Splendid Isolation

Too Old To Rock ‘N Roll

…but too young to die, as a wise man once sang.

Now we have the political equivalent:

Former South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley said over the weekend that politicians should have to take mental competency tests once they hit 75 years old to ensure they are fit to serve the public.

“We need to have mental competency tests for anyone over the age of 75,” she said. “And I don’t say that to be disrespectful. I don’t care if you do it for 50 and older. What I’m saying is, these are people in D.C. that are making decisions on our national security.”

Of course, this tin-eared politico uses this argument to score a point off the noticeably-senile Joe Biden, but she does have a point nevertheless.

We don’t let people go into public office when they’re too young, because even among a poulation of ignoramuses, youthful wannabe-politicians are no more than the primordial ooze of society.  Young people, as it’s been said, argue with passion, vigor and conviction;  except that they’re almost inevitably wrong.

So given the inescapable fact that old farts start losing their marbles as they approach senility — forget the numbers, stats and medical studies on this, it’s an inescapable fact of human life — why not set an arbitrary upper limit on public service?  Forget that “testing” bullshit as suggested by Haley et al., that’s just busybody government attitude on display.  Carve it in stone — hell, stick it in the Constitution, why not? — but make it impossible for any Olde Phartte to govern.

Yes, I know:  some old people are commendably active, mentally speaking, and denying them office would have denied us of, to name but one, Ronald Reagan (at least his second term, anyway).  But even in Reagan’s second term, it was apparent that the old boy was losing his marbles.  And taking our cue from that, it’s not really how old a President is when he takes office, it’s how old he’ll be at the end of his first term that’s important.  Think about it:  70 years old on Inauguration Day means 78 towards the end of his Presidency, when he’ll still have his finger on the nuclear trigger and be proposing legislation that may suit the present but be a hopeless long-term proposition. Older than 70?  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:  Joe Biden.

Which brings me to the next issue about senior-citizen politicians:  the “I’ll be dead by then” attitude that is as inescapable a mindset as physical senility.  Oh sure, we’d like to think that our politicians are going to be statesmen like Washington or Jefferson and think of generations to come;  but the most likely scenario is that they’re going to be more like Barack fucking Obama.  (Tangentially, the only reason to allow older men to become president is because they’re more likely to die soon after leaving office, unless they’re named Jimmy Carter in which case they continue to meddle and foist their horrible ideas and opinions on us long after they’ve exceeded their useful date.)

If we think about this logically, politicians and lawmakers in general should have to live with the consequences of their actions, because then the urge to just say “oh fuck it, let the kids deal with it” is a lot less appealing.

Corporations, by the way, recognize this issue quite clearly, which is why we have mandatory-retirement policies in so many professions — airline pilots at 55 65 being the most noteworthy — and why so many people prefer middle-aged doctors to both young and inexperienced doctors and old doctors who may not be up to date with recent advances or do things “because I’ve always done it this way”.  There are limits to experience, of course, and particularly when that experience stands in the way of proper action.  Most corporate boards, by the way, have no age limit but that’s because the proper function of a board is advisory and not executive.

Here’s my suggestion:  all public servants, regardless of position, should be banned from running for public office after the age of 67 — the de facto  “retirement” age of current society.  I know that medical advances are wonderful and have done so much to ensure that the age of Man is no longer just threescore years and ten etc., but allowing much older people to run for office — yes, Trump as much as Biden — is an irresponsible indulgence that in general and in the long term will turn out to be harmful to society.  (Trump, for example, would be 78 were he to win the Presidency in 2024, which means he’d be 82 at the end of his term of office.  You sure you want an octogenarian Trump flailing around the Oval Office for two whole years?  And that’s assuming he’s still got all his marbles now:  by no means an established fact.)

As a bookie might put it:  yeah, there are some senior citizens who would function perfectly well while late into their seventies and even eighties — but that’s not the way to bet.

If we have a lower limit on political life, why not an upper one?

Legacy Issues

Reader Mike L. sends me this little snippet:

The U.S. Department of Education has launched a civil rights investigation into Harvard University’s policies on legacy admissions.

Top colleges’ preferential treatment of children of alumni, who are often white, has faced mounting scrutiny since the Supreme Court last month struck down the use of affirmative action as a tool to boost the presence of students of color.

The department notified Lawyers for Civil Rights, a nonprofit based in Boston, on Monday that it was investigating the group’s claim that the university “discriminates on the basis of race by using donor and legacy preferences in its undergraduate admissions process.”

