Generally, I have a lot of respect for Old Men. With good reason: if you think about it, what grown-up ideal doesn’t come with its own imagery of them?
In Nigeria, the pastors and General Overseer in my church were Old Men. Nearly every Head of State of that country and of the one I now call home has been an Old Man. As a Yoruba boy, you already know a significant portion of my youth was spent face down on the floor, prostrating to one Old Man or the other. There was always some chief I shouldn’t be looking in the eye.
The groove only deepened when I moved to the West. Founding Fathers? Old Men. CEOs? Old Men. The representatives of a thousand nations and a thousand more schools of thought over the millennia? Old Men.
Taken together with the images of Aristotle, Plato, and sultans of old, socialization’s punchline was clear: if you would be wise, first be an Old Man. If you will succeed, you will do so as an Old Man. Memorialization of your life’s work – some marble bust of you cordoned off by velvet rope in a hallowed hall somewhere – will reflect you as an Old Man.
To be an Old Man is to have been refined by trial, by fire, and by the passage of time in a world where expectations of you are of distinction and achievement. To be an Old Man, it stood to reason, is a good thing.
It was.
It’s 2020 now, and that image couldn’t be more distorted. As young people take to the streets on five continents, the Old Men look anything but wise, clinging to power and to the apparatus by which they do wickedness to the world around them.
And it isn’t new. Five will get you ten that behind every cause for protest in the modern era – from colonization to neo-colonization to the acceleration of climate change to deepening socio-economic inequality to too much goddamn sugar in children’s food – is an Old Man.
In the United States, Old Men routinely make a mockery of themselves and of their understanding of the public’s intelligence. When not claiming victimization at the hands of the patriarchal institutions they themselves established, they’re shoving money into the pockets of other Old Men via means (e.g. tax cuts) that would be criminal if they weren’t legislated by Old Men.
It takes a special sort of audacity to sit in a pew or stand at a pulpit and rail on about the sanctity of life and make decisions on behalf of women all over the country; then sit out an entire summer’s worth of rallies in support of the matter of black lives. But Old White Men do it all the time. Every Sunday they do it, forming the perfect shadow of their forebears who traded and tortured souls for profit.
When Sandy Hook happened, I waited expectantly for the sanctity of life to spark action. Instead, Old Men blamed mental illness and lined their pockets with NRA contributions. And when ignoring gun violence and police brutality weren’t demonstrated incompetence enough, an Old Man bungled the United States’ coronavirus response, surrounded by power-hungry Old Men who enable him.
It’s soulless stuff, and it has to be exhausting. I see Mitch McConnel’s sagging jowls and sunken eyes coming up to the podium and I think: aren’t you tired, Old Man?
Our Old African Men are differentiated only by the pettiness of their kleptocratic insouciance. They’ll steal a billion dollars in public education funds but send their kids abroad for school. They’ll sabotage road repair so they can continue to file for and win rigged government contracts…to fix the road.
Nigeria’s Inspector General – and don’t laugh, this is real – “yielded” to public pressure to end his feral SARS police force and agreed to dissolve them. At the same time, he announced the launch of (surprise!) a new SWAT police force. “Look, guys! SWAT! No, this isn’t SARS, it’s SWAT. Why are you still angry?” It’d be cute if it wasn’t so disrespectful. It’s a unique kind of brazen that feels a hair’s breadth short of senility. The kind of “brazen” that only Old Men have.
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You don’t get this from women. While Boris Johnson struggles to find faster ways to degrade Britain’s standing in world affairs, Angela Merkel bravely shoulders the burden of leading the free world. Jacinda Arden has stopped covid in New Zealand. Twice. Our Old Man? He can’t keep it out of his own house.
And while women like Candace Ownes, Kayleigh McEnaney and Kellyanne Conway are not in fact Old Men, they are clearly bit players in a drama overwhelmingly starring Old Men.
And yes, there are many young men who stand on the wrong side of nearly every moral issue in the public square today, but they are at least matched or outnumbered by young men standing on the right side. It seems that as men age…that balance shifts until all that remains is destructive politicians, debased capitalists, and pervy uncles.
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To tell you the truth, I’m terrified. I’m 35, and whatever this “thing” is about being an old man that corrodes one’s integrity and calcifies poor character, surely it will be upon me soon.
I have an uncle. He’s an Old Man now but used to be a young man. When he was young, I looked up to him. He would drive with me on his knee and tell me how much he loved my aunt and tell me I had a bright future. He would talk about wicked politicians and tell me to be sure I remained “good.”
Now he’s a Trump supporter, a greying combination of religio-moralist antagonism and cultural antipathy that would gladly watch the world burn just to combat “the gay agenda.” He’s fiercely anti-liberal in a way that would make Fox News proud. His 30-year-old self wouldn’t recognize him. The “thing” has him.
I feel it encroaching on me. My tsk-tsking as some protests this summer gave way to riots and looting. The internal conflict when Bernie’s policies (which would raise my taxes by a little but benefit millions by a lot) starting to gain popular support. My drive to impose my will even here in my HOA and on my noisy neighbors whose shindigs I fear are harming my property values.
Today I am young. I want SARS to end, I want to defund the police, I want people to marry who they like, and I want the church to stand on the side of the poor and disenfranchised as Christ did. Will I always want these things? Or will the “thing” get me too?
Because this is the legacy of old men: callous selfishness buffeted by deep insecurity as they watch the dusk of their days approach. The pursuit of profit and power above all else and at the price of their own humanity. No, not the heroics and sweeping rhetoric of elder statesmen as told in the history books they themselves commissioned. But the weak-mindedness of career politicians and the greed of Old White Men who robbed, pillaged, and raped by entire continent; giving way in the 60s to Old Black Men who pillage it still today. Those Old Men who used to be Young Men fighting for freedom.
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I cannot guarantee my immunity from the “thing.” I don’t know when I’ll go from being young and fair to old and uncaring. While I’d love to say something like “guard your heart” or “stay true to yourself” or whatever, that doesn’t seem to have worked for generations of geriatric actors past and present.
So instead I beg you to act now. If you’re a Young Man, pick a cause, any righteous cause, and pursue it. If you’re a marcher, march. Volunteer if you have time to volunteer. Donate if you have the means to donate. Speak if you have a platform. Preach if ears are inclined to you.
Surely the evil that took our fathers’ hearts will come for us soon. With no guarantee of our ability to resist it, and with the number of our greys increasing, we must do things now that we ourselves won’t be able to break in 40 years.
We haven’t a moment to lose