I don’t think you truly appreciate how old 80+ is.
Politics, as a business, is about the future – not the past. I really don’t believe someone who’s formative years were in the post-war era and first entered national politics during the fucking Vietnam war (!) has perspective that is very representative (as opposed to occasionally valuable) of the populace that, themselves or their spawn, have to face the challenges of living in the current era – whether you consider it a new golden age or ”late stage capitalism”. Furthermore, I really don’t subscribe to ideas that have so little resonance that they couldn’t be represented by a gamut of people. If you think you need to rely on the elderly (Sanders) or those with feeble, Trump adjacent minds and actual brain damage (Fetterman), you don’t believe enough in the ideas themselves – and that’s a huge fucking problem. Don’t downplay that part we’re in agreement over to justify that someone, hypothetically, somehow, could be above it all and be a great representative even if they are completely removed from the people that will actually have to inhabit the Earth they leave behind.
That’s not to say I think your points are entirely moot. I just think you’re overplaying hypotheticals that we really should not accept at face value.
I don’t think you truly appreciate how old 80+ is.
Politics, as a business, is about the future – not the past. I really don’t believe someone who’s formative years were in the post-war era and first entered national politics during the fucking Vietnam war (!) has perspective that is very representative (as opposed to occasionally valuable) of the populace that, themselves or their spawn, have to face the challenges of living in the current era – whether you consider it a new golden age or ”late stage capitalism”. Furthermore, I really don’t subscribe to ideas that have so little resonance that they couldn’t be represented by a gamut of people. If you think you need to rely on the elderly (Sanders) or those with feeble, Trump adjacent minds and actual brain damage (Fetterman), you don’t believe enough in the ideas themselves – and that’s a huge fucking problem. Don’t downplay that part we’re in agreement over to justify that someone, hypothetically, somehow, could be above it all and be a great representative even if they are completely removed from the people that will actually have to inhabit the Earth they leave behind.
That’s not to say I think your points are entirely moot. I just think you’re overplaying hypotheticals that we really should not accept at face value.