​Old men in hot water

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Why doesn’t the world require politicians to leave office at 60?

Most of the leaders of countries, whether gods, fascists, democrats or socialists, are not doing very well these days. David Van Reybrouck, a Netherlands philosopher writes: “This is an unprecedented moment. The previous global disorder — Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao — were all in their 30s or 40s when they rose to power. A new generation built a new world and lived with its consequences. Today, the new world is being unmade by an old generation, one that will not live to see the wreckage it leaves behind. It’s easier to shout ‘drill, baby, drill’ when you are statistically unlikely to experience the worst of climate collapse.”

If all countries followed the Geneva Conventions and international treaties identifying what constitutes a war crime, all of the following “old” guys would be on trial: China’s Xi Jinping is 72 and sends dissidents to concentration and slave labor camps. Russia’s Putin is 72 and poisons, shoots and “gulags” and “Siberias” his enemies to death. India’s Modi is 74 and assigns his protesters to the Pakistan border. Hamas and Hezbollah leaders kill Jews while in town or country. Israel’s Netanyahu is 75 and kills 55,000 Palestinians in his Gaza prison. The Divided States of America’s Trump just made it to 79 and kills millions around the world by cutting funds to hospitals and clinics (Trump’s cuts to USAID medical funds will kill an estimated 14 million during his term of office). Iran’s Khamenei is 86 and kills women and men in the streets for not covering or cutting their hair.

The average age of leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty organization is 60, with several as young as 47. Ukraine’s Zelensky is only 47. Where will Russia and Ukraine be when he is 60 and Putin is 85? With developed countries having life expectancies generally between 75 and 85, ageism, education and medical advances have, like never before in human history, put the power in many countries in the shriveled hands of old and tired men.

The philosopher says the world has too many grumpy old men

According to insurance actuaries, life expectancy in the U.S. was 57.1 years in 1929 and advanced to 63.3 years by 1932. That’s an unbelievable change in three years! Maybe it’s because the Great Depression changed some lifestyles. People jumping out of sixth story windows after checking the stock market didn’t help. Less booze and red meat? In 2025, most experts put life expectancy for American men at 77 and women at 81.. So, technically, I have gained 14 years since 1932 because of medical and living advances and another 16 years because I’m lucky. My father, with good genes, lived to be 99.5 years and didn’t smoke or drink booze.

“Thanks to advances in medical science, people are able to lead longer, more active lives,” Reybrouck continues. “But we are now witnessing a frightening number of political leaders tightening their grip on power as they get older, often at the expense of their younger colleagues.”

And then we have the difference in aging and what happens to brains. For a couple decades I have witnessed the difference between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Although the same age, Biden is old and grumpy and Sanders is very young and inspiring while getting 36,000 young people in a red state to listen to what his democratic socialism will do for Generation Z.

I thought of two movies about old men after reading Reybrouck. One was “Grumpy Old Men” starring Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau and Ann-Margaret, produced in 1993. Much of it was filmed in Minnesota because the Minnesota Film Board supported the production. Our son Mark worked for the board and assisted in building several of the movie sets while it was filmed. The movie premiered in Minneapolis and Corky and I were invited to attend. We got lucky and were seated by Ann-Margaret, who was like a daughter. The movie is about two grumpy old men who exchanged insults, jokes and junk constantly while fighting over the charms of Ann-Margaret.

I got the title of my column “Old men in hot water” by transposing from Ernest Hemingway’s novel “The Old Man and the Sea,” a story about a Cuban fisherman who had gone 84 days without a catch. While ten miles out at sea on the 85th day, he caught a huge marlin. It took him three days and nights to land, tie the fish to his boat and get it to shore. It was too big to get into his boat, so by the time he got to shore sharks had turned it into a skeleton. Old men in both cases failed in their pursuits. This is a classic metaphor.

Some old leaders are looking to the future and have good suggestions

You are not on this planet if you don’t realize that “the world is facing a looming crisis of inequality that could see the first trillionaires emerge while nearly half of humanity still languishes in poverty.” This is a quote from David Smith’s article “Ex-World Leaders Call for ‘Powerful Shift’ as they Warn of Extreme Inequality” in The Guardian.

In a letter sent to the newspaper prepared by Club De Madrid and signed by 40 former presidents, the former leaders state that “Inequality spirals across nations, climate breakdown outpaces green transition, and 3.3 million people live in countries that spend more on interest then to pay sovereign debt than on education or health. Half of humanity lives in poverty. We need international cooperation, revamped for our era.”

