Nancy Braus, a retired independent bookseller, is a longtime activist.
GUILFORD-There is a basic, overwhelming irony to aging in America.
Those holding the vast majority of the power right now are old, often-deteriorating men who grasp their hold on power with a death grip. Obviously, the failing and flailing man who probably still can’t find Iran on a map but who continues to wield terrifying power, Donald Trump, is exhibit A.
I will not waste the time of anyone who has been a sentient being for the past decade with the specifics of Trump’s unfathomably deep intellectual, judgmental, and moral deficits, which we observe every endless day of this regime.
But the Dear Leader is far from alone. There are countless examples of people of both corporate parties who have overstayed their welcome in the halls of power and were not assisted to the door by laws, norms, political leaders, or family members — and they are getting better medical care than most of us.
We recently got to witness Dianne Feinstein continuing, by multiple accounts, to hold her powerful Senate seat as she suffered from full-blown dementia and only “stepped down” because the grim reaper finally took her.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was quite aware of how sick she was, refused to step away from her position of power on the highest court in the land, and she can be held partially responsible for the catastrophic corruption of the current Supreme Court.
Mitch McConnell — case in progress. What is his mental capacity? Who knows? But his vote in the Senate means as much as that of every other member.
And, of course, Joe Biden, who could have stepped away gracefully after one term but had to attempt to fly too close to the sun. And the fact that we were denied a primary process is likely the reason we are afflicted with the current fascists in Washington.
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It was refreshing to see victories of such young and exciting candidates as Darializa Avila Chevalier, 32, winning her primary over incumbent U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a man more than twice her age, and Melat Kiros, 29, who defeated an incumbent who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives when Kiros was born.
As a 72-year-old, I have always been a person of tremendous mental and physical energy — not necessarily the accomplishments that can be achieved with those gifts — but for the past seven or eight months, a number of health issues, minor compared with what many people I know are dealing with, have slowed me down.
I am now understanding from a personal perspective that you can eat right, exercise every day, interact with the world, be deeply engaged in what is most important, and your body can still betray you.
Hopefully, in my case, I will be getting my energy and health back, but this experience has been eye-opening! And it has made me far more angry about both the ruling gerontocracy and our medical system, which has been present for me in many ways that I know would not be the case if I were one of the millions of Americans who have no access to it.
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At the same time as we observe the levers of power being stubbornly wielded by those who will be long dead before the worst effects of their ecological destruction and economic greed actually come to pass, capitalism is gainfully exploiting a plethora of new and old “anti-aging” products, social media images and stories, and myths that pervade this culture.
Huge profits are made off all sorts of cosmetic surgery and dentistry, expensive skin products, hair products (dye, implants, thickeners, and whatever else can be done to make old hair pretend to be young), dubious injections, oral concoctions, and surefire exercise programs that claim to make your body look like it is 35 forever.
A recent story in The Guardian (“Anti-ageing [sic] is anti-life’: why longevity culture is just ageism in a lab coat”) is enlightening about the social and economic pressure on many, especially women, to shell out for all of the above.
“You don’t know what it’s like here,” said a woman in Dallas with a Ph.D. and a good job. “Everyone has a facelift if they can afford one and everyone has had some work done. I am a feminist to the core, but if I had the money, I would get a deep-plane facelift in a heartbeat. I am saving up to get my neck done.”
I was at a relative’s wedding a couple of years ago, and the bride, who was around 30 — a brilliant, beautiful doctor in a challenging specialty — told me that many of her peers, some younger than she, were getting botox already.
I tried asking why, but I could not understand any reason for these smart, talented, career women to begin the process of pretending they will never age.
It made me think of the tightness and shine of former House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s face before she finally stepped down from her leadership position at age 82. She could have been a role model for so many aging women. Instead, I kept wondering if her face was going to pull off at any minute, kind of like Kristi Noem’s in South Park.
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And, of course, this relentless pursuit of the image of youth does nothing for the health of the population.
Consider how much healthier we all would be if the resources that went into cosmetic procedures instead went into keeping people healthy. More researchers could be studying diseases and toxins and working on other useful tools to help the world, rather than spending their well-paid time on developing anti-aging products that benefit a small elite population who believe they can outsmart death.
In the same Guardian story: “Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were caught on a hot mic last year talking about immortality as though it were inevitable.” Ray Kurtzweil, described as “Google’s chief futurist” — whatever that is — seems certain we will be able to “overcome disease and aging.”
And how do most of the people in the world — and a greater number in the United States by the day — live? With no or minimal health care, being taken down or chronically suffering with diseases that could easily be treated with the correct medicine, prevention, or care.
It is pretty clear that Donald Trump, whose regime is following Project 2025, plans to cut healthcare from as many Americans as possible as quickly as possible.
It’s also clear that he’s likely able to function at all only due to extraordinary health care. Recently, it was revealed that Trump was evaluated by 22 specialists at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Guess who is paying for all that care?
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I feel so fortunate to live in an area of the country where we are allowed to age in peace. I have never felt the pressure to do whatever others do to aging skin, to exercise for any reason other than strength, health, and enjoyment, or to opt for any of the other expensive elective ways in which people, especially women, attempt to stop time.
In Vermont, and I think in most of New England, we are pretty comfortable seeing old people who look like elders. When my father was ill with dementia in Florida, I often came home after a couple of weeks there being fairly certain I was the only person with white hair in the Sunshine State.
Powerful men do not deserve a “get out of death” card in the game of life, any more than they should be creating a future they will never have to survive.
It is time for us, including those of us who are elders, to say that it doesn’t really matter how much cosmetic intervention, experimental treatment, or any other form of attempting to create eternal youth you undergo, or even how sharp your mind is when you are 90.
When the stakes — the future of the planet — are so high, it is time for those who will be living with the result of today’s policies to be the same people who are making those decisions for tomorrow.
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