The concern is valid, but isn’t this one of those things that we’ve been arguing for? That is, having government people like representatives and judges shouldn’t all be old geezers with little grasp on modern life?
This only highlights how assuming old=bad and young=good is rather naive.
Yup. If Congress was all people with the fortitude of ‘old guys’ like Bernie Sanders (even ignoring his politics if you don’t like them) the USA would be a much better place.
I say fortitude because the guy’s been pushing the exact same positions for like 30 years. There’s NO question of Bernie flip-flopping on an issue because whatever he’s pushing today is usually the exact same thing he was pushing a decade or three ago and will probably be what he’s pushing until he dies.
Yep. All that is required, mostly, for older politicians to still be a force for good as they age, is for them to stay curious, stay empathetic, and make sure they’re not always the smartest guy in the room. Their staff and so on can fill them in on cultural/technical changes as they become relevant.
As long as they maintain that, and their mental acuity, things will be fine.
I think this old=bad notion will look especially ridiculous and dated (ironically) as things are likely to get even weirder, faster, and sooner than we all may have assumed. I’m talking things like life extension, certainly healthspan extension, better disease treatments, etc.
But even if that doesn’t happen, writing people off just because they hit some arbitrary “retirement” age is just short-sighted, and Bernie is a great example of why we shouldn’t. He’s 85. Imagine if we told him, at 65 or whatever, “okay, off to the pasture with you!”
I say: FUCK THAT NOISE.
People are arguing that Federal judges shouldn’t be past-retirement-age geezers, but that’s different from arguing that such a position shouldn’t be a career capstone.
Also, a significant aspect of the danger is becoming out-of-touch simply from being in the job too long, which is exacerbated by being appointed to it at a younger age since they’re not likely to leave it for something else before their career is over.
That’s fair. You’re basically saying that they’re promoting college interns to the director’s table because they happen to support the CEO and that doesn’t mean they’ll be good directors or anything other than loyal to the CEO. It’s a valid argument.
I’m only saying that the whole narrative of old=bad isn’t necessarily always right.
Yeah but it doesn’t solve it necessarily without a term limit or retirement age, in this case it’s just an attempt to lock in the current brand of political insanity for decades regardless of how elections go
