Month: October 2022

Is President Biden Too Old?

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Is President Biden too old? Is quarterback Tom Brady too old?

Are we really inviting people to engage in age discrimination? I hope not, but then (full disclosure), I’m old. But so have been some really great baseball managers.

When an old person makes a blunder, we blame their age. When a person in their prime makes a similar one, we regard it as a mistake.

To not hire someone or not vote for them based on anything but their qualifications and performance is simply unfair. It is also kinda stupid as it categorically rules out a lot of great people. Age, gender, race, whatever.

If Tom Brady can no longer read defenses fast enough or throw the football hard enough or far enough, then those are the reasons to bench him. Not his age.

Similarly with politicians. Performance matters; age does not.

It is difficult to not engage in age discrimination. Really. My doctors seem too young to be competent. I’m wrong about that. Likewise, I can find myself thinking that a politician is too young or too old. That does not lead to good decisions to really important questions.

We need to watch our prejudices when they sway our judgment and not let them get the better of our decision making. The well-being of the nation depends on it. Voting is not the time or place to be exercising our prejudices.

Featured

Racist Names

Etching by G. Scotin and J. Cole after H. Gravelot and J.B. Chatelain, 1743.

The License to Name

“ So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.”  -Genesis 2:19, New Revised Standard Version, updated edition

Now, the U.S. will rename hundreds of mountains, rivers, and other natural features to remove racist name’s they were given by colonizers.

The Power and Trauma of Naming

“Things die a little when we name them.” -Ben Okri in Astonishing the Gods

From naming flows claiming and taming.

The bald eagle is not bald. Devil’s Lake is not demonic. To name Ukraine Russia does not make it so.

When colonizers gave their own name to Indigenous peoples and their sacred sites, they lost their capacity to know who those people and places truly were, while revealing who they, the colonizers were. By naming, they were making claims of dominance and ownership.

When Donald Trump gives someone a disparaging nickname, he loses all capacity to see them for who they are, while revealing who he is. One who relishes asserting power over others.

And so, it has been learned, ask of every living thing and every place you encounter, “Do you have a name? How do you prefer I refer to you?” Listen carefully. Respect what you hear and when there is nothing to hear.

Naming obscures all but the namer, whose heart it reveals.