Judging Joe Biden by his Age Is An Insult
Judging Joe Biden by his Age Is An Insult
And it's not just Joe you're insulting.
I’m taking a moment out of my busy day, a day where I get to do any damn thing I want to do, to tell all you buggers going on and on about Joe Biden’s age to back off and stop embarrassing yourselves.
Joe Biden’s age is nothing compared to Donald Trump’s flagrant, gross criminal behavior. You’re trying to compare the two with age being the only factor, noting that Biden is older than Trump so every gaffe, every slip, every hesitation must mean Biden is as unfit as Trump.
Aren’t you tired of doing this? You know and I know and we all know that only one of them isn’t fit to be president. Say his name. Come on. Just say it:
His name is Donald J. Trump.
I’m hearing more and more that neither of them is fit to be president, when one of them, the current president, Joe Biden, proves every day that he’s doing just fine. He’s getting things done. He’s delegating to the right people. He gets up every morning and goes to work. He’s not out trying to pretend he’s our country’s lord and savior or trying to hide his years and years and years of incorrigible criminality. That’s Donald Trump.
You may not like everything Joe Biden does—we’ve never liked everything any president has done—but I’m here to tell you, and you know this to be true: Joe Biden is a far, far better human being, a far, far better citizen, a far, far better president than Donald Trump ever even pretended to want to be.
Donald Trump revels in his badness. He wants to be the president who destroyed a democratic republic. He wants to throw his opponents in jail. He wants to be the exalted leader who is above the law and beneath contempt. He admires other dictators around the world and wants badly to be as bad as they are. That’s his goal. To be bad.
How many ways does Trump have to tell you this? Do you think he’s kidding? He’s not kidding.
How often does Joe Biden have to try and prove to you he’s up to doing the job? Yes, he talks slower and sometimes forgets where he’s going with his thought. Yes, he trips sometimes and looks awkward. Yes, he’s beginning to look old. But he’s not a goddamn monster.
Donald Trump is.
The only comparison between the two is that they’re both old men. They have nothing else in common. Nothing.
So here it gets personal. When you keep telling me that Joe Biden, at 81, is too old to be able to think straight and make important decisions and just generally keep up, you’re telling me, a woman who is five years older than Joe, that you feel the same about me. It’s an insult to check our ages—using no other criteria—and then write us off as done. Finished. You’re telling us our age—and nothing else—defines us.
The magic number today is eighty. At eighty we’re finished—or should be. If we’re approaching eighty we’d better be packing it up. And if we insist on living our lives in ways that suggest we’re not taking our advanced age seriously enough, knowing that our bodies and our minds will inevitably fail us—are already failing us—then it’s up to the rest of you to intervene and put a stop to our foolishness.
You seem to think it’s your duty to keep reminding us we’re old.
Joe Biden is the president of the United States. If he wins another term—and he’d better— he’ll be my age when his presidency is over. My age. Now I’ll admit I could never be president. I’m not smart enough or ambitious enough, and it’s not something I’ve ever even thought of, but it’s not because I’m too old now. I could never have been president when I was young. Not smart enough. Not ambitious enough. Nothing has changed.
But Joe Biden has been working toward this his entire political life. He is smart enough. He is ambitious enough. And he’s doing fine. He didn’t get to be president until he was much older than he might have hoped, but he’s where he should be now. He knows what he’s doing. And he shouldn’t have to keep proving it to you simply because you’ve set some arbitrary limit on him, based on nothing more substantial than the number of years he has lived.
If you’ve got a gripe with Joe, fine. You’re entitled. He’s not perfect. But if your only gripe is that he’s 81 years old and he’ll be 86 years old by the time his second term ends, you’ve got no argument. You’re going to have to do better than that.
You’re going to have to show real instances where his age gets in the way of his decision-making, and right now you can’t. There is no proof of any kind that Joe Biden is moving toward senility or is in any danger of incapacitation or of dying.
You can’t predict that five years from now he’ll be any different than he is right now. He may be, but you can’t know that, based only on his years. So please stop doing it. Tell the press to stop doing it. Tell Joe it’s okay if he’s 81. Lots of people are. And let him get on with the damn job.
Now I’m going to get on with mine, whatever it may be. My age, 86, is a number. It has nothing to do with me as a person. There are multitudes of us who are in our eighties and we have nothing else in common. Our ages are irrelevant.
Joe Biden is old. Donald Trump is old. I’m old. So what?
Please, you all, get over it.
Further reading: Heather Cox Richardson tackles this very subject today. Please read it. She’s brilliant:
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Ageism sucks.
Biden’s doing such a great job leaves the evil power-hungry “nabobs of negativity” no ammunition. They have only their lies and innuendos via sham investigations to use; the same old nasty games they’ve always played. Remember