Maximum Age Limit for Voting ?

A question posed at Quora: Should there be a ‘Maximum Age Limit’ for voting in elections?





Oh dear! A quote: “Discrimination on the basis of age is as unacceptable as discrimination on the basis of any other aspect of ourselves that we cannot change.”
― Ashton Applewhite, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism.

Elections, in the UK, USA and in most other countries are an opportunity to vote for representatives in government (local and national) for a limited period - 4 years, 5, 6 and with the opportunity, in future elections, to extend, within limits, those periods. Older voters most certainly have a stake in how their city, town, county, state or country will be governed during the next few years. To argue otherwise has no basis in fact.


A few snips from Quora answers:

At what point do you feel a Senior Citizen’s opinion has become so worthless that his/her Constitutional right should be revoked? As I see it: understanding, knowledge, experience, preferences, and opinions do not come with a shelf life like a carton of milk. (from Al Nolf's answer)


But just to be devil’s advocate, the best reason to limit the voting right of the very aged (say 85+) is that they are not going to have to live with the long-term consequences of their vote and so their votes should not have as much sway. My own parents actively decided not to vote once they got to be in their mid-late 80’s for just this reason. They felt the world belonged to the younger folks and they should be the ones to decide how it went forward.
(From Ellen Garbarino's answer.)


Yes, there should be a maximum age limit for voting. It’s better known as death. Up to that point — but hopefully not beyond — we need the input from people who have actually been around the block a few times.
(From Susan C Weber's answer)

Absolutely not. Only someone young and inexperienced who has not experienced the process of aging, who has not looked back on their lives with regret in regards to the assumptions they were so sure about would propose such a ridiculous idea. (Ridge Green's answer)


Mark Hartman wrote (with the added disclaimer "/sarcasm"):
I am all in favor of imposing a maximum age limit, and raising the minimum age limit.
No person below the age of 30 should be permitted to vote.
No person above the age of 150 should be permitted to vote.



And Al Eisenmenger wrote:
If it were not for the Senior Citizens that fought for your right to vote you wouldn’t have a Country to vote in….

AGEWISE

A while ago I had cause to complain, albeit fairly mildly, on a website's comment thread where ageism was displayed in a couple of comments in relation to "seniors" and their activities on the internet and Facebook.

Ageism abides!

Racism and sexism do abide also, they are outlawed in general, and criticised in no uncertain terms when encountered. Ageism is hardly ever criticised. I've ranted on ageism more than once on this blog, relevant posts can be read by clicking on "ageism" in the Label Cloud in the sidebar.

I was pleased, this week, to come across a piece by another blogger regarding this bête noire of mine, in particular relation to content aired on Saturday Night Live recently:

Saturday Night Live Elder Bashing

We no longer watch SNL - it stopped being funny, for us, years ago. I can't say that I'm surprised about the criticisms made in the linked piece.

My own yardstick for being sure that I'm making valid criticism, not just being bad tempered and mean because I'm feeling uncomfortably elderly myself, is whether similar jokes, observations or remarks would cause problems if, rather than age being the focus, age were to be replaced by race, ethnicity, gender, or persons with disabilities. Would the same general tenor of the joke or remark be acceptable ? The answer is almost always a resounding "No!"

TV Maturing Well ?

When we started watching Grace and Frankie, Netflix's own new series, without having read any reviews I was expecting a comedy - mainly due to Lily Tomlin's inclusion in the cast. Husband did laugh out loud a few times during the first couple of episodes - I didn't. I really disliked the show's pilot and second episode. Maybe it's due to my non-American background. Maybe due to ....oh, I don't know...my aversion to certain sitcoms about a certain "class" of Americans. They always live in big houses with pools and a view of the ocean, they are lawyers, surgeons, always wealthy, clever, successful etc. etc. Such situations might have been just the thing to attract an audience a few decades back. TV viewers in the USA, then, might have been anticipating their own rise to such opulence. Now - not so much!

Basic storyline of Grace and Frankie is that "Grace" and "Frankie" (Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, respectively) women in their 70s, have been long married to lawyers who are business partners, Robert (Martin Sheen) and Sol (Sam Waterston). The husbands announce to their wives, over a communal dinner, that they've been in love with each other for 20 years, and intend leaving their wives to set up home together and marry. The guys hope to live out the rest of their lives in tune with their natural instincts. Both couples have grown-up families, bringing in four more regular cast members.

Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are probably the only two actresses, of the right age group, who could have carried off the parts of Grace and Frankie. They're a classic "odd couple" thrown together by circumstance. There are other, lesser known TV faces who could have played the parts of the husbands to much better effect though. Martin Sheen remains Jed Bartlett (West Wing) to me for all time. Sam Waterston's Law and Order character loomed large for me over his characterisation of an ultra-sensitive, soft and gentle gay guy.

