Soviet Geezers
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There are rumors that Trump's health isn't good. More than just rumors. Facts. It was disclosed a few weeks back that he suffers from chronic venous insufficiency, which isn't serious per se but does suggest he may have serious underlying problems and this is just a manifestation of them. Bruises have been spotted on his hands, too. They look like the bruises people on blood thinners tend to get. People who are on blood thinners tend to be people with serious chronic underlying problems.

Then there is the fact that he's been out of the public eye for about four days now. This is unusual for Trump, who - unlike Biden - likes to be in front of the cameras and likes to banter with the press.

Swollen Ankles?
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It smells of something's wrong.

It is also something that goes deeper than whatever may be wrong with Trump. People who are old enough to remember the old Soviet Union in its declining days remember that just before it fell, it was run by a succession of old men. Some of them looked worse than the pickled corpse in the mausoleum they stood atop to wave at the crowds below.

And here we are, again.

Brandon
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Trump ran and won to a great extent by pointing out Biden's age and increasingly obvious physical frailty and mental decline. Trump didn't even need to point it out. Biden made it plain during the "debate" that led to his being hurriedly replaced by Kamala Harris.

But Trump is only about two years younger than Biden is now and he is older now than Biden was back in 2020. By the end of Trump's term in 2028 he will be about 83 years old. That will make him seven years older than Leonid Brezhnev was at the time of his death, back in 1982. Trump is already older than Brezhnev. And Andropov and Chernenko, the gerontocrats who replaced Brezhnev.

Gorbachev and Reagan
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Ronald Reagan was thought by many to be too old to be president back in 1980, when he began his first term. He was 69 - a decade younger than Trump is right now. By the end of his second term in 1988, Reagan was obviously in decline. He was a year younger then than Trump is right now.

Orange Man is probably not dead. But he is almost 80 and so older than every Soviet-era gerontocrat. The parallels are remarkable. The Soviet Union in the late '70s/early '80s was in about the same state as its leaders. Everything was falling apart. Does it sound familiar? The Soviet gerontocrats assured the Soviet people that things were never better - but the Soviet people knew better.

We know better, too.

The cost of just about everything is up while the quality of just about everything is down. We pay more and get less.
USSR Supermarket!
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Nothing seems to work. People look awful. As they did in the old Soviet Union, another remarkable congruence. We are tired. Worn out. Not because we are ruled by gerontocrats but because we are ruled. The gerontocrats are merely the ossified incarnation of the ossification that besets us generally.

As in the old Soviet Union, it is almost impossible to get anything done without first getting government permission and almost impossible to make a living doing anything because of the costs and impositions of government. Government is a suffocating omnipresence, like a nasty old man who hugs too much.

Trump is that old man. He wants to rule us, not leave us be. Burn Bibles all you like but never the flag, the symbol of Soviet State Power (whoops, "America").

He is America's Brezhnev, a decrepit remnant of another time whose time is almost up. The same may be true of America as well - and that may not be a bad thing for Americans, either. Just as it was not a bad thing for Russians, either, when the old Soviet Union finally fell apart.