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America’s Deeply-Complicated Dance With Age, Work, And “Still Having It”
Up top in this post, I’d say it’s very hard to look at Biden and think “This guy is fully with it.” He has gaffes, he stumbles over things, he misidentifies, he talks about deceased people as if they’re alive. He’s also 81.
Trump conveys a bit more “virility” or “still with it,” but he also comes off as insane often: talking about magnets out of nowhere, confusing Pelosi and Nikki Haley, etc. He’s also 77.
In the ultimate “lesser of two evils” election, these two fossils are going to throw feces at each other for 75% of this year for the right to run a country that’s also largely graying, and not being backed up with massively-high fertility rates either.
But at the same time, as these dudes brawl over ideology and who is more “with it,” it’s impossible for many 39 year-olds who find themselves unemployed to get back in a good groove.
So the dance becomes more and more complicated: we’re an ageist society when it comes to employment, yet the oldest power brokers hang on and on. The dichotomy can cause frustration across multiple age cohorts.
Is there anything we can unpack here? Let’s try.
