Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain
The term “gerontocracy” (rule by the elderly) isn’t new — it’s been in use since the 1830s — but according to Google Trends it’s come into more frequent usage since 2018.
And no wonder. The two most recent US presidents have been the oldest ever, senior citizens who frequently lapse into dementia-driven rants in public.
A number of US Senators and Representatives likewise have to be led around by the hand, shushed when their babbling gets too weird, and told by staff how to vote on bills.
To be clear: Not just which votes to cast on which bills, but sometimes literally how to operate the voting machinery they’ve been operating for decades. And that’s when they’re not collapsing and dying, or disappearing into hospitals, due to age-related maladies.
Solutions to the problem cover a narrow range: Age limits to stop people over a certain age from seeking election, term limits to get them out of office before their hundredth birthdays.
Really, though, our aging political establishment is just an end-stage symptom of an even worse disease: Archomania.
You won’t find archomania listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but you should.
While it often manifests in the same ways as other manias (kleptomania, an irresistible urge to steal; oniomani, a compulsion to shop; etc.), archomania is a distinct disorder.
Its symptoms include a compulsive urge to rule others, distress at the prospect of not being allowed to rule others, and a narcissistic belief in one’s unique qualifications to exercise such power.
The colloquial term for an archomaniac is: Politician.
Gerontocracy is just the result of coddling and empowering archomaniacs. Their hair grays, their gaits slow, their minds wander … but the compulsion remains, as does the grip on power seized back when muscles were stronger and hands less arthritic.
Age limits and term limits would treat a symptom, but not the disease itself, and certainly not the effects of the disease on those who don’t suffer from it. Younger archomaniacs would just file in to fill the seats of the forcibly retired ones.
I’m not sure there’s a treatment for archomania.
Early exposure to the works of, say, Frédéric Bastiat and Lysander Spooner might have a sort of vaccine effect, but that’s questionable.
It seems more likely that the only thing to be done with archomaniacs is to try to keep them away from political power, just like — and for the same reasons — we try to keep pedophiles away from school playgrounds and alcoholics away from liquor cabinets.
And really, the only way to keep archomaniacs away from political power is to keep as little of that power as possible on hand and available to anyone. It’s bad stuff anyway.
