Age Incapacity

It's a big, old, fast-paced world out there.  There's all sorts of crazy things like Instantgram and Snapbook, Facespace and Googleplex.  It's a tough, complicated world for someone whose mental faculties were never that sharp to begin with.  Someone like Donald Trump.

Trump was shipped off to military school back in the '60s.  I have only been to NYMA in recent years, but it was a rather sad, shabby place.  The history of military schools isn't exactly a catalog of excellence.  Especially back then, military schools were either for the sons of career soldiers or were for problem kids.  "He's an undisciplined punk, send him to military school."  This attitude, combined with a woeful ignorance about learning disabilities, meant that military schools like NYMA likely became de facto institutions for kids with learning differences.

Donald Trump is attention deficit disorder.  Goldwater Rule...whatever.  He has never manifested an ability to focus.  He consumes stimulants in the form of Diet Coke (confirmed) and Adderall (alleged).  He has also - as a reasonably wealthy man - been able to avoid having to deal with these attentional issues in a straightforward way.  Most people can either develop or be taught coping skills to deal with learning differences, but Trump never had to.

Age brings cognitive decline. It also brings perspective that can become wisdom.  Wisdom comes from meaningful reflection on experience.  Trump never reflected on his experiences in a meaningful way.  He has become fixated on the idea of loyalty, but that's all he has done by way of reflecting on things.

Trump has routinely been called "America's Racist Uncle."  He's that family member who forwards racist or sexist emails, and then gets pissed when his niece calls him on it.

Enter Rudy Giuliani.  Giuliani had a completely undeserved reputation as a brilliant crime fighter and competent mayor.  In fact, he was at the right place (NYC) and the right time (a period of overall decline in crime and increase in wealth in the nation's financial centers).  He has become the face of Trump's legal team, because no competent lawyer will come within miles of the sinking ship that is the SS Trump.

But Giuliani is also just another Old White Dude.  Like Chuck Grassley or Mitch McConnell (or for that matter Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders), Giuliani seems increasingly lost in the trappings of his own mind.  Rigidity is an attribute of older brains.  Younger brains are more "elastic."  That's simply the biology of aging.  That's why Aaron Sorkin can eat a bag of salted dicks.

Increasingly, I'm becoming convinced we need a mandatory retirement age for important public figures.  The world just moves too fast.