I don’t understand how anyone thinks an 81 year old person should be leader of a nation. And will they ever produce good stuff instead of what they’ve been trying and failing to do for so many years and it hurts the people.
When will they help the citizens instead of funding the military and fancy projects that waste money, cutting taxes for billionaires and raising them for the poor, cut social security, cut medicare, cut this, cut that, more money to the military.
So messed up.
I don’t know good places to find accurate news.
If the aim is to ensure that a person has a sufficient amount of life experience, that correlates exactly with age. That makes a minimum age requirement reasonable.
No it doesn’t.
Put another way, experience is different for everyone. Most of his experience predates the internet. It is fundamentally irrelevant to the modern world
Does that mean he’s the stereotypical technophobe boomer? No.
I’ve got a couple decades experience working. Doesn’t mean I’m qualified to be an a heart surgeon. The kind of experience matters, and it’s freshness.
Of course the quality of experience is different for everyone. That’s what voting is for. And we have a lower (minimum) threshold for the quantity of experience.
On the other hand, someone being 81 years old does not necessarily mean that they are experiencing mental or physical decline to a degree which should disqualify them from office. OP opened with:
I want to be clear that that’s what I am a bit rankled by. I’m definitely not trying to get in an Internet Fight™ with you. We’re having a respectful and reasoned debate, and I definitely see your points.
Ah. Understood. I appreciate the distinction there.
I do think that at a certain point, there needs to be a turnover in leadership. things are either stagnating, or they’re growing/developing. At a certain point, you have to stop and ask if it’s appropriate to let the next generations take up the wheel. Keep in mind, at this rate, the next president will not be gen x- we’ll skip them. (and remember, Biden is in fact in the Silent Gen, not a boomer.)
I have no good answers as to how to do that, without being a dick. but we’ve been voting from the same pool of people to be at the top since I’ve been alive, and the reason things seem so stagnant now is for exactly that reason. I’m not really worried about his absolute age, I’m worried about the lack of change and turnover, and worried that we can’t afford another twenty years of stasis. (climate change, for example, can’t afford for us to twiddle our fingers.)
There’s nothing at all wrong with voting based on how you feel someone will bring their own quality of experience to bear on political leadership. As above, that’s what voting is for. But the rise of fascism in America, along with our voting procedures (FPTP, electoral college, gerrymandering, voter suppression) means that voting solely on that basis can have unintended consequences.
The right wing in American politics has been artificially propped up by the structures around elections since day one, and the left wing has been suppressed. Those structures still exist, and we need to loudly express our political will to change them - and take the right wing thumb off the scales. And we have to do that while government still functions. It’s like rebuilding an engine while the car is driving down the interstate.
Would you say that Trump’s life experience qualified him for the job?
Amount, quantity. Not quality.
Do you think that the quantity of Trump’s experience qualifies him for the job?
One must be at least 35 years old to qualify for the office of president. Trump meets that qualification. There are others, most notably the Insurrection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which, in a sane world, would disqualify him.
But I suspect that you’re using the word “qualifies” in a colloquial sense, and not a legal one. Donald Trump is a fascist, and since fascism is in direct contradiction to democracy, no, I do not believe that Donald Trump is colloquially qualified to be president.
But at least he’s not some wet behind the ears 34 year old. That would be the real nightmare scenario.
If you’re spoiling for a fight, you’ll need to find it elsewhere.
Well, it’s not like the ageist policy that perpetuates the existing gerontocracy is going away without a constitutional amendment anyway.