Age is Paper
Look around. America is aging. So are its governing institutions.
Boomers read a lot. They love stuff in print. Books you can feel the weight of. Newspapers that crinkle to the touch. Information in front for all to see, not making your iPhone light up at 5:00am, but delivered to your doorstep like a friendly good morning. Or available at the public library without the need of a temporary password.
So it comes as no surprise that aging Americans are “woke ageists.”
OMG, he’ll be 84 before his term ends in 2027!
When will SHE (it’s usually a SHE) give up the (fill in the blank)?
Consider these words from a member of the Barcalounger generation: age is skin deep, age is in the eyes of the beholder, and ‘experience’ does matter.
Consider one may be correct, but not accurate;
Consider the President does not rule alone;
Consider ‘age’ is ours to own.
Consider redirecting one’s angst to what is aging, and some things one can participate in changing. Such as… our governing institutions… our barriers to democracy… our recoiling at redistributing wealth… our refusal to shore up our ineffable assets.
Consider children. Remember them?
Not the current wailing, diaper/knicker crowd, but the planet occupancy they will inherit… from us. Those children, yet to arrive.
We know the short list of paper changes from news headlines, such as “Running for office requires deep pockets and lots of contacts which takes time to accrue.” Or “Contrast Biden with Trump, who’s in better shape?” Or “Congress could vote in age requirements for holding office.” Or “Pass an amendment which lowers the voting age to 14.”
What we don’t know, because it’s hard to see, let alone wrap one’s head around, are the non-paper codes enforced by those in power, the plutocratic bromides such as “do the work of ascending through the system,” “protect your base,” “pay your dues,” “earn the car keys.”
What we don’t know because we ignore in one form or another is the “pedagogy of the oppressed” (Paolo Friere). We prefer to channel our angst in disdaining/enabling the crotchety institutions than in seriously imagining an alternative or an ‘alter state.’
Paper doesn’t resolve matters of oppression.
What we don’t know, because we blind ourselves to the banality of our collective predicament, is what other nation-states are attempting to change. Israel doesn’t have a Constitution. Chileans are trying to rewrite theirs. Even the concept of “nation-state” is overdue for a critical overhaul. (1)
We feel emboldened, righteous even, in talking about cognitive decay that mysteriously visits when we cross the seventies threshold. Call this the Prevagen era.
In the end it’s paper that’s aging, not exclusively its purveyors. And all that paper? Somebody had to write those words, coin those phrases, compose those ditties.
So don’t blame them.
Tear down the paper. The walls will follow.
We are already doing it, attempting pseudo social change, setting up challenges that will be written into law, putting social change in the sights of an Appeals Court. Hannah Arendt was once quoted as saying “Lawyers are the secret arbiters of social change.” Lawyers are page turners: they arbitrate, they don’t lead. Throw lawyers the gavel and they will throw it back at you: abortion rights, affirmative action, the fourteenth amendment. A professional class arbitrates “in order to be in the game.” (2)
We embrace another form of page turning — transitioning to a “digital era.” We superimpose all things identifiable onto a Facebook page. The ‘real’ page turning seeks its digital double. And then we indulge handwringing over what we have done or will be condoning: a makeover of the same algorithm, the same model. (3)
We traffic in answers where currently there are none. Because we can’t see them. But this does not preclude action. Philosophers have and will argue the question of when and how to act for generations: it’s part of the human DNA.
Consider where we can start. Consider we know that list: vote; show up; learn more; engage in collective politics; exercise the solidarity muscle.
Tear down the paper. The words will follow.
September 28–30
Postscript
A compelling argument for tearing down paper is published in a recent issue of The New Yorker. See “How Do We Survive the Constitution?,” by Corey Robin, The New Yorker, October 4
Notes
1- Prior to last week’s speech before the UN General Assembly, Ukraine Prime Minister, Vololdymyr Zelenskyy raised the issue why Russia is still a member of the Security Council because unlike Ukraine, Russia has violated the International Genocide Agreement required of all original UN signatories.
For one legal analysis, see http://opiniojuris.org/2023/02/11/no-russia-can-still-not-be-removed-from-the-un-security-council-a-response-to-thomas-grant-and-others-part-two/
2- Richard A. Posner, “How Judges Think” (2010)
3-Naomi Klein, “Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World” (2023)
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