The show did grow on me some during the 13 episodes of its first season. It still isn't, for me, what it ought to be, and could be. Maybe Season 2 will improve it still further. In any case, it is good to see another show with its focus on characters of an older generation, and not portraying them like doddering old fools. In tandem with its more mature characters the show approaches what had been "a sensitive subject": being married to a heterosexual partner while gay. For those factors alone I should give Grace and Frankie a gold star!

Another show we saw early on in our Roku-owning time, was Amazon's Transparent, starring Jeffrey Tambor as a guy who dared to came out as transgender in later life. I much preferred the general tenor of that series to that of Grace and Frankie. The humour was less forced, more natural; the characters warmer, and far more believable.







An excellent British TV drama series we found, I think also on Amazon Prime during our free month's trial a while back: Last Tango in Halifax. It's another drama mixing love stories of an elderly couple (played by Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi), with an interwoven theme of a lesbian relationship of one of their daughters (played by Sarah Lancashire). Characters in this series were totally believable; there was humour and pain mixed with delicate deftness, skilled writing and acting. Maybe I'm a wee bit prejudiced because the action took place in my native county of Yorkshire!




Thank goodness some writers and producers are at last cottoning on to the fact that there is an audience out here made up of more than teens, twenties, thirties and forty-somethings! We have time to watch too, and we have been starved of decent drama and comedy to which we can easily relate. I don't want to watch nothing but "oldie" stories, I enjoy films and shows featuring younger people, as long as their themes are interesting, funny, witty, clever or science-fiction related - so few of them are though. Writers of such shows will often throw in a token "oldie" to keep things, as Fox News puts it "fair and balanced", but those token characters are usually portrayed in such a way that is anything but fair and balanced - just like Fox News!

Ageism Makes Me Mad as..........!

Bill Maher, for me, hit a new low last Friday evening.

"In the battle for government giveaways," he said, "we have to stop thinking in terms of rich versus poor, or black versus white, and admit it's really a war between the young and the old. And the old are winning."
(See LA Times)
Transcript HERE


Maher structured his comments around some unfunny jokes and offensive generalisations at the expense of seniors, "jokes" which, if something as generalised and offensive had been made against other sections of the populations - say gays or African Americans, would have brought wave upon wave of criticism crashing down on him. Elderly members of the population continue to be easy targets. Nobody seems to care about ageism here in the USA. It's sad, and it makes me mad!

I'm not personally fully involved in the issue he brought up. I have two pensions coming from the UK, for which I paid and worked my whole life, but I feel for my fellow seniors here in the US. I've ranted a bit about ageism in the past, on more than one occasion (one 2009 example here). It doesn't go away, pathetic faux-comedians like Maher have to have a target don't they? After they run out of jokes about Hillary Clinton's trouser suits, or Sarah Palin, or some other Republican, or that strange Ford person in Canada, etc etc ..... it's, "Oh yes...let's have a go at seniors again!"

AGEISM

Yesterday's thoughts on PCism reminded me of a complaint of my own, and if I say so myself, it's a valid one, one which matches the original intentions of political correctness: reaching for general courtesy and thoughtfulness for others.

It's a tricky question to ask in the current economic climate, but why is so much emphasis placed on numbers? Numbers are at the top and bottom of most of our common problems, economy-wise, climate-wise, vote-wise and otherwise, but when it comes to numbers of years a person spends on Earth, numbers ought to be accorded less importance.

Among the young and those heading towards middle-age, there appears to be a feeling that sentient life somehow declines and eventually stops soon after the 50th year.

Stereotyping or labelling of any group, generation or individual on the basis of age is illogical. An example of this came up during the recent election circus. A piece by Niall Ferguson at The Daily Beast was basically a tear-down piece of Joe Biden's VP debate performance. Last para:

What we saw last week was not just a contrast between Irish-American political styles. We saw the opening round in the clash of generations that will soon dominate American politics. If Laughing Uncle Joe—who turns 70 this year—has nothing better to offer than “It’s going to be OK,” then I suspect a surprisingly large number of younger voters will turn instead to young Father—and future veep—Paul Ryan.

Apart from the right-wing slant of the whole piece, this pitting of one generation against another bugs me.

Some seem to assume that the accumulation of knowledge, experience and emotional intelligence the average person gathers through time simply degenerates into so much goo, with the hapless individual rapidly descending into vegetative state, just waiting for the journey to the funeral home. Where did this idea come from? I think it comes from the past and should be rapidly updated. People, of whatever age, who cling to this notion are old themselves - in their mindset.

