8 Comments
⭠ Return to thread

From an interview with Marilynne Robinson today in the NYT:

“Frankly, I’m less than a year younger than Joe Biden, so I believe utterly in his competence, his brilliance, his worldview. I really do. You have to live to be 80 to find this out: Anybody under 50 feels they’re in a position to condescend to you. You get boxed into this position where people who deal with you are making assumptions about your intellect. It’s very disturbing. Most people my age are just fine. What can I say? It’s a kind of good fortune that America is categorically incapable of accepting: that someone with a strong institutional memory, who knows how things are supposed to work, who was habituated to their appropriate functioning is president. I consider him a gift of God. All 81 years of him.”

Marilynne Robinson

Expand full comment

Someone please ask these blowhards who say Biden is too old despite his doing a great job as president, what they think of Ben Franklin. After they talk about how he is a sacred Founding Father, remind them that Franklin was 81yo at the Constitutional Convention of 1787! "Benjamin Franklin was 81 years old and nearing the end of his life when the 1787 Constitutional Convention...He proved to be instrumental at the Constitutional Convention as well, helping the process to move forward and recommending the adoption of document despite its faults." https://www.benjaminfranklin.net/franklin-and-constitutional-convention.jsp

Expand full comment

Ben did more in his old age than most do as pups. As has Joe. Chump doesn’t even have an iota of the wisdom usually attributed to elders. All he learned to do was look in the mirror.

Expand full comment

Old is a spectrum of competence and health. Some are old early, some are young late. Chump is an idiot at any age. Some have a core of decency, some of mush. Some say, there go my followers, I must follow them.

Expand full comment

Just ten days short of 91 years, I can’t tell you how much I resent the head patting or how much I appreciate the kindness shown to old age. I don’t see Biden as infirm or incomprtant,whereas Trump appears unhinged. Today he’s peddling sneakers. In the face of all that’s happening he’s promoting shoes.! How much ridicule does that deserve?

Expand full comment

Considering that some folks day our days are numbered at birth, I have to agree.

Expand full comment