The letter contains facts collected by the People’s Medicine Alliance and Oxfam, the world’s best source of economic information. The revealing part of the letter is that 153 former leaders of the 193 countries that are members of the United Nations didn’t sign the letter to support the Club De Madrid letter on the physical condition of the planet. Are they all grumpy old men and women? Would we classify England’s Margaret Thatcher and Israel’s Golda Meir grumpy old women?

The letter points out the problems of the world coming out of two world wars. Too many countries have had slow economic recoveries. Global problems cannot be solved when nations are failing to solve their own unique problems. The world is falling short in multilateral cooperation and the financing of global development aid which leads to more poverty, poor health care, more illiteracy, more stupidity and a superyacht load of climate change,

Today, July 1, European countries are being hit by a continental heat dome with temperatures reaching 116 degrees in Spain, France and Portugal. It’s estimated that thousands may die because most European housing is not air-conditioned. After all, Europe used to be in the Temperate Zone, not the Tropical Zone.

“Big Beautiful Bill” should be renamed “Billionaires Breed Bastards Bill”

In his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump yelled “I love the poorly educated!” as he lied his way up his Manhattan towering Tower of Babble. He made an artistic deal with evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who believed Black people were created by the Perfect God to serve whites. He told them he would do anything they wanted as long as they all voted for him. The Vatican and radical-right Roman Catholics and many Protestant denominations opposed abortion and the entire LBGTQUIA+ community because abortion was murder and homosexuality was “intrinsically disordered.” Perfect cultural items to feed the albatross around Democrat necks to keep the uneducated masses poor and the billionaires rich. After all, Trump has only one ideology: malignant narcissistic love of self.

I use the word “bastard” in renaming the BBB. A bastard is defined as an illegitimate child — and any product of irregular, inferior or dubious nature. Elon Musk, usually the richest man in the world, is a narcissistic buddy-enemy of Trump. He has had a dozen children by five different women and believes he must impregnate hundreds more to keep the planet populated.

The problem is, he is a terribly neglectful father. Ask the mothers of his children. They say he is never available except for one thing. He has a 21-year-old transgender daughter who hates him because she have never been accepted by him. He claims she’s dead.

What have Trumplicans done for the poor in red counties lately?

The following are some facts collected by Thomas Edsall of the Washington Post on counties in the Divided States of America who voted for Republicans, the political party that was once the representative of billionaires, Wall Street and some Main Streets.

1. Counties that supported Trump in 2016 are poorer, more rural, less dense, have fewer college graduates and are more likely to be in areas scarred by deindustrialization.

2. Republican counties dependent on the federal government for at least 25% of local government expenditures increased from 186 in 2000 to 1,746 in 2020, an uptick of 838.7%. In direct contrast, the number of Democratic majority counties dependent on federal payments for 25% of their budgets over the same period grew from 131 to 240, an uptick of only 83.2%.

3. The Congressional Budget Office has determined that Americans falling into the bottom 30%of the income distribution — which now includes many white MAGA Republicans — will be poorer if the BBB passes into law. And the loss would be most severe for those at the very bottom. They would lose approximately $1,600 per year.

4. Even if the country does not have the BBB, 300 rural hospitals are threatened with closures by 2027. Texas presently has 70 rural hospitals that may have to close in the near future. The BBB will just make it much faster. Rural hospitals earn 20% of their income from Medicaid now. If the BBB is law, the big cuts in Medicaid will be devastating. Records indicate 80% of the rural hospitals which have closed in the last decade have been in states that did not expand Medicaid.

5. A study by Vanderbilt University and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities states the following: “The Trump administration and Republican majorities in both houses of Congress are advancing a policy agenda that deeply threatens millions of families’ ability to afford the basics by making it harder for them to secure health coverage, buy groceries or afford everyday goods, all while pursuing expensive tax cuts that are skewed toward the wealthy. And the highest tariffs in a century will cost low-and middle-income families hundreds, if not thousands of dollars more than any money from tax relief.”

While more than 900 BBB billionaires and 24 million millionaires are ruling America, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and former TV journalist Lauren Sanchez were spending $50 million getting married in Venice, Italy, a wedding attended by wealthy friends from around the world. Celebrants occupied nine superyacht ports and 96 parking spots for private jets at the local airport. Before the wedding, Bezos had said climate change “was the biggest challenge to our climate” and Sanchez, whose wedding dress consumed 900 hours of labor, claimed she was “dedicated to fighting climate change.”

On a poster of Bezos on a Venice wall was the message: “In the time it takes to read this, Jeff Bezos’ wealth has increased more than your monthly salary.”