At the risk of admitting ageism, I'd assume that anyone at 80, even someone commanding a vast trove of resources to support their life, would have difficulty doing anything productive, let alone the amount of stamina required to be a president. When I voted for Joe Biden, I was imagining Joe's "nothing" as better than a Trump who doesn't have a re-election to worry about (or, worse, a Trump who's eyeing a third term.)

The fact that Joe Biden is attending public events and lifting his hands above his head was surprising enough, but to know he's meeting with all these different people to try and get things done? That's the bare-minimum we should expect from a President, but I truly did not expect that from Joe Biden.

I'm not a Biden stan by any means, but I'm realizing I just completely wrote off people older than 75. That's just simple ageism.

I had the kind of opposite personal discovery with Elon Musk.

If you asked me about Musk in 2015, when I was a Child, I would have said something like this:

"Musk is going to bring us to space again! Space is really cool. Did you know that war usually brings technological innovations and economic boons? NASA going to space did that without all the horrific atrocities and bloodshed. And SpaceX will do that too!"

If you asked me about Musk in 2018, I would have said something like this:

"Musk kind of sucks. Accusing political enemies of being pedophiles without evidence is kinda fascist. He's a privileged CEO who brands himself as an engineer. He's incredibly smart, but you only become a billionaire with incredible luck on top of incredible privilege on top of incredible talent. You need all three."

And that's mostly what I believe now, except that last part: "Incredible talent."

This whole time, I thought that being a successful billionaire required -- at the minimum -- great intelligence to make extremely selfish decision making (again, on top of privilege and luck.) For years, I thought he was horrible, but at least smart. He'd be interesting to interview, maybe.

His recent acquisition of Twitter really showed me otherwise. I thought, "Well, he has to maintain a public brand, and surely all the freezepeach techbro stuff is just that. What a piece of shit."

But, no. There are no layers of complexity, he's just a middle-aged failure of a guy. Almost everyone I know is more successful and more interesting than him. When Elon Musk says "le 420 doge #bitcoin", he's presenting the full complexity of his person. (Which is to say, pretty much none?)

Billionaires are already unethical and should not exist, and it's an indictment of our society that it's even possible for them to exist. But over the past year I've come to the horrifying realization that billionaires don't even need to be awake to become billionaires. This capitalist economy is a vast swirling system that will just deposit vast amounts of influence and power in random individuals.

TLDR:

• i was ageist about 80 year olds and joe biden showed me otherwise.

  • EDIT: i have learned jane goodall is still alive and kickin. holy shit

• i thought billionaires had to at least be capable of thought to become a billionaire. may musk drown in piss