Some thoughts on turning 86

 Sam Smith - In a few days, I will turn 86 years old. As of a few months ago, I had already lived longer than at least three generations of males in my family. This also will make me nine years older than Donald Trump and six years older than Joe Biden, It is however clear to me, contrary to media coverage, that the major health issue of the two has little to do with age or with words they misspeak and mistaken moves they make. It has to do with more substantial  and longstanding matters of the mind, such as the sensible policy proposals of Biden compared to the massive illogic of Trump. Even though Trump has three years to go before reaching 80 he is already making dramatically less sense than Biden.  Biden, for example, has this year done nothing that can be called stupid, while Trump deserves that assessment on a nearly daily basis.

What I do find interesting about this issue is that a large portion of the public seems to think it’s okay to treat those of my age as incompetent or unreliable. Even liberals don’t seem to acquaint ageism with other forms of discrimination.  And they ignore some interesting facts such as that 4% of the Senate is in their 80s and 30% in their 70s.

Part of the reason for this is a reflection of political decline that started with our first show business president, Ronald Reagan. Reagan began the Hollywoodiazation of politics, turning the priority from achievement to image, which only a few politicians could really pull off. If you watched the recent GOP presidential debate you saw dramatic evidence of the weakness in this regard of the candidates even though much younger than Trump. And the Democrats – some who are speaking of replacing Biden – have not come up with a single name that causes serious consideration. Those old Democrats in the Congress are there in no small part because so few younger pols have yet to create an appealing status. 

Absent ageism this would not be such an issue but I’m afraid that a growing part of our country considers old folk to be unintelligent, sick or irrelevant. Which means, among other things, that those younger don’t need to find a place for them in their community.

This is aggravated by the fact that as you get older, others die. I’ve been keeping track for almost two decades and over 200 people I knew, worked with or were related to, have passed away.  Among these were those who, if still alive, might have been still inclined to be nice things to me.

I don’t deny that I have declined in many ways, but if we are theoretically meant to learn from experience then folks like me may still have some significant role. For example, we tend to define history as something that happened a century or more ago. It’s easier to read about slavery, for example, than about the civil rights movement of the 1960s.  It seems that not only are folks of my age irrelevant, what we experienced is as well. It would be helpful, for example, if young activists knew more about how their peers of sixty years ago produced so much change.

I grew up in a family of six children. I learned early on that even though we shared parents, home and school, we were each quite different and this would help make me skeptical of defining people by, say, ethnicity or gender when I got older. I learned that we were each different and needed to be regarded by what we did and said, not by what we looked like. And now I’ve learned this is true as well for old guys.