Ageism is one more big "ism" needing to be addressed. In the USA and UK there is legislation in place to combat racism and sexism; the USA also has legislation dealing with age discrimination in employment - I don't know how well that works. I accept that there are many considerations an employer has to weigh, especially in cases where lengthy and expensive training is part of the job, when choosing between a younger person and a person who is nearing retirement. That kind of thing isn't what annoys me. I worked in the department administering Employment Tribunals in the UK for 24 years, and became sharply aware that issues are hardly ever clear-cut in such cases.

What really concerns me is the more social aspect of ageism. People of "a certain age" are expected to accept insults and sneers while ethnic minorities and younger women have some protection of the law against discrimination, slurs and name-calling.

"Ageism is as odious as racism and sexism" - that's a quote from someone called Claude Pepper, but I've said it myself, often. Description of older individuals as geezers, wrinklies, crotchety, blue-hairs, senile, etc. is abuse, as hurtful and degrading as someone being called "nigger", "rag-head" and other such slurs. Many people just don't understand this - or don't wish to understand, or care. This same carelessness and ignorance is, sadly, why legislation became necessary to stem the tide of racism and sexism. Insulting the elderly happens without thought by some, often the same people who are sensitive to racism and sexism.



Chart above is from a website Ageism Hurts.

In the section Seeing Ageism:

Once a person begins to understand the depths to which ageism insidiously infiltrates American (and UK - my addition) society, it is easy to recognize it operating at every level of daily life. The idea that old people are supposed to be frail, incompetent, less than, and laughable permeates culture so thoroughly that it takes real attention to catch the small messages as they slip by..........

A further aspect of ageism is generationism, something I've noticed often, and have blogged about before. The so-called "Boomer" generation often comes under attack by younger writers of Generation X and others. Boomers are blamed for leaving later generations the dreadful mess they will soon inherit. They omit to mention the benefits they've grown up with, due in part to the efforts, courage and expertise of those older generations.

Horoscopes for Elders ?

On an internet wander the other day, I happened upon a blog called "Time Goes By". Among the comments following 28 October's post, "The Essence of Elders", was one which brought up a point I'd never even considered before.

The blog post itself had addressed the issue of advertising aimed at elders (those generally labelled "seniors") in a way which is quite often not appealing to them. Ronni Bennet, the blogger, points our that

"....... advertising aimed at elders almost always feels irrelevant to me – they are trying to appeal to old people with the memes of youth. This also applies to just about every aspect of the culture in relation to elders: television, movies, clothing, technology, vacations, etc., soaked with sexual innuendo and status seeking."

Commenter "Pete" had this to say:

"I always get such a laugh out of horoscopes. All they talk about is love life. Someone who wrote horoscopes for elders could do very well!"

Hmmm. You know, after I'd thought on this for a while I decided that the best Sun sign column writers do actually write in a non-age-specific style. Jonathan Cainer at Cainer.com and Rob Brezsny at Free Will Astrology are my own two favourites. I don't ever recall feeling alienated by their writings, as one of their readers who passed her first flush of youth when they, probably, were still in diapers.

The really bad Sun sign columns, such as appear in our local newspaper, syndicated stuff which the paper probably buys for a few dollars a week, are dreadful and ought to be outlawed. It could be such columns to which "Pete" referred, or perhaps he had been borrowing some women's magazines, or reading 'em in the dentist's waiting room. These do tend to carry content slanted for younger women, who make up their readership.

I've given the subject some more thought, and even chatted to my husband about it, wondering whether I could possibly stretch myself and write an Elder Horoscope as part of this blog. Unfortunately our conversation descended into some rather dark humour and giggling when considering the type of content I might include. I shall say no more! You know, I reckon we don't take our elder status seriously enough for me to to be of any real use in this context. Most of the time we're not even aware that we are indeed elders; if others find that a problem - then it's their problem.

We did go on to wonder at the amazing talent of daily and weekly Sun sign writers though - how they can come up with so much material day in, day out, week in, week out. It's a special and rare talent. I could probably write one day's worth of content, then I'd be done!

However, should a stray astrologer pass by here, read this post, and fancy the idea of writing an Elder Horoscope column, please leave your URL and I'll pass it on to "Pete" and others.

I'm going to think longer on this topic myself, perhaps I'm missing something!

AGEISM

Why are numbers given so much importance? It's a tricky question in the current economic climate, when numbers are at the top and bottom of our huge problems. I'm thinking here though of numbers of years - the years a human spends on Earth.

