Writing While Aging

By Tom Lamia

It has been more than a year since one of my “Notes From Away” contributions appeared in owner-publisher George Capsis’s WestView News. There were reasons for this. None have to do with age, neither George Capsis’s nor mine. During this hiatus, I elected to withdraw from the controversy between George and those who chose to form Village View because it was not my fight and because I saw error and wrong on both sides. I still do.

The passage of time has brought a new perspective. I do not have to agree with the views of either party to this apparently still simmering dispute to offer my thoughts on other matters and to have them made public. I do now. If WestView News wishes also to print this column it has my permission. By publishing it here the Village View implicitly agrees that all rights remain with me and can be offered on similar terms to others, including WestView News.

Now to the subject at hand, which is not entirely unrelated to the conflict between the News and the Village View.

I am not as old as George Capsis, but this does not put me beyond the age boundaries of the present debate over the limits of age acceptability for running either the country or a local newspaper. I am 85. Of course, I am confident that I am still qualified to express my opinions on life and its many dimensions. Likely, it will not be my decision that will end this confidence. In any life, influence is dependent on having an audience. An audience is lost when the writer or publisher drives it away with nonsense. Nonsense does not persuade. Nonsense may slowly emerge by degrees as time or other factors play their parts in the path to nonsense. Writers and publishers both must avoid creeping nonsense to remain viable.

I do not have all of the relevant facts to know who is right about the newspaper war. It appears that in late 2022 George lost his audience among a critical mass of staff and contributors. Many moved on to seed the startup that became the Village View. Was it George’s age that caused the revolt? No. Most likely the cause was intransigence, a character trait George has had as long as I have known him. It has often served him well; a bit of stubbornness is healthy. It shows courage of one’s convictions and a healthy devotion to principle. When intransigence spills over into conflict with friends and colleagues it becomes irrational, a kind of nonsense. It may have in this case. Like many of you in the West Village community, I regret the outcome. I do not blame it on George’s age.

Consider a pantheon of political, business and finance leaders: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, who led the allied powers to victory in WWII; Konrad Adenauer who led Germany through its post-war years; George Soros, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, pre-eminent finance wizards in our time; Vermont senators Bernie Sanders and (recently retired) Patrick Leahy; Iowa Senator Charles Grassley; Henry Kissinger, Charles de Gaulle, Jimmy Carter, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, Nelson Mandela—all highly effective world and national leaders at advanced ages. If being 80 or more were to be considered a bar to effective leadership, it would be society’s self-inflicted penalty.

I think we all know what the current hoopla over Joe Biden’s age is — a cudgel scooped from a great pile of nonsense that MAGA Republicans are using to inflict pain on Democrats. Joe Biden’s problem is that so much of the electorate is too young to appreciate the wisdom of experience. The country is facing the gravest of challenges at the moment. We need a bulwark against the barbarians at the gate. Joe Biden is such a bulwark.