Satire turns serious

In a recent public event, 65 year-old Barack Obama stated "80 percent of the world's problems involve [congressional] old men hanging on who are afraid of death and insignificance, and they won't let go." 

66 year-old Former Chicago mayor and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel endorses mandatory retirement age at 75 for members of Congress, presidents, cabinet officials, and federal judges. 

The bigotry articulated by those influential Democrats is harbored by a mestastisizing woke bloc. But it falls to pieces when subjected to evaluation.

Contentions advanced from that quarter are that 'old' men necessarily hold passe ideas, and their intellectual capacities to comprehend, reason, and exercise sound judgement are uniformly of dubious status.

That's obviously a generalization. Elon Musk hardly deserves the same negative ranking with Joe Biden in the smarts department.

Individuals should be graded on their own merits - not uncritically dismissed wholesale as guilty, based on immutable-characteristic group membership. That's a standard no more applicable to age than to sex, skin color, nationality, or (to point up the foolishness of the proposition) height or hair color.

The next logical step would be banning 'old' men from voting - participating in decisions as to who is elected to office. If the aged are ruled universally inadequate to devise laws, it would follow that they are identically unfit to choose lawmakers.

The 1968 satiric movie Wild in the Streets depicted song "Fourteen or Fight" and the callow, revolutionary crusade it inspired. Voters above 30 were derided as "stiffs" ("stiff with age").

Later, the singer whose song had rallied subversive youth campaigned for president. He cited the group most dangerous to America's national interest.

"Who, after all then, has caused all our troubles? Those who are stiff, baby! Not with love, but with age!"

Decades later, the satire has become serious.

Iowa's DC Larson is the author of That a Man Can Again Stand Up and Ideas Afoot. He counts among freelance credits Daily Caller, The Iowa Standard, American Thinker, and numerous heartland newspapers. His political blog is American Scene Magazine.