This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Old Man World
Leftovers of the American Century
Let one old man deal with two others.
I turn 80 in July, which makes me just over a year-and-a-half younger than Joe Biden and almost two years older than Donald Trump. And, honestly, I know my limits. Yes, I still walk -- no small thing -- six miles a day. And I work constantly. But I'm also aware that, on my second walk of the day and then as night approaches, I feel significantly more tired than I once did. I'm also aware that my brain, still active indeed, does forget more than it once did. And all of this is painfully normal. Nothing to be ashamed of, nothing whatsoever.
I also know from older friends that we humans can still be distinctly functional, thoughtful, and capable at age 82 (when Donald Trump would leave his second term in office) or even 86 (when Joe Biden would do the same). But honestly, what are the odds? I'll tell you one thing that couldn't be more obvious -- not as good as for someone who's, say, 55 or 60 years old, that's for sure. Yes, there's also the reputed wisdom of old age -- and it might indeed make Joe Biden a more thoughtful president, were he to get a second term; Donald Trump, of course, would be Donald Trump, at 60 or 82.
And I have little doubt that, whatever age you are, you've been thinking somewhat similar thoughts. I mean, doesn't the very possibility of watching a televised debate between the two of them make you anxious? After all, the oldest president to previously leave office was Ronald Reagan at 77 (and by then he may have had dementia). Before him, the oldest was Dwight D. Eisenhower who ended his second term in 1961 at 70 years old, having had a heart attack while in office. Third comes William Henry Harrison, who entered the White House in 1841 at age 68 and died, possibly of pneumonia, 32 days later. Now, it's also a fact that we Americans are generally lasting longer than once upon a time. But is that really where you want to put your political money? I doubt it.
Still, all of the above is too obvious to belabor, so here's a question: Are there any other implications we can draw from the upcoming battle between those two old men that's going to grab our attention and steal the headlines for all too many months to come? The answer, I suspect, is yes. Sometimes in our world, the symbolic is all too subtle, but every now and then it impolitely smacks you in the face. And at least as far as I'm concerned, the second Biden-Trump election campaign should more than qualify in that regard.
I mean, the country that still passes for the greatest power on Planet Earth is going to set a limping age record for president, no matter who wins, leaving China's Xi Jinping, now 70, and Russia's Vladmir Putin, now 71, as relative youths in an all-American world of absolute ancientness. And that should certainly tell you something about the state of our country and this planet, too.
To be a little clearer about just what, let me add one more factor to the equation. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are preparing a fight to the wire to lead an America that, not so many decades ago, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, was considered the "sole superpower" on planet Earth. Doesn't that tell you something?
I think it does. I think, quite bluntly (though I've seen no one discussing this amid the endless media headlines and chatter about Trump and Biden), that those two old codgers offer a stunning image of the all-too-literal decline and fall of -- yes! -- the United States. They should make us consider where the country that still likes to think of itself as the singularly most powerful and influential one on this planet is really heading.
A World Without Peace Dividends
As you might imagine, there's a prehistory to all of this. George H. W. Bush, president at the moment when the Soviet Union went down in 1991, had that very year ordered the U.S. military to launch Operation Desert Storm, which drove Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein's troops out of Kuwait. In its own fashion, it also launched what would, in the century that followed, become a set of American military operations around the globe. At the same time, with Russia in tatters and China still a modestly rising power -- with, that is, no true great-power enemies left on Planet Earth -- that sole superpower would do something rather surprising. It would continue to pour ever more taxpayer dollars into the U.S. military-industrial complex. Yes, there was talk then about a "peace dividend" for this country and its people, but none ever arrived.
Thirty-two years later, the Pentagon budget has almost hit the trillion-dollar mark annually, while the overall national "security" (yes, it's still called that!) budget long ago soared well above the trillion-dollar mark. Meanwhile, in this century, George H. W. Bush's son, elected president in November 2000, would the following September respond to the 9/11 attacks, planned and carried out by Osama bin Laden and his small terror group, al-Qaeda, by launching what quickly came to be known as "the Global War on Terror." And all too global it would be with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. It would also prove a disaster of the first order for the last superpower, whose military would leave literally millions dead across the planet, destroy countries, decimate economies, and create tens of millions of refugees, while costing this country a staggering $8 trillion and counting as, over more than 20 years, the U.S. military lost wars, while terrorism as a phenomenon only grew.
Yes, in May 2011, Osama bin Laden would be killed in Pakistan by a team of U.S. Navy Seals. Still, were he alive today, I suspect he would be pleased indeed. With next to nothing other than his personal wealth, a small crew of followers, and some hijacked airplanes, he managed to outmaneuver and outplay what was then the greatest power on Planet Earth. Thanks to the slaughter of several thousand Americans in New York and Washington, he also managed to draw this country into an endless war against "terrorism" and, in the process, turn it into an increasingly terrorized country, whose inhabitants are now, however symbolically (and, in the future, possibly far more literally), at each other's throats.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
