job fair held at the Denver airport that expected 5,000 applicants only got 100. Millions more have moved from big cities to the countryside and there’s no sign they’re ever going back. College applications are way down, a trend driven by young men who fear graduating with a massive burden of student loan debt. Craving simplicity and comfort while saying goodbye to an increasingly cruel world, Americans want to get back to basics.

            Old feels basic.

            Of course, fashion is window dressing. Sure, you want to look like grandma. But would you hire her?

Silicon Valley, its major employers disproportionately populated by young CEOs, continues to maintain ageism as one of its core religious values. Discrimination against workers over age 35 is so rampant that an ad expressing a different sentiment made national news. “Unlike Silicon Valley, we do not discriminate based on age,” read an August listing for a senior software developer by a Chicago-based startup. “Experience matters. We hire old people. (And young people, too.)”

On the other hand, you might date grandma. 90% of men say they’d date someone ten years older or more.

            Whether we’re paranoid or clearly recognizing objective truth, those of us in that Gen X never-sweet-at-any-age demographic spot suspect that Millennials aren’t merely ignoring us—we’re used to that—but are actively plotting our demise. If you’re over 40 these days, mass media doesn’t bother to cover the book you wrote, the band you sing for or the stuff you like to buy. This desire to look old, really old, significantly older than me at 58, serves as a can’t-look-away reminder that generational politics isn’t just personal, it’s familial.

Millennials are mimicking granny fashions. Who are grannies now? Not Gen Xers 15 or 20 years older than them. Today’s grannies are Baby Boomers—Millennials’ parents. It’s another example of “generational leapfrog,” the cultural phenomenon of memory-holing a generation by making whatever is cool, desirable, profitable, etc. the provenance of those who are younger and older—just not you.

Gen Xers have been generationally leapfrogged throughout their lives. They’ve never had and never will have a president of their own. They’ve never been the right age to appeal to employers who were always looking for older folks to be bosses and younger ones for entry-level positions. Their cultural icons are routinely snubbed and marginalized by cultural gatekeepers.

Now that Xers are middle-age, it’s cool to be old or to look old. Take this to the bank: once Gen X enters the real over-65 gray zone, calls to eliminate/privatize Social Security will return and mocking the elderly will again become de rigueur. No one will want to look, much less be, old.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of a new graphic novel about a journalist gone bad, “The Stringer.” Order one today. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

 

 

Where Were You When Joe Biden Made History?

Many people will probably remember where they were when they heard that Joe Biden had been declared the victor of the presidential campaign over incumbent Donald Trump. But will the exceedingly elderly, increasingly fragile and intellectually deteriorating president-elect remember?

When a Country Reeling from Crisis Turns to an Aging Father Figure

Vichy/ Free France and Lead up

Not long ago, there was a country whose people were suffering a devastating moral, political and economic crisis. Before the crash they were certain of their place in the world; theirs was, even in the opinion of their adversaries, an exceptionally prosperous, powerful and politically vibrant civilization whose culture had disproportionate influence around the planet.

Then everything collapsed. Just like that, seemingly out of nowhere, they were laid low, lost, no hope in sight.

No one was sure why. But there was no shortage of scapegoats. The left blamed the right, the right blamed the left, and everyone wondered whether it was simply a meta case of nothing good lasts forever.

Before the collapse this nation had been a military and economic colossus, a superpower possessing one of the world’s biggest navies and one of its strongest armies. It controlled a vast empire. What had happened was unthinkable. Yet there it was.

This was France in 1940. In just six weeks, Germany—itself defeated and humiliated by France 20 years earlier—had invaded and subjugated this proudest of peoples. How, the French asked themselves, could they have been so unprepared? Why had their much-vaunted democracy, first in the West, failed?

In their time of need this desperate people turned to the leadership of a revered father figure, an elder statesman. His advanced age and halting manner worried some. (He was probably suffering from Alzheimer’s.) The leader “is good for three or four hours a day… but when he is tired, especially in the evening, you can get him to sign what you want without him realizing,” one of his ministers said at the time.