An Education Department spokesperson confirmed its Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation at Harvard. The agency declined further comment. 

I’ve always thought that giving alumni preference for their kids’ admissions was a nice touch, in that it established some kind of continuum or legacy (hence the name) for families.  (My old school St. John’s College absolutely thrived on such a legacy — to see fathers and even grandfathers wearing the Old Boys’ tie was a sign of belonging like few others — and legacies always got automatic admission into what was an extremely limited enrollment.)

But nowadays, tradition and (especially, it seems) father-son or mother-daughter traditions are anathema to the Egalitarian Set, who equate what is essentially a courtesy into some kind of “inheritance” Bad Thing, akin to keeping title transference within the same family.

It’s a good thing we don’t have nobility titles Over Here, because otherwise some Human Rights pests in our Gummint would no doubt call for its abolition in the name of “equity”.

A pox on all of them.

By the way, I have no dog in this fight because I happen to think that any private institution should have the right to determine whom they prefer to see inside it as members — country clubs, universities, fraternities, companies, whatever.

The fact that Harvard, of all places, is getting bitten by this is satisfying, but only because Harvard is a stupefyingly-PC and much-overrated institution, and they deserve every bad thing that happens to them, the elitist bullshit artists.

Oh Dear

We’re always being told how bad Eeeevil Oil is for us, for the environment and of course for the pore likkel beasties in the fields.

First off, we have to stop using oil-powered vehicles and start using Duracell-powered cars and trucks (lol) instead.  Except that it turns out that electric cars are worse for the environment than gasoline-powered ones (see here for the !SCIENCE!).

So if Teslas and Priuses are doubleplusungood after all, then we need to start using “sustainable” eco-fuels like corn-based ethanol because sustainable.  (Even Formula 1 is moving towards using ethanol-only fuel in the next couple of years, the idiots.)

Sounds good, right?  Errrr, nazzo fast, Guido.  Add this little snippet to the “Solution Is Worse Than The Problem” category:

The US biofuel program is probably killing endangered species and harming the environment in a way that negates its benefits, but the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is largely ignoring those problems, a new federal lawsuit charges.

The suit alleges the EPA failed to consider impacts on endangered species, as is required by law, when it set new rules that will expand biofuel use nationwide during the next three years, said Brett Hartl, government affairs director with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which brought the litigation.

Not that we need any further proof that the EPA is to the environment as cancer cells are to the human body, but I digress.

The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to set minimum levels of biofuel usage for the transportation sector. The new rule approved by the agency calls for about 15bn gallons (57bn liters) of conventional corn ethanol for each of the next three years, plus an increase from 5.9bn gallons to 7.3bn gallons of advanced biofuels during the same time period. 

About 40% of all corn grown in the US is used for ethanol production, and nearly half is used as animal feed.

While the fuels are designed to decarbonize the transportation sector, their production eliminates wetlands and prairie land that act as carbon sinks, Hartl noted. The EPA in 2018 estimated that up to 7m acres (2.8m hectares) of land had been converted to grow corn for ethanol fuel. 

Ethanol production also pollutes water. Regulations around pesticides and fertilizers used in corn grown for ethanol fuel are much looser, which means much higher levels of dangerous chemicals run into surface and groundwaters. The pollution probably plays a significant role in dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico after pesticides flow down the Mississippi River, Hartl said. 

Read the rest to see how the EPA is ducking and diving to avoid doing anything that might actually, you know, alleviate the problem.

One by one, every single alternative proposed by the Greens (and their lickspittles in academia and the media) is proving to be a complete fiasco:  wind- and solar power generation instead of nuclear, electric vehicles (EV) instead of internal combustion engines, and now biofuels instead of gasoline.

But Oh No! we have to preserve the Gaia Cult — even if it kills us (and Gaia).

Fucking bastards.

Working Towards Extinction

In this post at Insty’s  which discusses how San Francisco retailing is going down the rat-infested tubes, Stephen Green opines:

The future of shopping in America’s Democrat-run cities will eventually evolve into the Soviet model of paying a clerk first at one counter, then waiting for your goods to be delivered at the next counter. Shoppers won’t be allowed near any of the merchandise. But that’s what happens when you elect Soviet-minded politicians.

Our remaining advantage over the Soviet model is that enough of America still works that there are goods behind the counter.

So far.  But the Communists in the Democratic Socialist party are working hard to create the other reality — you know, the one where the State ends up owning the means of production and pretends to pay people while people pretend to work. [/Stalinism]