I have news for people over 65 or those coming close to it. You are no longer a Democrat or a Republican, or members of any of the other known parties. You, my friends, now belong to the party of old people.
The sooner you wrap your head around that, the better life will get for you. The ideas and the moral beliefs you fought for in your youth have no meaning to the life you are now required to live.
If the government wants to spend billions building a wall to keep some Mexican from coming here to pick tomatoes – how does that affect you? Being women’s-choice or pro-life at 65 or older – how does that affect your life?
What I am saying is that at 65 you need to put away the toys of your youth. Let your children and their children fight those battles now. We have more important battles to fight.
If a car company opens a big plant in your town, neither you nor I will be working there. If these so-called job creators bring jobs into your area, it is very unlikely that you will be working there. If they do away with, or keep ACA (Obamacare), it will not affect you.
Giving billionaires tax breaks doesn’t affect you unless doing it means cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, which would affect you.
We are soon to be the largest group of voting citizens in US history. For years we chose sides in battles over what we thought this country should look like. Those battles are over for us. Now we must join together: black, white, Asian, and all others – we now belong to one party and one race – old people.
The problems we face and the hardships ahead are shared by us all. We have a common enemy; it is called time. If one of us dies because we can’t afford our medicine or are left to die in a nursing home that doesn’t really care what happens to us – then it will be because we stood by while people were elected to public office who didn’t give damn about us.
We can no longer allow the passions of our youth to decide how we vote. There are questions that candidates need to answer before we give them our vote. I mean answers – not a play on words but a swearing to protect what is important to us!
Ninety percent of our needs deal with health problems that young people don’t understand any more than we did when we were young. The only way we can change the way the government treats us is to stop letting the foolishness of our youth come between us and the way we vote.
You can keep your beliefs, but you can no longer afford to let them interfere with the way you vote.
| Copyright © 2017 by Ed Rogers Bellator Senex (“Old Warrior”) is a penname of contributing editor Ed Rogers. |
This is so true in many respects, but it feels a bit self-interested to me. Just because we ourselves are growing older, do we cease to care about those issues vital to our children or (in my case) nieces and nephews and their children? I will likely die before the oceans rise catastrophically or the atmosphere becomes as toxic as that of Venus, but I don't want that for the next generations. I think I would rather die caring more about others, and about others yet to be, than for myself, even if that means I die a few years earlier than I might have with a little more self-interest. Also, don't forget that many of us can no longer afford the luxury of retiring at 65: my current retirement plan has me working until 75: lots of those "issues of the young" will still matter to me then,
ReplyDeleteBravo, Eric, well and rightly said, however good Ed's advice might be for people who have heretofore been kowtowing to the self-interest of their political tribe. At least, their changing to be truly THEMSELVES-interested would be an improvement.
DeleteAnd your comment reminds me of a critique of altruism along the lines that even altruism (concern for one's descendants or nieces and nephews) is one's self-interest in satisfying one's own need to feel better about oneself through living up to one's principle of caring for others. Well, if that's what your (and my) concern for others amounts to, so be it.
Our colleague James T. Carney comments via email:
ReplyDeleteThis is why people call us “Greedy Geezers.”
This has been a big factor in politics as long as I've been paying attention - and surely far longer. I assume Mr. Senex knows this. Love that name!
ReplyDeleteChuck, as I recall (if I remember correctly), you have commented on "the self-interested voter" a time or two before, seemingly with approval, or perhaps simply with tacit acceptance of the way things are.
DeleteI can honestly say that I have NEVER in my life voted out of a sense of self-interest, but always from a position of "civil responsibility" for "the greater good." And to me that has always seemed "the right thing to do," in terms of citizenship and fealty to Enlightenment principles that informed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America.
As you might, therefore, surmise about me: I have been appalled and deeply troubled by the apparent fact that millions and millions (perhaps a majority) of American voters vote out of self-interest, or, even worse, out of a sense of solidarity with their political tribe. I use "tribe" deliberately, since Thomas L. Friedman and others have recently, in the NY Times, written about "tribe mentality" in the United States, particularly with regard to the polarization of its politics.
Here is the URL of Friedman's article, "Alabama Says No to Trump’s Tribalism":
Deletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/13/opinion/alabama-senate-election-jones.html
I believe the Enlightenment theorists of democracy assumed that most people, most of the time, would vote their own interests. History suggests that is mostly right. I try to do better, but success is in the eye of the beholder.
ReplyDeleteTribalism, on the other hand, is crude xenophobia, humanity at its most childish. Trump types exploit it for demogogic purposes, of course.
BTW, Ed, you ARE writing with tongue firmly in cheek?
Chuck, alas, I think you are right about what Enlightenment theorists assumed. I wonder what teacher I had, Civics class I took, book I read as a young person gave me the silly idea to vote “the common good” rather than “personal self-interest”? Who or whatever influenced me, it was powerful.
DeleteHaving read the article and the comments I could believe it is written about here down under
ReplyDeleteBear
It would seen to me those who vote for a candidate that that plays on their emotions to get the vote is more of a danger than people who vote their self-interest. Would it not stand to reason that a person that cares for the welfare of the sick and old, would also care about the water, air, and the well being of the world in general. May I point out that the next generation may very well reject your ideas and beliefs and you will have died too soon for nothing.
ReplyDeleteEd, I’m not sure that setting aside a voter’s tendency to vote for a candidate who “plays on his emotions” is any easier for a voter who votes in his self-interest than for a voter who votes for the common good. That is, I think you’re recommending a false alternative. By the way, “Make Your Teeth Grate Again: Think of Who Is President!”
DeleteI didn't say it was easy. The point being, if you're over 65 and vote for a candidate because he is against abortion but for cutting Medicare and Social Security, what have YOU gained. All we have is our vote and we keep giving it away for the pie in the sky bullshit petaled by con-artiest. The only true fact you have is that without medical help you will die. There is no emotional idea behind that nor should there be a vote given to anyone that would be willing to see this happen, but it does.
ReplyDeleteAs for the White House, there is no president, only a ring master running the con of a lifetime.
Ed, thanks for quickly clarifying the point you hoped to be making, especially in clarifying what you meant by “playing on their emotions” (by emphasizing an inflammatory topic like abortion...or guns, or taxes, or immigrants, or regulations, or...hmm, there are SO MANY topics that some Americans take way, way, way too emotionally).
Delete