{"id":4775,"date":"2026-08-14T02:02:36","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T10:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=4775"},"modified":"2026-08-13T20:09:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T04:09:52","slug":"old-people-arent-the-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2026\/08\/14\/old-people-arent-the-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Old People Aren’t the Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/i> has an interview with Morgan Freeman<\/a>, who is 89 \u2013 he in fact says \u201cpushing 90\u201d \u2013 and still working. At the moment he\u2019s got a regular role on a streaming series.<\/p>\n

I am a sucker for all reports about people who are older than I am and still pursuing their art or their career or doing something else that we\u2019re all told is \u201cunusual\u201d for old people. I want to be reminded that getting old doesn\u2019t mean you have to stop doing stuff and just wait around to die.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a hell of a lot of ageism out there right now and it\u2019s really starting to get on my nerves. The other day I saw a social media post excoriating James Carville\u2019s ideas about what Democrats should do and then saying something that I read as \u201coh, well, he\u2019s 81 and gonna die soon anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

I got the impression that the person who wrote just thought 81 was horribly old, not that they knew anything about Carville\u2019s health.<\/p>\n

Now I despise Carville. His ideas about what Democrats should do are awful; he\u2019s the original \u201ccompromise with the Republicans no matter how extreme they get\u201d person. I actually go to the trouble of cancelling political solicitations that mention his name, instead of just ignoring them. The Democrats made a major mistake by listening to him in the first place.<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s been wrong for at least 30 years, and probably longer. He thinks politics is a fucking game. After all, he\u2019s married to a Republican consultant. Obviously he doesn\u2019t think any of this is really vital \u2013 he just wants to win a game.<\/p>\n

The problem isn\u2019t that he\u2019s old. It\u2019s that he\u2019s wrong. He\u2019s always been wrong.<\/p>\n

And when you blame it on his age, you give him a pass for all the terrible things he\u2019s done for years. <\/p>\n

I see a lot of criticism of Congress that starts with a discussion of how old the members are, but the real problem isn\u2019t their age; it\u2019s that they\u2019re bad people with bad policies.<\/p>\n

Yes, Congress is set up to favor people who are already in office and to allow people to set up their own little fiefdoms. But that\u2019s a systemic problem, not an age-related one. And it\u2019s not like they make decisions that favor most old people \u2013 look at the ongoing claims that Social Security is running out of money or the cuts to Medicaid, which pays for a lot of care homes for the frail elderly.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re doing things that help the extremely rich and the major corporations. That\u2019s the real problem: they don\u2019t represent people; they represent money.<\/p>\n

Aging is also an uneven thing. Some people in their 80s and even 90s are still very good at their jobs. Nancy Pelosi, with whom I don\u2019t always agree politically, is a very good example. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s been a more competent Speaker of the House in my lifetime.<\/p>\n

Now of course older people have to pay attention to their health and recognize \u2013 or have family or staff who can recognize \u2013 when they can no longer do their job. Actually, though, that also applies to everyone. What about that congressman from New Jersey who disappeared for a couple of months?<\/p>\n

Now I am \u201cretired,\u201d by which I mean that I no longer have to work at a day job to pay my bills. Thanks to my last job, I have a small pension and some good savings \u2013 my company was employee-owned for most of the years I worked there and we had a good union, so I had stock and defined benefits. And I\u2019m old enough to draw Social Security.<\/p>\n

I still do a lot of things; I just don\u2019t have to do them to make a living. And believe me, I don\u2019t want to work for a living anymore. I never really did. I want to do the things that interest me without worrying about whether they\u2019ll put food on the table.<\/p>\n

However, if I wanted a paying job \u2013 say I wanted to run for City Council \u2013 I am quite capable of doing the work. My mind is fine and my body\u2019s still hanging in there.<\/p>\n

And since I\u2019m competent digitally \u2013 meaning I\u2019m someone who\u2019s been using a computer since the early 80s \u2013 I \u2018d know better than to be suckered by \u201cAI\u201d and other enshittified crap if I did get a job. Of course, employers might find that a liability, but I think it\u2019s an asset.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to because I don\u2019t want that level of stress and because it would mean I had to do a lot of things I hate to do \u2013 starting with going to meetings. I like not having all those obligations.<\/p>\n

But there are people my age who don\u2019t mind meetings. There are people who really do love the paying work they do. There are probably even some who don\u2019t stress out when things go wrong \u2013 and in jobs things are always going wrong. They\u2019d be fine in politics or running organizations.<\/p>\n

The problems we\u2019re facing are caused by old people, but by bad people. Some of the most powerful politicians are old, but most of the broligarchs are young or middle-aged. And they\u2019re all terrible people doing terrible things.<\/p>\n

Judge people by who they are and how they act, not their ages. You\u2019ll get better results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times has an interview with Morgan Freeman, who is 89 \u2013 he in fact says \u201cpushing 90\u201d \u2013 and still working. At the moment he\u2019s got a regular role on a streaming series. I am a sucker for all reports about people who are older than I am and still pursuing their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[636,17],"tags":[1237,88],"class_list":["post-4775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-rants","tag-ageism","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4776,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4775\/revisions\/4776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}