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Give Donald Trump credit. He's a genuine record-setter and no one can deny it. After all, he's now the oldest candidate ever to run for president of the United States and, were he to win in November and last until the end of his term, at 82 and seven months, he would have "Trumped" Joe Biden (who will leave the White House at 82 and two months) and become the all-time oldest president, a true record-setter first class. He would, in other words, have left George Washington (64), Andrew Jackson (69), Dwight D. Eisenhower (70), and even Ronald Reagan (77) in the genuine dust of history.
And were he indeed to end up in the White House again (backed by at least one "Black Nazi"), all one might say is: Let the madness begin.
After all, Donald Trump is increasingly mad in a distinctly aging sort of way. As someone who is indeed older than The Donald (yes!), let me say that, when you hit a certain age, you can begin to feel it. Of course, as the miraculous former New York Times sportswriter, author of SportsWorld: An American Dreamland, and TomDispatch regular Bob Lipsyte, still writing so vividly at 86, makes clear today, old doesn't necessarily mean (to use a phrase from my radio-listening baseball past) going, going, gone. Not at all.
But of course, it certainly can. And in Donald Trump's case, it's already looking ominously and disturbingly that way whether you're considering his unnervingly strange posts on Truth Social, including "fake images showing prominent Democrats in prison garb and a call for former President Obama to be subject to 'military tribunals,'" or his increasingly incomprehensible public comments. Take, for instance, this little passage on wind power that he offered a Wisconsin audience recently: "You take a look at bacon and some of these products. Some people don't eat bacon anymore. And we are going to get the energy prices down. When we get energy down -- you know, this was caused by their horrible energy -- wind, they want wind all over the place. But when it doesn't blow, we have a little problem."
And for anyone who watched the Harris-Trump debate, where The Donald was remarkably incoherent at times, you have to think that age is not doing him any favors. Even if I were a Trump supporter (not for a minute, of course!), I would be worried about that increasingly ancient brain of his. And with that in mind (yes, truly in mind), let Lipsyte enter old age in a new way, consider its distinctly un-Trumpian upside, and call on those of us aging coherently to lend the rest of the world a hand (or even a leg). Tom
Growing Old in the Age (And That's the Appropriate Word!) of Trump
A Call to (Old) Arms (and Legs)
After Joe Biden was shuffled off stage on trumped-up charges of senility, I started thinking seriously about the weaponization of old age in our world. Who gets credit for old age and who gets the boot?
At 86, I share that affliction, pervasive among the richest, healthiest, and/or luckiest of us, who manage to hang around the longest. Donald Trump is, of course, in this same group, although much of America seems to be in selective denial about his diminishing capabilities. He was crushed recently in The Great Debate yet is generally given something of a mulligan for hubris, craziness, and unwillingness to prepare. But face it, unlike Joe B, he was simply too old to cut the mustard.
It's time to get real about old age as a condition that, yes, desperately needs and deserves better resources and reverence, but also careful monitoring and culling. Such thinking is not a bias crime. It's not even an alert for ancient drivers on the roads. It's an alarm for tolerating dangerous old politicians who spread lies and send youngsters to war, while we continue to willfully waste the useful experience and energy of all ages.
We have to weaponize old age for good causes. We have to shake a mindset that allows us to warehouse people because their presence is an inconvenience while covering up for those with money and power. Out of shame or guilt or that feeling of elder helplessness, even smart old people all too often go along with arbitrary cut-off dates. I remember my dad, at 75 and retired, inveighing against the "dead wood," especially in his field (education) that blocked progress and discouraged young energy and innovation. By 75, he maintained, people were sliding downhill, which was his way of justifying being shelved himself. He became increasingly depressed and listless, not because he was too old but because he had been made to feel useless.
Then, at 76, he was given the chance to help other old people with their tax returns and, ultimately, their confrontations with local government. He promptly perked up and became an active advocate for elder rights until his accidental death at 100.
My old friends and I talk constantly about our aging, how to suffer it, outwit it, gang up on it, or even strategically give in to it. We've decided that nobody in power is doing anything meaningful about it because, beyond exploitive eldercare, they haven't figured out how to turn a profit.
Meanwhile, the really rich coots like Rupert Murdoch, at 93, are still tomcatting around and fussing with succession plans, while Warren Buffet, at 94, is cagily toying with his billions to avoid inheritance taxes.
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