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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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As others have pointed out, we might also worry about (say) Fetterman's cognitive capabilities. Or the emotional stability of some of congress's younger members.

I think it's better to look at this as a symptom. It's not like U.S. voters got together and said "okay, we'd like a gerontocracy". Rather, there's some underlying dysfunction preventing these people from being kicked out. This dysfunction ought to be identified and rectified, not just because having senile officeholders is bad, but because there may be still worse consequences.

We observe that politicians remain in office despite obvious incapacity. Outlawing a single obvious incapacity is hardly a solution.

Because partisan politics means that both unless you have a maverick like Ted Cruz or Bernie sanders, it doesn’t matter if your senator is a smart person, a senile old man, suffering from brain damage, a monkey in a suit, etc, and that core voters(the people who need to be convinced to toss a 90 year old under power of attorney from the senate) are loyal to the party above all and would rather keep an obvious bad case than take a risk, no matter how small.