Now everybody knows that the only Republican I liked is Abraham Lincoln. So what’s this? Read on and you will see.
As you know, I am a scientist and we just deal in intrinsic reality as it occurs in nature. Not consensual reality, which occurs in human nature. Personally, in matters of age I firmly believe it is not the years, but the mileage that matters. As a person who has rolled over a few times so to speak, that’s not good news. Let’s face it does it really matter how kind or few the years are… if the weekends are wicked… but I digress.
We all know the big corporate terrorists attack America’s most vulnerable in the names of “remaining competitive,” “protecting us from foreign threat,” and what ever argument is handy to advance the agenda of the very few, appease and beguile the large crumb eaters, and keep the poorest and most unaware, poor and unaware. We have all seen how unethical and irresponsible the media has been with Barack Obama. We know racism; we know fear; we know predatory people.
So, I do not want to talk about that. I want to talk about the recent flurry of things attacking John McCain because of this age. Let’s discuss this responsibly. Consider this—the facts about the aging human brain.
Information is stored in different parts of your memory. Information stored in the short-term memory may include the name of a person you met moments ago. Information stored in the recent memory may include what you ate for breakfast. Information stored in the remote memory includes things that you stored in your memory years ago, such as memories of childhood. Remember John McCain’s speech in the Middle East, when he forgot and misquoted key facts, not once but twice? Look at this man closely. He’s like all of us… weary, and doing what he believes to be the right thing to do—but at the end of the day, this man, as some of his public appearances have demonstrated has some issues with executive function.
While I believe that people should do all that they can at any age—the fact is as you age, certain capacity decrease—I also believe that the aging process is highly individualized. John McCain is 71-years old. There are plenty of people who are 71, who exhibit no impairments in executive function. John McCain is not one of them. What I am saying here is not that an old person should not be president; I do not age grade—especially now when I have come to that age where the best thing about it is that I can no longer die unexpectedly. Make no mistake about that. I do not even believe in linear time, but I digress. What I am saying is this person is at the point in their aging process where executive function is a concern—case in point those speeches in the Middle East.
Bruce Yankner, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, is investigating how human brains change between ages 26 and 106. If you are dragging 40, instead of pushing it the news is not good. Of course, if you have hit 40, you already know that unlike 20, or even 30, 40 hits back. Just for the record, 50 will not hit back—it will cut you. But I digress. Yankner and his colleagues at Children’s Hospital in Boston and Harvard searched brain tissue from 30 people for changes in genes involved in learning and memory, and for damage to these genes caused by the normal stresses of living. Now these are just the normal stresses, not the stress of say, something like trying to clean up the mess that we have made of this nation in the last 8 years, but again, I digress.
Anyway, from ages 26 to 40 years, those Harvard Study brains show similar patterns of wear and tear and low levels of gene damage. Brains 73 years and older exhibited more damage, as expected. That’s because when you’re in your 20s, you begin to lose brain cells a few at a time. Your body also starts to make less of the chemicals your brain cells need to work. The older you are, the more these changes can affect your memory. Thus, the word on the brain research street is that aging affects memory by changing the way the brain stores information and by making it harder to recall stored information. Different people are affected differently
Aging is a part of the human process, and we have to be realistic about it. I hear all of these people carrying on about how John McCain, if elected, will be the oldest person to become president. So what? It’s not about his age. It’s about his mileage that we need to be concerned with—as evidenced in the Middle East. Now if you made a speech in front of thousands of people, and made a glaring error—was corrected—and then proceed to make the same error, again—would you not be concerned about your self?
Yes, I’ve seen the stuff on the Web. True, John McCain is: older than nylon; older than the chocolate chip cookie; older than the shopping cart, the TV dinner, Velcro, Cheerios; the Cobb Salad, LSD, the Golden Gate Bridge, Scientology, the Slinky, and Spam (I am talking about the canned meat, not unsolicited e-mail)—but that’s not the point—I am older than the Super Bowl. America is older than all of that and John McCain too—as a nation we need to know better by now.
It’s not because John McCain is an old man that he should not be president, it is because he is not the right man. The take home message is this is the United States… and the operative word is United not States, and while we reside in a collective of separate human states—we must remain united as one. So do not let those among us who do not understand that “united we stand, and divided we will fall” divert our attention away from the issues, and towards things that are divisive and superficial. So, before the noise starts, there are more important concerns here—like the voting machines in Ohio and Florida. More importantly there’s a change train leaving the station, and there ain’t no room on this train for attacking people because of their age—a nation that does not respect their elderly can not respect any other population. Change begins in the brain—not in the street. So let’s start now, thinking a kinder, more salubrious America than we have known thus far.
So yes, I am saying stop the age assaults on John McCain, like I said stop the assault on Hillary, and the race assault on Barack… this is not about McCain, Hillary or Barack… this is about becoming the nation that we need to be… and we need to be a more intelligent nation–and intelligent people do not batter people on the basis of consensual reality. So yes, I am standing up for John McCain’s right not to battered because of his age… because this is the USA and we are a smarter, better nation than that. And that is wassup wit dat!
Be black! Go Blue!
–Dr G
