Their combined age is 158; let that sink in
I sometimes forget to zip up after using the bathroom. Thankfully, I don’t have to take my pants off in the bathroom because, if I did, I’m sure I would sometimes forget to put them back on. I would lose pants and party invitations the way I used to lose umbrellas and girlfriends.
In my prime, I occasionally beat the chess computer. Those days are gone. Nowadays, I’m lucky if I can find the goddam chess computer.
My fast ball? It left so fast it left my head spinning.
I’ve lost my keys so many times that I bought a gizmo to put on my keychain so that I can use my phone to make the keychain ring. Now if only I could find my phone. Soon I’ll be trying to start the car with my phone and trying to telephone people with my keys.
Mea culpa. I admit it. I stipulate to it. I confess. I do not have the mental capacity or physical strength to be president of these United States.
We’re on the brink of nominating for president two men older than I, who are even less physically and mentally fit for that job.
The younger candidate is clinically obese (which is neither sinful nor unusual in America, but he mocks others who are obese, such as Chris Christie who at least has publicly and courageously tried to remedy his condition). He apparently uses cheap lotions to turn the color of his skin to the color of his hair, neither of which is particularly attractive.
He’s addicted to social media in the manner of a 14-year-old girl and addicted to adolescent insults in the manner of a 13-year-old boy.
That’s the younger candidate. The older candidate is hidden from live interviews, mixes up names and dates, clumsily trades access for money for his corrupt family, tells fabulist stories about himself, and, according to a recent investigation, mishandled top secret government documents but is mentally unfit to stand trial for that crime.
His two greatest pleasures in life are to eat ice cream and to freak out young girls by sniffing their hair. It’s apparently important to him to do these things on-camera. It’s only a matter of time before he gets in front of the cameras to thrust his ice cream cone into a 9-year-old girl’s hair, and then licks her hair clean, cameras rolling.
Sometimes he curses news reporters, and sometimes he curses clouds. I suspect that when he’s all alone he curses inanimate objects, and he most certainly curses – and kicks – his dogs which unsurprisingly go on to bite his handlers.
Imagine a kinky potty-mouthed animal-abusing pedophile with Tourette’s Syndrome and cheap hair plugs accompanied by a family of hillbilly grifters.
When considering the age of these two nominees for president of the United States and leader of what used to be called the Free World, consider this for context. Thomas Jefferson was 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were 36 and 32 when they wrote the Constitution.
Bobby Fischer was 29 when he was the chess champion of the world. Albert Einstein was 26 when he published his theory of relativity.
America’s current presidential candidates are 77 and 81. American government is broken.
My generation was taught that democracy – especially the American strain of it – was the ultimate evolution of politics and philosophy.
But that’s pretty egocentric. Maybe it’s time for another evolution/revolution. Maybe it’s time for Plato’s philosopher kings (which are known in certain systems as “politburos”)? Maybe it’s time for a benevolent dictatorship (which for centuries in successful Europe were called “monarchies”)? Maybe a pure Athenian-type democracy as opposed to a democratic republic (but maybe improve on the Athenian model by ensuring universal suffrage)? Maybe a Republic that is less democratic, such as the one originally envisioned by the Founders?
Winston Churchill famously said in a line not original to him but often attributed to him that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s Churchillian catchy. Churchill was a great wartime leader, an inspirational speaker, and the second-most important figure of WWII. But a great political philosopher? Not so much.
A smarter but less-known political philosopher, William F. Buckley, said with more circumspection, “We are made to ask what it is that political democracy gives us. The system is utilitarian. But is it a fit object of faith and hope?”
Indeed, is it? Leave your thoughts in the comments below – with a defense of the same.
Plato’s philosopher kings were quickly discarded by our Founding Fathers because our Founders, in homage to our Divine Creator, realized that all men (i.e., people) are created equal and that “philosopher kings” foisted onto to the public are just as corruptible and sinful as the village pickpocket or the local adulterer.
That is why the Founders brilliantly divided the powers of government via Federalism and the separation of powers. In America, no one politician can wield political power in the manner of Plato’s philosopher king. That’s the feature of our system, not a bug.
The late William F. Buckley, Jr. also had some great insight about who he would trust more to govern the affairs of American citizens …
“I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.”
See: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/30244-i-would-rather-be-governed-by-the-first-2000-people#:~:text=“I%20would%20rather%20be%20governed%20by%20the%20first,faculty%20of%20Harvard.”%20―%20William%20F.%20Buckley%20Jr.
Buckley too realized the inherent fallacies of those ivory tower academicians who, full of pomp and circumstance, undoubtedly see themselves as worthy of fulfilling the role of Plato’s philosopher kings.
Additionally … in one last reference to Plato along with his allegorical cave, our current political class, establishment media, academia, and so much of the other American institutions we all used to trust, seem to be on a turbo-charged gaslighting mission of the American people.
There was “it depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is,” WMDs in Iraq, “you can keep your doctor” with Obamacare, the Russia hoax, and even the now “the border is secure,” and/or the inability of a SCOTUS justice to define what a woman is, among countless other lies, frauds, and ambiguities perpetrated onto the American public.
So many Americans are like that prisoner chained at the bottom of Plato’s cave, and compelled to watch the shadow shows put on by their jailers. Only when the prisoner escapes his captors and exits the cave does he emerge to see the sunlight and the truth of the world, as opposed to the shadows he was shown to be “truth” by his former cave tormenters.
As I remember the allegory … the former prisoner, having seen the light of truth in the sunlit world, decides to return back down into the cave to convince his fellow prisoners to escape. The remaining prisoners, too conditioned and too believing of the shadow shows, promptly kill the freed man because of their refusal to believe his tale and experience of sunlight and truth outside of the cave.
Anyways … that’s how I remember the allegory.
Here’s a link to Plato’s Cave or sometimes called The Allegory of the Cave:
https://interestingliterature.com/2023/03/plato-allegory-of-the-cave-summary-analysis/#
Plato was a smart and very deep thinker, but his notions of “philosopher kings” would only end up in a tyranny by the most educated. We would end up being ruled by condescending moral busybodies who govern us for our own good. Imagine Buckley’s nightmare scenario in which all of our political leaders are chosen only from the Ivy Leagues.
Lastly … this notion also dovetails into another famous quote by C.S. Lewis, and his view about tyranny:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology
Reference:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/526469-of-all-tyrannies-a-tyranny-sincerely-exercised-for-the-good
G’day to all!
Respectfully, I disagree with Glenn's thesis. Ok, many in the past did great work in their 20's and 30's, and of that there is no doubt, but they were an exceptional few. However, because the "president" is a mental bag of goo that doesn't describe Trump. There are older people who have the physical and mental vitality of someone much younger and chronological age should not be so determinative. I remember Ben Franklin's "Many men die at 25, but aren't buried until they're 75" on that subject.