Three score years and ten (70) used to be thought the allotted span of a human lifetime. One would have had to be lucky to reach age 70 in many past eras. In the 21st century we are indeed very lucky in this repect. Most people can now expect to live into their eighties, given they've led a reasonably moderate lifestyle with few excesses. In our local newspaper I regularly see obituaries for folks in their late 90s and 100+. There's a gentleman of 103 in our town who still attends the theater regularly, we see him there each time we visit.

That said, there is, among the young and even the middle-aged, a feeling that sentient life somehow stops soon after the 50th year. Some seem to assume that the accumulation of knowledge, experience and emotional intelligence the average person gathers through time simply degenerates into so much goo, with the hapless "senior" person rapidly descending into vegetative state, just waiting for the journey to the funeral home. Where did this idea come from? I think it comes from the past and should be rapidly updated. People, of whatever age, who cling to this notion are old themselves - in their mindset.

Perhaps Saturn opposing Uranus is bringing this to the forefront of my mind just now. Or perhaps it's Pluto's move into Capricorn (Capricorn is ruled by Saturn). Astrologer Robert Phoenix touched on this a few days ago (here).

"Along the same lines, older generations, pre-boomer will be invigorated by Pluto In Capricorn as The Goat rules aging, no matter which generation reaches elder statehood. My father at 73, just started his own website, taking on the evil empire of the local Homeowners Association. His site, ‘Echoes From The Canyon is quickly becoming a unique tool for education and relating to one another in his gated burb, rallying around the inequities of the HOA. He’s finding purpose and technology is helping him achieve. While many are already off the tax rolls, with many more to follow, don’t write them off at all as Pluto in Capricorn will re-invigorate them with renewed purpose."

Saturn represents age, Uranus represents all things modern. Currently, and for many months to come, the two lie opposite one another, in a symbolic push-pull situation. I have Sun in Aquarius. The two opposing planets are both associated with Aquarius: Saturn its traditional ruler, Uranus was given its rulership in more recent times. Perhaps these days Aquarians will be feeling more keenly, one way or another about ageism - it's a possibility.

Ageism is the last big "ism" needing to be addressed both in the USA and in the UK. Legislation has been in place to deal stringently with racism and sexism for decades. Any legislation against ageism seems largely ignored. People of "a certain age", however, are still expected to take insults, sneers and being overlooked for interesting jobs all in good part, while ethnic minorities and younger women have the protection of the law against discrimination and name-calling

I had a tiny taste of ageism brought home to me by a comment which arrived last week on an old post of mine. The commenter expressed surprise that an "old gal" like me could be in a position to write about the stuff I write about, and congratulated me on "conquering the internet". It was meant kindly, but felt like a mild slap in the face. I laughed about it later and tried to accept it in the way it was intended.

"Ageism is as odious as racism and sexism" - that's a quote from someone called Claude Pepper, but I've said it myself on many occasions. Many folk just don't get it though. They will insult the elderly without even realising what they do, yet those same folk are sensitive to racism and sexism, because they've been educated to be so. So far, education with regard to ageism has been sadly lacking.

In an article, "Perils of Ageism", on a blog called We're Only Human, I came across a theory I'd not heard before. It's a thought which the young could be well advised to take on board:

"And it may not just be the elderly who are harmed by ageism. New evidence suggests that young, healthy people who stereotype old people may themselves be at risk of heart disease many years down the road. Becca Levy of the Yale School of Public Health examined data on hundreds of men and women who have been studied for almost four decades as part of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. Back in 1968, when scientists first began studying these volunteers, they ranged in age from 18 to 49 and were all in very good health. At that time, scientists gathered all sorts of information about the volunteers, including their attitudes toward the elderly. Their images of being old covered the gamut from very positive to very negative.
Levy and her colleagues examined the health histories of all the volunteers, focusing on cardiovascular disease: heart attacks, congestive heart failure, stroke, and so forth. There was a striking link between ageism early in life and poor heart health later on. That is, those who viewed old age as a time of helplessness were much more likely to experience some kind of cardiovascular disorder over the next four decades. The scientists also looked at a subset of volunteers who didn’t have any heart problems until after they were 60—at least 21 years later—and found that these people had been very negative about aging from early on. The episodes of heart disease could not be explained by smoking, depression, cholesterol, family history, or any of a myriad other possible risk factors.
What this suggests, Levy writes in the March issue of the journal Psychological Science, is that people are internalizing stereotypes of old age when they are still quite young—with far reaching consequences. This is the first scientific look at people maturing into the very people they have been unkindly caricaturing. It could be taken as a cautionary tale for those who think they’ll never grow old."

This 40 second video was made to promote Ireland's "Say No to Ageism" week 2008. In Ireland, at least, someone understands!!

(Advert samples from here)