The old man’s politics included unwholesome dalliances with reactionaries. But he had a long record of service to the nation. His patriotism was unquestioned. He claimed not to have sought power; he had stepped up, he reassured the people, to protect and guide them through a terrible time. “I make France,” Marshal Philippe Pétain told the French after ordering the army to surrender, “the gift of my person.”

France should have returned that gift.

Some wondered whether, at age 84, Pétain was too old to understand that he was being used. Playing on his name, critics called him “maréchal péteux”—senile. The Marshal had certainly lost a lot of sharpness since World War I when he led the miraculous victory at the Battle of Verdun—“on les aura!” he had cried to his dispirited troops, deliberately echoing Joan of Arc—that many believed to have turned the tide of what had felt like a doomed war.

It is more likely that the Hero of Verdun, a vain and reactionary man who had always been stubbornly resistant to suggestions he might be on a wrong course, felt vindicated by the catastrophe. In his view, and he was hardly alone, louche liberalism had led France to a sorry fate. It was his fate to salvage the mess and keep the Germans at bay—and his opportunity to create a cult of personality under a pathetic sub-dictatorship.

As the rot of his brain proceeded, Pétain became apathetic and withdrawn, leaving the outright fascists in his puppet administration to collaborate with the Nazis enthusiastically. His government protected no one. It deported tens of thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps, tortured and shot members of the communist-led Resistance and turned over so much cash and food to the Reich that France soon had the highest hunger rate in occupied Europe. Today Pétain’s name is synonymous with weakness and treason.

Unless Trumpian legal challenges to mail-in ballots don’t trigger a 12th Amendment scenario, polls indicate that desperate Americans are about to turn to a father figure with visibly diminished mental capacity to lead them out of a deep crisis whose causes and nature they have not yet internalized.

While it is undeniable that Donald Trump’s initial non-response to the COVID-19 pandemic and his bizarre refusal to embrace basic medical protocols increased the economic costs and killed more patients, the fundamental causes of the crisis were structural: predatory corporate capitalism that long predated his presidency, a for-profit healthcare system without a social safety net, poor diet and obesity, staggering disparity of wealth, previous administrations’ outsourcing the manufacture of vital supplies such as masks, too much power vested in local and state governments.

I do not expect President Joe Biden to sell us out to foreign enemies. He will not fill his cabinet with proto-fascists, as did Pétain. Like Pétain, however, he has neither the vigor nor the vision nor  the political orientation required to get us through the coronavirus crisis or to correct the systemic flaws that made a terrible problem unnecessarily worse. When he was called upon to defend Anita Hill and block the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court but enabled him instead, when he ought to have taken a stand for African-American men systemically condemned to draconian prison terms but joined the racist jail-them-all crowd, when he had doubts about the Obama Administration’s decisions to destroy Libya and Syria and remained silent—whenever he was required to stand tall and speak up—Biden failed the test of leadership. And that was when he was a more lucid, younger man.

Not unlike Pétain, Biden seems unable to work more than a few hours a day.

If Biden wins, only three things can save us from this crisis. If he dies or is incapacitated and President Kamala Harris turns out to listen to better angels she didn’t reveal as DA, we may have a shot at recovery. If Biden’s cabinet turns out to be a remarkable collection of Best and Brightest and he serves as their figurehead, we could muddle through. If the American people rise up and overthrow this corrupt and moribund government and replace it with one that serves our needs, and we somehow manage to avoid the despotism that often follows revolution, we might emerge better than ever.

I am not optimistic.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of the biography “Political Suicide: The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party.” You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

 

A Date with Joe Biden

Joe Biden’s basic appeal to voters: he’s not Donald Trump and he’ll have other people run the country.

The Healthcare System is Demented

After my mother fell and broke her arm, she ended up in the hospital. Medicare covered five days in the hospital and three weeks of rehab. Then the insurance troubles began.

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