Biden The Game Changer

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We’re ashamed to admit we had a wrong assumption about U.S. President Joe Biden. His age. Trump trumpeted it every chance he got, during the 2020 presidential election, he lost to Biden. He said Biden was slow, sleepy, but his success as a first term president indicates he is up to the task.

Biden’s fan base are not Twitter prone so we will never know why they voted for the Democratic Party candidate in 2020. What we know is that some fans will miss the three-pronged power portrait of him, Vice President Kamala Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, during major public announcements. Behind every successful man are two women, if we may tweak the proverb.

Some fans will not tweet about it, but they voted for him because of his age. Maybe it represents experience, wisdom and stability. Maybe Joe Biden is good news in a society that worships youth exuberance and promotes the ‘throw them away’ culture. They are old. They are a liability. Throw them away.

This does not mean people of Biden’s age have the monopoly of wisdom. They banned Tik Tok on U.S. government phones and laptops after all. In other parts of the world, older people are still revered because they are the granary of history and experience in surviving  harsh geographic environments.

As the Nigerian proverb goes: what an elder sees sitting down, a young man cannot see even if he’s on top of the iroko tree, (Igbo and Yoruba languages).

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.

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