On Trump's Birthday

I am often hearing statements like “Russia wants this or that”, “United States are determined to”, “China believes” whatever. This type of claims effectively anthropomorphises the polities in question, framing them as human beings that are capable of thinking, feeling emotions, having convictions and so forth.

Yet, I think that there may be an element of context here that most observers are missing.

Let’s have a closer look at these four guys:

Putin, Xi, Trump, Khamenei

Everything about them seems to be different:

Democracy and Autocracy, Islam and Christianity, Capitalism and Communism

(and some weird forms in between)

And yet, you may notice a common denominator orthogonal to all of the above. And that denominator is age:

Xi - 71 years old

Putin - 72 years old

Trump - 79 years old

Khamenei - 86 years old

Irrespectively of their political, ideological, religious and whatever differences, Russia, China, the United States, Iran are all governed by the old. Whatever political regime they may have, whatever values they may proclaim, it is the septuagenarians and octogenarians who have the final saying in it.

This fact is more consequential than it seems

To explain why, let me introduce the following idea:

Every society is a multiracial society, for every generation is a new race