Octogenarians

Call it what you want. They have to go.

I once had a friend whose parents had her later in life. She was a month younger than me but her parents were a good 15-20 years older than mine, around say... Joe Biden's age. When my friend graduated from college and was looking for a job, her mother told her to get a good job with a pension. My friend explained that jobs with pensions don't exist anymore. Her mother told her to fight to bring back jobs with pensions. This was the sum of her career advice.

If you've been on TikTok lately, you've seen a lot of memes of this sort. Young people getting job advice from seniors like "put on a suit, print out your resume, and go door to door shaking hands". The punchline is usually along the lines of "someone should make a Boomer try to get a job using their own advice". You don't have to look far to see just how out of touch the oldest generations are. For millennials, this moment hit hard when we watched Senators question Mark Zuckerberg about how the internet works. For Gen Z, they had the same gut punch moment watching Members of Congress question Shou Chew about how TikTok works.

The world has changed so drastically in even just the past decade that even geriatric millennials such as myself have a hard time communicating with people born ten years after us. I realized long ago that I simply cannot understand anyone who missed the 80s, nor do I want to. I had Boyz II Men. They have Billie Eilish. We are not the same.

The kids get this. They know all too well that the world they live in is one that not even their parents, much less their grand and great-grandparents can understand. The economy, the internet, housing, education, all of the central poles by which our world is upheld are Sanskrit to anyone who couldn't pick out Harry Styles in a lineup. The kids get this, but the grands don't.

And herein lies the problem.

Years ago we discovered that pharmacists are regularly delivering Alzheimer's medications to Members of Congress. That was worrying. For at least a decade Californians have been begging Diane Feinstein, a woman who very clear forgets where she is half the time, to step down. She (or her family and staff) refused, only recently agreeing not to run for reelection. One of the frontrunners to replace her, Barbara Lee, is 76 years old. She would be well into her eighties by the time her first term as Senator was over. Nancy Pelosi is 83. She was born before the attack on Pearl Harbor. And, of course, Joe Biden. Joe Biden has been running for president, since I was five years old. I am turning 40 this year.

Anyone who says that maybe, just maybe, there comes a point when you are too old to run for office gets shouted down with calls of AGE DISCRIMINATION. The other day, the Palmer Report, whatever that is, posted this epic tweet, which confirmed for everyone that Joe Biden is, indeed, still young enough to be an actor. What a relief.

Age discrimination or not, the nuclear codes should not be in the hands of a man who falls asleep at major global meetings and the internet age should not be regulated by someone who doesn't know what an algorithm is. Our country is falling apart, is more divided than ever, and is facing a series of massive, potentially democracy ending crises and our President still thinks that our best shot is reaching across the aisle. The world has left them behind but they refuse to leave the world in the hands of the generations who actually live in this world.

The irony here is hard to ignore. Biden was the youngest member of Congress when he first entered it at 30. Now he is the oldest President we have ever had. This is not the way this country has always been run. Our Presidents have never been this old before, our Congress has never skewed closer towards the past than the future. Revolutions are started by the young, the Founding Fathers were not grandparents when they wrote the Constitution. This generation, unlike any before them, grasped power when they were young and are refusing to let go, refusing to admit that the world has long passed them by, that they have not been a part of it for far too long.

So what's the answer? Term limits, obviously, but that will never happen. Congress will never voluntarily put itself out of a job, and this generation will never listen to us. They might, however, listen to their peers.

Last month, Barbara Boxer called on Feinstein to resign. She told her "there is life after the Senate". We need more of this. The octo crowd will never listen to a millennial or god forbid a gen zer tell them to step down. But they might listen to other people who are as old, and were once as powerful, as them.

Angela Merkel is a mere babe compared to most of these folks, at a youthful 68, but she seems to be having a good life out of office. 69 year old Tony Blair has found plenty of ways to keep up his wild and exuberant corruption since he left Downing Street. Shrub is 76 and still painting and hanging out with Ellen. Bill is 76 and... I don't know being vegan or something. Henry Kissinger is somehow still alive and chairing the boards of corrupt startups at 99. Of course, there's the ideal, the man we wish they all could be, wonderful lovely kind and generous Jimmy Carter, but you only get one of him in a generation, if you’re lucky. The rest though, could start a council. A Hydra of sorts, whose aim is to convince the octos and septos who refuse to step down that on the other side of elected office lie billionaire's yachts and free trips to fashion week. They would never do this for the good of the country, or the world, of course. Let's be real. But maybe they need more people to nap with at Klosters.

Let's make this happen. Let's give the ever declining greatest generation one last mission. Save us from yourselves. Let the 50 year olds have a chance. Go, rest, in peace.

Hail hydra.

Watch:

The Diplomat (Netflix)- You guys, this show is so good. It’s insanely good. It’s so good it made me realize that it has been a really long time since we have had a really great political drama. Watch it now. I can’t even begin to tell you how good it is.

Almost Australian (Netflix)- Professor Sprout gets her Aussie citizenship at 78 and travels her new country in a camper to get to know it better. I hope I’m still making solo trips around the world at 78, and I hope I have the spunk, kindness, and ferocity of Miriam Margolyes when I do.

A Black Lady Sketch Show (HBOMax- I REFUSE TO CALL IT MAX I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL)- My favorite sketch show is back and just as hilarious as always. I wish they would just release every episode, waiting a whole week is torture.

Listen:

Faith on Trial: Hillsong (podcast)- Remember when Justin Bieber was baptized in Tyson Chandler’s bathtub? That was when the world learned about Hillsong, and now this podcast is here to tell us the story of the rise and epic fall of the Bieb’s favorite cult.

High Strange (podcast)- If we’re ever having drinks, ask me about the time I saw a UFO that I know was probably some sort of extremely weird and advanced military aircraft but only because I am really really trying to convince myself. Now that the US government has finally acknowledged that UFOs are a thing, it’s time for some serious investigation in to the matter, and this pod is a good start. I binged it on a red eye flight yesterday and kept looking for bright lights out the window but alas, I remain unabducted.

Tigerlily- Natalie Merchant- Spotify’s new AI DJ is my best friend, his name is DJ Giles, and he recently pulled up my theme song, Wonder, and reminded me that Natalie Merchant is still that girl and Tigerlily can still make me really really sad about the death of River Phoenix.

Read:

Career of Evil- Robert Gilbraith- Book 3 of the C.B. Strike novels is darker than the first two with a serial killer that gave me such a bad nightmare last night that I literally woke up panting. I had been in a storage locker trying to HIDE A PHOTO OF MY GRANDMOTHER SO HE WOULDN’T DESTROY IT. It doesn’t take a therapist to figure that one out. The killer in Career is far more brutal than a destroyer of photographs but this dark novel starts showing us more of the pasts of Cormoran and Robin and is a dark but fun jaunt through the darker side of London.

We need to be talking about the cult deaths in Kenya.

I have never preordered a book so quickly in my life. Except for mine.