Time is the greatest teacher, and the more we have of time, the more we have of life.

— Rex Murphy, on the virtues age. of

The race for the Democratic presidential nomination, which began with a full smorgasbord of candidates, has greatly narrowed. The view now is that it may come down to a contest between the two white-haired seniors of the party, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Such a wide and diverse spread at the beginning — feminists and spiritualists, strong candidates of colour, a gay man — the whole spectrum of progressive diversity was on offer. And it’s come to this: two old white males. You can feel the progressive rue from here?

Can such things be? A party built around the dogmas of identity politics, catering to every sub-splinter of the “oppressed and marginalized,” selects as its standard- bearers against Donald — the patriarch — Trump, from the only reviled category in the universe of group identity, that of old, white, males.

In the party that up until very recently belonged to Hillary Clinton, the OWM triplex is the most deplorable in the whole basket of deplorables.

In the prevailing progressive mindset, any person stamped with even one of these features is ( pardon the pun) beyond the pale, to be shunned, not exalted. To bear all three is a triple brand of shame, to be a monstrous vessel of unearned privilege, a horror to the woke world — sexist, racist, and phobic on every point of the social- justice warrior compass. According to the fresh- as- themorning-dew scripture of current progressive politics, old, white and male stands not so much as a classification as an affliction.

This is to my old, white and male mind, a problem. Whenever you hear these terms strung on a string it is always in a tone of dismissal and contempt. Which is puzzling, for if you take them one by one there is nothing intrinsic to either term that is unattractive or insidious.

How is being old, in itself, an obnoxious state? Indeed, up until yesterday it was a revered and greatly respected state. One of the world’s greatest tragedies, perhaps the very greatest, King Lear, teaches with great pain what follows from abandoning, trashing respect for the old. From a mere glance at the world’s cultures and history, it is apparent that great age — being old — has been looked upon as the period of a person’s life when judgment and reason have their fullest sway. For most people, if wisdom is ever to be achieved, it will be so only with longevity, only with the reflective pause that attends, in the wellused phrase, a ripe old age.

It may be a surprise to those who live in a pop culture, which is a culture of endless, successive, here- and- gone- in- a- flash novelties, that real knowledge and understanding is a harvest of a full and extended experience with life. Time is the greatest teacher, and the more we have of time, the more we have of life, and therefore the lessons that only experience can offer. So throwing out “old” as a disqualifier, as a term of contempt, is not only a statement of prejudice, it is ignorant.

But what can we expect from this new intellectual miasma called identity politics? A pseudo philosophy that wishes to measure every individual’s worth and moral standing from the category to which they are assigned. It is a bleak and malignant style of thinking, a resurrection under a progressive banner of some of the worst detours in political thought: that the group defines the individual, that the collective is the index of value, not the actions, particularity, individual life story of the person, him or herself.

Now when “old” is attached to “white” we reach a more intense spasm of dismissal and outrage. Forgive me again, but when did skin colour become an index of moral worth? There has been no sin more preached against, and properly so, in our time than that to judge a person by the colour of their skin is of all prejudices the vilest. Is there a “does not apply” clause for white? This may be an awkward point for some but it should not be: the skin colour white is not a moral condition. A glance at some of the currently fashionable “whiteness studies” however will be enough to demonstrate that some, either out of ignorance or malice, believe or wish it to be seen as such.

As is said by the philosophers of sexuality, you don’t choose your sexuality. Nor do you “choose” your skin. And having at birth received your whiteness or blackness or brownness — or any other hue and shade — this makes you no more, nor no less, better or worse, wiser or dumber, more or less talented than any other person whatsoever. White, brown, black or blue, we are all God’s children, and the tint of our outsides is not a determinant of our virtue or lack of it. I had thought these were lessons long ago learned and never to be forgotten.

And finally we come to male, the designation of half the human species since the species began. Is being male a moral error, a genetic flaw, an inevitable placement in an inferior status of the human? Contrarily does being female confer moral advantage by virtue of biology? To ask the question reveals its inanity.

Particular men and particular women, in any category, many be odious, but that does not emerge from their being of a particular category. The sex, race or age of any individual is not an explanation of the conduct of the individual. In the times before identity politics we deplored using collective designations to evaluate, praise or blame, individuals. But now we search for virtue and its opposites according to our groupings. We fracture our common humanity, belittle the elements that make us all one, in favour of identity rivalries.

And so we have come to that strange place where, should it happen that the two finalists in the Democratic primary would both be old and white and male, that it will come as a grief and a regret. It is a strange turn, that our exertions to rid ourselves of all prejudices, never to tag people on the basis of exterior and inescapable characteristics, has rounded on itself, and to point this out may even be seen as an outrage.

HOW IS BEING OLD, IN ITSELF, AN OBNOXIOUS STATE?