The British Crown As Metaphor

not gonna lie the first time I generated this data and chart it was so jaw dropping I immediately checked to confirm it was right https://t.co/CgvqVhFghs pic.twitter.com/UIV3KZPUC2

— Walter Hickey (@WaltHickey) September 13, 2022

Given the life expectancy of most white American males who don’t labor for their work, and have the means for politics, why is this a surprise?

My grandfathers didn’t live to see their 70th birthdays. They both died old men, worn out. I am no more than a year younger than their age when they died. I have pictures of them: they looked old.  I don’t look extraordinarily young, but I’m not as old as they were at my age.

I’ve been treated for two chronic conditions (neither all that serious) for over 40 years. Without those drugs I might have followed my father’s older brother and died in my forties. His father, like his brother, died of a heart attack. My father survived three heart attacks, largely due to two bypass surgeries. He died of brain cancer at 90.

My father rode a desk, smoked like a chimney (even after the surgeries), and played golf for “exercise.” I don’t smoke, exercise daily, and have yet to have major surgery, much less even chest pains. If I don’t surpass my father’s age, I will frankly feel cheated. Like him, it probably won’t be my heart. Exercise won’t stave off cancer.

So it goes.

My story is not unusual. This is, as I’ve said before, the society we are building. The old do not retire at 65 and die at 68 anymore. Indeed, I’m more fit now than I was in my 30’s. I could easily start a second career (except it would be my…fifth, I think. I’m tired for other reasons than age). This is the story of the world we’ve made, with better medical treatment and expanded access (well, for some of us). And of course members of Congress are seldom drawn from the working class who still labor and wear out. We’ve always been a society with classes. That distinction is sharpened by the gap in life expectancy. And the fact it appears so starkly in our national legislature. 

Tim Ryan may insist younger people take these positions; but frankly, he’s just pissing into the wind.

For at least a generation, we are all either Prince Charles; or we are Queen Elizabeth II. And like Charles, there’s really nothing we can do about it.