this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
705 points (98.4% liked)
Not The Onion
12547 readers
1931 users here now
Welcome
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
The Rules
Posts must be:
- Links to news stories from...
- ...credible sources, with...
- ...their original headlines, that...
- ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”
Comments must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I got accused of ageism before for saying the same that there should be mandatory retirement for public officials. However, the most convincing argument I heard for letting elders to still run for public office is that their accumulated experience, knowledge and wisdom could still be of great dispense for the public. Noam Chomsky is still doing well despite in his 90's, for example.
But Chomsky did not get it right with his genocide denialism on Cambodia and Yugoslavia. He may have great insights, but his ego seems to have been entrenched on downplaying atrocities of other anti-Western countries simply because they are anti-America. And then there is also the time when Chomsky basically brushed aside his association with Jeffrey Epstein, by telling the interviewer to mind his business. It's not a proof in and of itself, but it's very suspicious.
You can share your wisdom and be of great value to the public without being in public office.
At some point, though, you've gone from useful adult into honored elder, and while I'm not suggesting we put them all on ice floes, they shouldn't be running the country, especially since more than a few of them clearly don't even know which country they're in, let alone how to run it.
If you can't walk, are having strokes, have developed dementia, and generally just sit around staring at the wall like my cat, perhaps it's time to gracefully retire and go spend the rest of your life doing conferences and speaking engagements and whatever the hell else you want, not trying to legislate.
There's also a common problem of no career path for politicians after holding some of the higher offices. It's either be reelected or elected to a higher position. I think it's more or less present in most countries.
It's especially obvious with US presidents, none of them held any other office after being president. Even previous younger ones.
I kinda have two responses here, so uh, here's both of them:
Well, by the time this is an issue, odds are you've been a career politician anyway and don't need another job. This is just old people who refuse to retire because they like the power and trappings more than they care about doing their job.
By the time they MUST retire, these ghouls have stolen sufficient money that it doesn't matter, and sticking around is just them refusing to give up the power and feed their greed even more.
Both seem equally reasonable and applicable to the problem.
Don't most politicians have degrees even if unrelated to politics? They could fall back to the career relating to their degrees or at least close to it. There are some, however, who don't have college degrees or trade before becoming a politician. Bernie Sanders haven't had a proper career and did many jobs before becoming a politician.
Although if the politician retires at ripe old age between 60-70, they could live off the pension anyway.