I was making chicken fajitas, and I used half of both a red and a green bell pepper. The remainders I sliced up for use the next day, securely locking them into a nice glass container that I use just for that purpose. Then I very carefully opened the dishwasher, placing the vegetable container on the rack. While the fajitas were cooking, I went ahead and ran the dishwasher. The bell peppers are very clean.
There is an easy explanation for this behavior: I’m old. Not very old, but definitely old. I’m still just short of being a septuagenarian, but I do remember President Eisenhower played too much golf. (Perhaps it’s because I’m a historian, but I tend to date things by presidential eras.)
There are many subjects where I have a greater knowledge or ability to understand far better than when I was younger, but I am definitely finding it much harder to memorize specific details about some subjects. During a recent Art History course, I found it extremely difficult to memorize the artists’ names and the dates paintings were created. I could understand the paintings, and even remember details about the artists’ lives (and could probably discuss the iconography in detail) but I sometimes couldn’t quite remember the artists’ names.
As I have aged, I’ve changed in other ways, too. I have become both more intolerant and critical about a wide range of subjects that I will just lump together and call stupidity. (For the sake of kindness, I will not specifically name all the members of the Enema U Administration that should be neutered in a medical procedure involving two bricks and a bucket of rubbing alcohol.) My wife, The Doc, suggests that—perhaps—I become a trifle “intense” at times.
While I disagree with President Joe Biden on many political issues, I firmly believe that he is, fundamentally, a good and decent man who genuinely wants to serve his country. Unfortunately, I also believe that he is too old to do the job well. Frankly, every morning when I read the newspaper, I expect to see a story about how the United Nations is taking America to the international court in The Hague and collectively charging us with elder abuse.
That last sentence isn’t just tongue-in-cheek blog humor—the literally hardest and most demanding job in the world is currently held by a man 79 years old. Of the leaders of all industrialized nations in the world, only the Queen of England and Pope Francis are older than our president.
I’m not picking on President Biden—there are clearly politicians in both parties who have….well…let’s just say their ‘sell by dates’ are long passed. If we were to set a maximum age for political leaders at age seventy (like many countries), 71% of the Senate would have to retire. I picked age seventy as a retirement age because over half of the states have already picked seventy as the upper age limit for judges. Arkansas is particularly punitive to the elderly: the state now has a law specifying that any state judge who refuses to retire at age seventy loses all retirement benefits.
Scientists who have studied the problem of aging suggest that cognitive decline by age seventy is inevitable. While more years may provide the elderly with more experience and more wisdom, it doesn’t alter them fact that as we pass our sixties, we can’t do quite as much nor do it quite as quickly. While the level of decline may vary with individuals, there is measurable decline in everyone by the time they reach seventy.
Recent studies conducted at Harvard and M.I.T. suggest that there are several different kinds of cognitive activity that reach their highest peak at different ages. While vocabulary, a good indication of overall intelligence, doesn’t reach an intellectual peak until the sixties or early seventies, all other intellectual activities peak much earlier.
Most mental processes like memory, pattern recognition, and the ability to mentally react quickly peak in a person’s twenties. The ability to recognize and remember emotional states in other people reach their utmost in the forties, while general knowledge and reading comprehension peak in the fifties. Unfortunately, after the early seventies, it’s all downhill. All measurable mental tasks slowly erode with time.
Perhaps the most significant erosion occurs in an elderly person’s ability to pay attention to more than one task at a time. While mental multi-tasking is difficult at any age, tests reveal that the ability drops by half between the ages of 35 and 65. Needless to say, the job of President requires the ability to multi-task far more than most jobs.
It all of the above weren’t dishearteningly enough, there is a long list of diseases that target the elderly. Aging is a key risk factor for most of the common neurodegenerative diseases, specifically dementias like Alzheimer’s disease, cerebrovascular disease, Parkinson’s disease and Lou Gehrig’s disease. While the risk of an individual’s developing these diseases is incredibly difficult to calculate, their incidence definitely increases with age.
As we age, there is a natural tendency for us to be more conservative and to insulate ourselves from new ideas, new technology, and new fashions. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but it does make it more difficult to make decisions that will affect those who do not share our history and traditions. These traits don’t necessarily disqualify someone from a position of authority, but they hardly serve as attractive traits.
Perhaps it is time for Congress to enact legislation that restricts candidacy to those under the age of seventy as of the date of the election. Those still in office when they reach age seventy could remain in office, but would not be allowed to run for reelection.
I’ve noticed that the elderly are frequently credited with honor and distinction simply because of their age and are given respect for experience and wisdom in advance of any evidence of its existence. From my experience, the net distribution of intelligence and stupidity seem to be about the same regardless of age. Perhaps we need to remember that growing old doesn’t require a lot of brains…it just takes a long time.
While I see where you're going and rather agree with you, such a ban on over 70 presidents would have cost us the man I believe was one of the key figures of the 20th century. He was 70 years old when his term began and 78 when he was done. He turned around the faltering US economy, restored America to greatness on the world stage and pretty much brought down the Soviet Union. He invigorated conservatives and stopped America's slide into the mire of Marxist collectivism. He restored American individualism and led the resistance to progressivism. In Texas, Ronald Reagan was influential in inspiring voters to begin dumping the old Democrat dominated state government. I worked with nonprofits at the time, helping start 5 nonprofit organizations to fill in the gaps in the DC designed government human-service programs. My interaction with the entrenched Democrat dominated bureaucracies in Texas served to make a solid conservative out of me. I'm not sure how successful we would have been in cleaning up the vastly corrupt bureaucracy we all had to deal with without President Reagan. His descent into Alzheimer's was one of the tragedies of 20th Century, but despite his decline with age, the man made a difference beyond the age of 70. I don't think we can set an arbitrary age for retiring our leaders. Unfortunately, politicians hate to give up power and will cling to it on into rampant senility. Still, I'd have hated to give up President Reagan because he was 70 years old. The man was done yet just because he was in his 7th decade.
ReplyDeleteI meant "wasn't" done yet. My typing has gotten worse as I've gotten older and often spell check makes it even more problematic.
DeleteWould this mean we would finally get to see Obama's birth certificate so we could figure out his mandatory retirement age?
ReplyDelete