AGE IN POLITICS:...Joe Biden And Donald Trump Both Old Geezers...Is 81 Too Old?...Is 78 As Old As 81?...Americans To Vote On Favored Coot...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas |...It wasn't all that long ago, like 20 years ago, that societal scuttlebutt had age 50 being the new 40. Well, they're still saying it, only now it's 70 being the new 50. America has been a hurry-up, throwaway society since the 1960s, when black & white TV went to die in Vietnam, Hippies brought "Free Love" and the electric guitar raised the nation's noise level a few good decibels.

John F. Kennedy was president then at the young age of 42.

The Beatles and Rolling Stones appearing with aging Ed Sullivan as they cruised into their early-20s. John Wayne and Frank Sinatra, last of the Hollywood dinosaurs, fading and then dying. The color gray was leaving town.

Now comes the resurgence? We ask, as presidential politics has us back on the clock.

President Joe Biden is 81, finishing his first term in office and looking for another four years. He's seen as getting up there in age, as they say in civil conversation. His opponent, Donald J. Trump, has legal collars around his fleshy neck, will be 78 this June. Are they too-old for the most important job in the splintered country, in the fractured world?

Yes, they are.

By about 15 to 20 years, we would say. And it's not that the crap being bandied about the immigrant surge along the nation's southern border is anywhere near the crisis that was the Cuban missile threats of the early-60s. Not even close. That Israeli War on Palestine in the Gaza Strip is NOT the mess that was our involvement in South Vietnam, where some 58,000 of our soldiers died staving off the so-called spread of communism. Yeah.

That however-nasty fight in Ukraine is not North Korea versus South Korea of the 1950s. Our Korean veterans would slap you silly if you dared to make that connection. Those cries of Inner City crime and police misbehavior is not the same of the sort we saw earlier in Los Angeles and, a bit earlier than Compton and Watts, in the Selmas of the American South.

We could parallel other moments in this country's worst moments, but you get the drift.

What America needs is a young president, whether male or female - someone who would speak to tomorrow, to the future. I like Biden over Trump for all the reasons under the sun and in the Bible, but his time has come and largely gone. Trump is just a mess individually and who wants the neighborhood loser as head of the street watch committee?

The number of Americans ages 65 and older is projected to increase from 58 million in 2022 to 82 million by 2050 (a 47% increase), and the 65-and-older age group's share of the total population is projected to rise from 17% to 23%. So says the U.S. Census Bureau. America's population is older today than it has ever been.

No, Maria, we're not out of the woods anytime soon. We're old and getting older. The woods may never the same, in fact.

From time.com: [ With the oldest presidential matchup in American history upon us, issues of health and competency are likely to come up again and again over the next nine months. And both campaigns will be working to make their opponent seem doddy, senile, and infirm, and their own guy the picture of vim and vigor. ]

That's out & out cheap political posturing. I guess we deserve it. It is, apparently, Biden vs. Trump in the November General Election. 81 or 78 - pick your horse at the Kentucky Derby's Senior Citizen Horse Race. Makes one wonder about age. Time, that constant in human life. You can't walk up to the standup clock and turn the sucker back, or off.

That time feature in your cellphone is what you live by, right?

Sure.

The job of American president will be filled. Citizen voters from coast to coast will have their say. Old will win...

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