Sen. Diane Feinstein and insert here-ism

 Sen. Diane Feinstein is not doing well.  She has physical health issues, and if we cut through the euphemisms, she has pronounced cognitive decline.  Sorry, that was a euphemism.  She is senile.  Whatever one thinks of her ideology, which we can now describe as center-left (even if it was once comparatively further left), she has committed her life to public service, and anyone who believes in democracy should recognize and honor that.  Honor Diane Feinstein and her lifelong service to the American people, and the principles of representative government.  Yet the republican form of democracy requires having public servants who can perform the task, and there comes a point at which a person can no longer do that.  One of the few careers in which people regularly stay past their ability is that of "public service," at least in the elected realm.  Of course, academia is the other, but I'm not senile yet.  I'm just plain, ole' crazy, which will make any such assessment somewhat more complicated for yours truly.  Regardless, consider another form of public service:  the job of firefighter.  This job requires a high level of physical fitness, and that declines over time.  Sure, you can do things to slow the decline, and you absolutely should.  You should exercise, eat healthy, avoid obvious vices, and all of the things that you don't need me to tell you, but regardless of what you do, time and entropy are brutal, merciless, and if nothing else, true practitioners of the ideology of "equity."  They get everyone in the end.  And no matter what a firefighter does, he will get to a point at which his strength and endurance will fail him.  Would you like him to stay on the job past that point, knowing that your life may depend on the strength and endurance of the person who must perform the job?  Probably not.  Many jobs are more cognitive, yet important on a larger scale.  When the Senate debates and votes on a bill, it is not merely one life at stake, but potentially many.  The cognitive abilities of those in office matter.  If we bemoan the innate stupidity of legislators like Marjorie Taylor-Greene, then is not cognitive decline relevant to the performance of the job?  If we are logically consistent, then it must be.

It is not merely Republicans pointing to Feinstein's senility.  Physical frailty can be overcome in a job that is purely intellectual.  Stephen Hawking.  End of discussion.  Yet cognitive decline is the end of the line, and plenty of Democrats recognize that for whatever they think of Feinstein's career, she can no longer do the job.  Between her senility and her latest bout of physical health problems, she cannot do the job any longer any more than a guy with busted knees and a walker can be a firefighter.

And yet what is the predictable pushback among the left?  There must be an -ism because everything is an -ism.  To the degree that there would be an -ism, one would think age-ism, and there are actually laws about that.  The issue, though, is that age is directly, causally related to the observation that Feinstein cannot do the job any longer, but it has no political power in modern politics, and especially not among the left.  Among the left, the fact that Feinstein is a woman does have political power.  So, assert that the pressure on Feinstein to step down must be misogyny.

Assertion:  the pressure on Feinstein to resign is misogyny because such pressure is not applied in comparable cases with men.  Shirley, you have encountered this claim, and certainly those who are not named Shirley have also encountered it.  Also, I hate that joke, and I hate that movie.

So, my dear Shirley, let us test the insert here-ism claim.  Is such pressure applied in comparable cases to men?  If so, then the misogyny claim falls apart under scrutiny.  If, on the other hand (which hand?), we see such pressure applied to women but not men, then we can see a pattern of consistent misogyny.

Take Joe Biden.  Please take Joe Biden.  I'm on an old joke kick this morning.  Emphasis on "old," I guess.  Joe Biden is old.  Joe Biden is very old.  He has comparatively good health, but by many assessments, he has demonstrated some cognitive decline.

My assessment is that claims of Biden's cognitive decline-- scratch that, senility-- are overstated.  Such claims are based on watching his speeches and finding the points at which he stumbles, which he does.  Yet, he has always done that.  He stuttered when he was young, and those of us who have been watching Biden throughout his career have watched his reputation-- well earned-- for diarrhea of the mouth.  When he was young, nobody interpreted such "gaffs" through the lens of age, and hence, nobody attributed anything to senility.  That was just Joe Biden.

If you cherry pick the worst moments of his speeches, you'll find some bad ones, but a) you have to take the whole, b) you have to compare the whole today to the whole of decades ago, and c) you have to apply the same process to other politicians.  Has Biden declined?  Yes, but not by that much.  Not if you compare the whole to the whole.  Then, keeping in mind the need to compare blunders to blunders, are you applying the same analytic process to all politicians equally?  Probably not.  Biden is getting old and senile, but his decline is not actually that bad, in my assessment.

But my assessment isn't actually the point.  The point is that there is a common assessment that he is very senile, and needs to step aside for 2024.  This is a common rumbling within the Democratic Party.  And indeed, by no measure is Biden as senile as Feinstein.  Not even close.

The argument that pressure on Feinstein to resign is rooted in misogyny comes from the assertion that such pressure is applied to women, but not men.  Yet, similar pressure is being applied to Biden, right now, even though Biden is in better shape, physically and mentally.

We could easily keep going, as we look through the history of old senators, but going further, the question is, why would anyone even bother with this?  How does the insert here-ism argument come about, because it always does.  The left has reoriented itself centrally around identity politics, so everything must be defined around an insert here-ism, even when there is a more parsimonious explanation.  We see that playing out destructively in the matter of Feinstein right now.  Instead of asking is this about identity?, the left asks, how do we construct an identity-based frame for this issue?  That is not intellectually useful, and it is politically toxic.

Also, it is divisive internally, but the politics of a purity spiral are such that they always eat their own.

I missed jazz again yesterday, being busy with other obligations.  Pat Metheny, "Old Folks," from Question & Answer.