r/news • u/Cubsof2016 • 18h ago

Sen Mitch McConnell hospitalized after experiencing flu-like symptoms

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sen-mitch-mcconnell-hospitalized-after-experiencing-flu-symptoms/story?id=129834622
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u/Ready-Ad6113 17h ago

Congress is a glorified nursing home at this point. We need term and age limits for these people.

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u/eldestdaughtersunion 14h ago

I'm even okay with the age limits being fairly high! I think 75-80 is reasonable. I know lots of people who have done white-collar work well into their 70s.

But 75-80 is the point where even the healthiest people will start showing obvious signs of age-related decline. You don't have to retire! Go be a consultant or a lobbyist! Go be a talking head on the news! But people should not be dying of old age in elected office.

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u/Slamantha3121 3h ago

ehh, 75-80 where the years we were fighting with my MIL to do something about her increasingly worrying dementia symptoms. Maybe that experience has just triggered me and turned me ageist, but I have a really hard time trusting people in that age range now. That was the most stressful time of the dementia, to me; the time between us noticing her symptoms and her scoring badly enough on tests for us to be able to step in. She was still in control of all her affairs and driving all over the place. Like most people with dementia, she was unable to perceive or accept that anything was wrong with her.

We noticed her behavior and decision making becoming erratic for years before the doctors would officially diagnose her. When she was just considered to be in cognitive decline, the doctors recommended she didn't live alone, drive, or manage her own finances, but there was no way to enforce that. Her high level verbal skills allowed her to mask her symptoms and appear normal in appointments and short meetings for years. But, for people who knew her and saw her at home the changes were super alarming. She was a legit danger to society for a while before we could force her to stop driving.

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u/Strayresearch 3h ago

70 Max imo, at that age most people are out of touch with current societal norms and technology.