Dateline: WASHINGTON, D.C.—After the 2018 U.S. congressional election, Democrats won back enough seats to bring impeachment proceedings, but they decided to simplify their case against Donald Trump, citing only the undeniable fact, as the reason for the urgent need for Trump’s immediate removal from office, that Trump is “an old man.”
There are hundreds of scandals, crimes, conflicts of interests, gaffes, inadequacies, or embarrassments that can be attributed to Trump’s presidency, but leading Democrats believe they can avoid getting into the details by reminding everyone that, after all, Trump is just an old man and thus is obviously unfit for high office.
“There’s something that happens to you when you get old,” said Senator Al Franken. “You go downhill, as they say. That means your brain doesn’t work as well as it used to. Why should your brain stay the same when the rest of your body is clearly deteriorating? I mean, your skin sags and gets full of wrinkles, you lose muscle mass and bone density.
“You go downhill. At the bottom of that hill is the sort of old guy ridiculed in The Simpsons. You get to be like Homer’s dad who babbles incoherently and can’t take care of himself anymore because, you know, he’s gotten, like, really, really old. That’s what’s happened to Donald Trump: he got old, far too old to run a country.”
Democrats contend that, although he’s always been a boor, Trump’s senility is responsible for the outlandish scope of his incompetence. Thus, there’s no reason “to get into the weeds,” as one Democrat put it. “You just go with what’s obvious and can’t be denied. Trump is super old and he acts like it. So he needs to be pushed into retirement.”
Republicans have accused Democrats, in turn, of being hypocritical, since numerous top Democrats are over seventy years old, including Bernie Sanders, Barbara Boxer, Pat Leahy, Harry Reid, Carl Levin, and Dianne Feinstein.
Franken replied that while many Democrats may likewise technically be far too old to be entrusted with driving a car, let alone with the enormous responsibilities of holding high political office, they’re “functional old fogies,” whereas Trump is “off his rocker and off his meds.”
Sociologist Millie Hildebrand credited the PR firm Old Folks Rule for conspiring to generate the misplaced confidence most people have in the elderly, which is why, she said, the elderly are often reelected.
“In an election,” Hildebrand said, “voters see the old man or woman next to the fresh-faced challenger, and the young gun doesn’t stand a chance because he or she lacks experience. That’s what most voters think; they go with the greater experience.
“What these voters forget is that the more experience you have, the older you must be, and after a certain number of years you suddenly become simply an old man or an old woman. When that happens, it becomes absurd for others to expect much in the way of competence from you.
“For example, an old politician won’t be able to keep to a tight schedule, because he or she will be in the bathroom all day and all night. How are you going to talk tough to dictators on the phone when you’re always sitting on the toilet?”
Jay Wackadoodle, a political pseudoscientist at the Machiavelli Institute, offered a different explanation for old people’s success in politics, pointing to the fact that most American voters are themselves elderly, given the shockingly-low voter turnout in all U.S. elections over many decades.
“We vote for people like us,” he said. “Bald guys are more likely to vote for baldies. Blondes vote for blondes, racists vote for racists, and the elderly vote for the elderly.
“That’s how narcissism works, and we’re self-obsessed because our materialistic culture drives us to be consumers, first and foremost. We have to attend to all our needs and wants, and so we have to buy all these products; we think the world revolves around us. Naturally, then, we presume we ought to run the country, but because we’re too fat and lazy to do so, we vote for the next best thing, someone who reminds us of ourselves.”