Monday, August 17, 2020

The death of Robert Trump, . . .

President Trump's younger brother, at age 71 should serve as a reminder to us that we, as a country, really continue to gamble with the nature and age.

Donald Trump is 74.  Should he serve a second term, which looks increasingly unlikely, he will be 78 when he leaves office.  Joe Biden is 77, and will be 78 if (and that "if" increasingly looks as if it should be "when") he becomes President.

The problem with all of those statements is that they assume a longevity that may not be there.

Male life expectancy in the US is 78.54 years, a couple of years lower than that of the UK and Canada. That's just a statistic, however, and takes into account men who die as children on up to those who are centenarians, making the statistic close to meaningless.  What isn't meaningless, however, is that people actually die.

With men, if somebody dies of "natural causes" in their 40s, we're shocked, as they're "young", but it's not completely unexpected.  Deaths in the 50s are the same way.  In recent years deaths in the 60s are as well, but not to the same degree by any measure.  A review of the obituaries in any local newspaper will reveal that male deaths are pretty common in the late 50s on up. 

Diseases of all types begin to take their toll at that time.

For some reason, the Baby Boom generation has become unique in the American experience in that it expects to basically live forever, as a generation, free from disease. But it won't, and isn't. 

That doesn't mean that what occurs in regard to untimely death isn't a tragedy.  It is, of course.  But a country that vests its leadership in the elderly is counting on those people living their terms out free from the ravages of time.  Sooner or latter, that gamble won't pay off, if we keep making it.

And we are doing just that.  We're gambling that whomever wins this election will live through the term, and complete it, and be free from illness or disease during it. And that's gambling against history and biology.

Both of which mean, we'd note, that Vice Presidential candidates this go around are inordinately significant.  It isn't the case that the terms might be completed by Pence or Harris. . .it's likely they will be.

At this point having a septuagenarian take office appears inevitable and it will occur save for what I'm fearing in this post occuring sooner than November, which of course could occur.  Robert Trump's death takes us by surprise. But then if a tour through the obits for today's paper will likely find those who embarked on the barke earlier than that.  Biden appears to be a healthy 77. Trump appears to be a less healthy 74.  People questioned Trump's mental acuity early on, but that appears to mostly have been brought up due to his odd personal characteristics.  People are questioning Biden's right now, but that also appears to be due to his long term personality traits.  The nation's gamble, this time, might pay off again.  But it might not.

And we haven't even discussed the Supreme Court . . .

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