A few thoughts on the question of Biden's age

Ten years ago I was looking for a job as a Linux Systems Administrator and already 64 years old. Before I found the position at Rackspace Hosting that I would work for six years, I suffered a number of rejections that I suspect were age related. I get that. If an employer is faced with a choice between two applicants with comparable skill sets. i.e. either would make a capable Linux Systems Administrator, the vote may go to the younger applicant, even after much internal debate over the age question, for reasons I see no need to detail. I'm now retired, yet I still get job offers—because the IT industry has failed to train enough good Linux people, and BECAUSE, and this is the important point for our present discussion—

In a contest between an applicant who knows Linux, and one who doesn't, the question of age doesn't even come up!

Surprise! Surprise!

The main job of the President of the United States is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

If one candidate, namely Joe Biden, vows to do just that, and has already done a pretty good job of it, and the other candidate, namely Trump, or one of his mini-mes, thinks the Constitution can, and should be "suspended," and has already taken many measures to undermine and circumvent it, the question of age shouldn't even come up.

It's like if you were looking to hire a Linux Systems Administrator, and you interviewed a guy who said: "Look, I don't know the Linux operating system, don't even like it, but I think you should be running everything on Windows, and I really know Windows." You might even entertain his ideas for changing the system. But your decision about whether to hire a Linux person or this Windows guy would depend on him convincing you to throw out the system you've been using, and buying his. Again, applicant age considerations would fade into the background.

The paramount point here is that the two candidates represent two radically different visions of the United States. A vote for Biden is a vote for keeping the US the constitutional bourgeois democracy it has been for more than 200 years. A vote for Trump is a vote for replacing that with a white supremacist, misogynistic, autocracy and a mob boss operating as a virtue king.

Now I ask you: Where does age even enter into the equation on that question?

Anyone arguing that Biden's age should play a big role in this election is actually arguing for ending the US tradition of being a constitutional democracy, and using Biden's age as a way to get there.

my 2¢ worth..

Clay Claiborne

10 September 2023