The Problem With Old White Guys

They are not built to lead in the world we’ve been handed

I mean, seriously, the look juxtaposed with the caption says it all. By the way, “worst”? Source: CSPAN.

This bizarre thing we are calling an election cycle in 2024 has focused quite a bit on age. Somehow it is now normal to quibble over which old white guy, who will command the largest military in the world, is less demented, as if that is the highest bar we can set for the leader of the supposedly free world.

People actually believe that a still-shot of one candidate breathing through his mouth because of stuffed sinuses is more damning than his opponent who gloats that he can properly identify a cartoon image of a camel. Others clamor about the guy who needs help to gingerly walk down a gently sloped ramp, while defending the other guy who managed to fall upward into an airplane — twice in the same ascent.

In an era plagued with a litany of history-altering problems, that this specific issue is front-and-center in the media and minds of the electorate tells you all you need to know about the cheap reductionism of modern American politics.

Nevertheless, let’s dispense with the false equivalencies up front. These two guys are about three years apart in age. One is obese, says a lot of stupid things, and seems to have little idea how anything works. The other is in far better physical shape, but moves and speaks slowly which provides an abundance of meme fodder. One is a chronic liar, launching mean-spirited tripe so often that it is hard to know what he truly believes and even harder to care. The other exhibits a decent personality, but one can question the totality of his goodwill as it relates to a key elephant in the room — Israel.

Still, saying the two are similar is like equating a tiger to a chihuahua: both are four-legged, furry, meat-eating mammals, but rational people would not say both are good pets. Lots of false equivalencies are flying around about our presidential candidates, but those are not the problem with old white guys, or these ones in particular.

The problem with old white guys as leaders is that they know nothing about those whom they lead. Biden has served in Congress for like a million years, a Congress that has overseen the devastation of the middle class and allowed robber barons to run rampant over society, the economy, and the environment. Meanwhile Trump spent an equal amount of time putting his father’s wealth toward ripping off everyone from cancerous kids to contractors who built the only casinos in the world to go bankrupt.

Biden participated in legislative efforts that gutted the middle class to bolster a stock market from which few Americans benefit, while Trump led the administration that passed the largest giveaway of wealth since early in the Bush administration (the dumber one).

Biden appointed Merrick Garland — another old white guy — who seems to have no clue that it is the Justice Department’s job to arrest terrorists and insurrectionists and charge them with more serious crimes than trespassing and vandalism. Trump appointed Bill Barr — another old white guy — who confused the Justice Department with the Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe law firm. His pinnacle achievement was the presentation of a second-grade level book report on the Mueller investigation that would not have warranted even a D-grade.

Trump sputters on about cancer-causing windmills, sharks fighting electric cars (or something), and he defaces weather maps with sharpies because he has no idea how any of these things work, or maybe even what they are. If we are to take him at his word, his gold toilet at Mar-a-Lago must be splattered with feces because it has almost no water flow no matter the copious amount of times he flushes.

Sycophants on his golf course have convinced him that it is a championship-level achievement when he waddles his ball from the weeds to the cup and drops it in by hand. That a porn-star seeking publicity would sleep with him has fooled him into thinking that stapling some poor animal to his head and haphazardly slathering pancake makeup across his face makes him the most attractive in all the land.

This mirror-on-the-wall existence has persuaded him that the office of the presidency was just another tool of grift, another outlet to rip off even more people and to massage his noxious ego.

Biden sits at the White House snarling at MAGAs to get off his lawn. At his dinner table, he grumbles about what an asshole Trump is, mistaking one invective for the proper one — traitorous criminal. His Justice Department dillies and dallies over responding to a nationwide effort to overthrow the government, leaving the prosecutions of the highest levels of treason mostly to a smattering of local DAs.

Seemingly stuck in the politics of decades past, he persists in adopting a mostly even keel, playing as if today’s politics is a game with set rules that everyone follows, that the consequences end at mere policy differences. He barely mentions the blatant corruption of the highest court of the land, one which illicitly thwarts his agenda at every turn.

American democracy is imperiled by a party consumed with grievance, beset with corruption, fueled by violence, and bolstered by ignorance. If the age of the candidates matters at all, it is because one is an embittered old man who enjoyed an undeserved coddled life that he criminally abused over and again. He seethes at the fact that some of his devilry has finally caught up with him because he stupidly decided to broadcast it on the world’s stage by getting elected to a job he still knows nothing about. This acrimony arises out of a complete misapprehension of how reality works for most people, a reality now settling upon him. It turns out, living within the same rules as everyone else is not all that fun, and after more than seventy years of avoiding it, he bristles at his sudden immersion. All he wants now is for people to suffer like he believes he is.

The other candidate is an old man who enjoyed a similarly cushy life, albeit with moments of tragedy and hardship. His challenges comprise just some of what mostly everyone else suffers, but everyone else endures innumerable indignities that those of his station never experience. He remains anchored to a rosy view of the past, one which possessed its own abundance of moral stains, but trivial when juxtaposed to today’s. Never having witnessed the unbridled upset of the very system in which he moved upwards, he has no answers for what to do with such an ominous circumstance. A soft, restrained response to a veritable rebellion is not what the country wants or needs.

I am not arguing to abandon Biden as the candidate. His administration has been extremely successful in many areas. As choices go, the one between him and Trump is so dramatically one-sided that is hard to take seriously anyone still vacillating. But neither he, nor people like him, are suited to lead us into the future. We need a firebrand, someone full of youthful vigor willing to confront the torrent of enemies we face — both political and corporate. Because of the design of our system, for the next four years Biden is the only choice. But after that…

The coming decades will be filled with misery, death, and destruction. Decades of environmental annihilation and the vast theft of global resources by a petulant few have ensured it. Life moving forward will not be about trying to provide our children a slightly better future than we enjoyed, the goal of generations of parents before us, it will be about whether our kids survive it at all. It will require a substantial rethinking about how humans exist on this planet, how they organize society, and how we handle those intent on destroying it. The time for gentle treatment is over. After this term, we must ditch the doddering old fools, the remnants of times long gone, and bring in those willing to wield the sword of righteousness.

But first, we have to elect Biden so in four years we can again make that choice at the polls, not in the streets with guns. Sadly, for even what should be an easy, small victory, I am not optimistic.

Robert Vanwey was Senior Technical Analyst for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice, who specialized in investigating public corruption, and technology and financial crime. He also has a Juris Doctor and Master degree in history.

His piece, Lawless America, describes what may be the last gasp of American democracy, indeed maybe even the final breath of global democracy. November ’24 is Not an Election only further sums up the peril we are in.

If you like Rob’s work, check out the Evidence Files Substack for an exploration into technology, science, aviation, and the Himalayas, where he frequently lives and works.