Don't Trust Anyone Over 70*

We're not 70 yet, but most of the way there: in Whistler last summer.

I watched some coverage of the Democratic debates this week. That Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris emerged as the clear leaders gives me hope. As for the one actually leading the polls, Joe Biden, nothing I heard changed my first reaction when he declared his candidacy: "Really? Is another old white guy the best we can do?" 

Thinking of Biden made the title of today's post pop into my head. I wondered if the phrase had any currency, so I googled it. Only one solid match came up: the title of an 2013 Foreign Policy article by Gautam Mukunda, written when Trump in the White House was just a joke on The Simpsons.

Here are a few passages: 

Power itself has profound, and usually toxic, effects on those who have it. CEOs are so pampered that comparing them to babies is surprisingly illuminating. What is true for a CEO is, in this case, even more true for the men and women who lead nations and can literally have power over life and death... 

... Even worse, power tends to make those who have it more sociopathic. They become more impulsive, more Machiavellian, and more willing to dehumanize those who lack power....  

... aging can have pronounced effects on personality. Put simply, in general people really don’t mellow with age. Instead... they tend to become exaggerated versions — almost caricatures — of themselves, with their normal tendencies and patterns becoming intensified. This tendency is particularly likely to affect foreign policy. ...

Of course, 'way back in the lost innocence of 2013, I could read stuff like this and think this kind of insight might prevail. 

Maybe it still can. Go Harris. Go Warren.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Canada Day!

Karen

Pat and Cliff: Whistler last summer.

*Excepting, of course, any readers of this blog who are over 70. I trust you guys with my life.