Dear Donald: Growing Older Won’t Be Elegant

Dear Donald:

As we become older — may I remind you that you are a senior citizen now — we become medically more vulnerable. We get more cancer, more heart attacks, more strokes, more diabetes, more osteoporosis … and our immune system weakens. Practically every organ of our bodies performs worsely.

Your own diet is rich in fast foods and poor in vegetables. You are (in)famously known to favor: Big Macs, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Diet Coke.  You make no effort to avoid genetically engineered foods (GMOs), and I haven’t heard that you’re continuing Michelle Obama’s tradition of planting an organic garden in the South Lawn of the White House.

As to exercise, I regret to inform you that riding around in a golf cart is not aerobic. Even swinging a golf club as many times, as it’s been reported in the press, as you need for 18 holes, is not marathonic.

Re: the third leg of the the Wellness Triad — some sort of relaxation procedure — would you consider devoting a half hour a day to meditation? Writing tweets in the small hours of the night doesn’t count, not even if you use up all 140 characters.

Another matter you will come up against as President is the intense bureaucracy of the federal government. Either four or eight years in the White House are enough to rapidly age anyone. Look at Barack Obama — gray before his time, which everyone can see despite his close-cropped haircut. And, Bill Clinton: white haired, and a cardiac patient for good measure. Only Ronald Reagan seemed to avoid the aging process with frequent naps [some at meetings in the Oval Office]. But, he did not escape a considerable degree of Alzheimer’s at the end of his two terms. Is that why Melania, our present First Lady, lived in the penthouse of Trump Tower in NYC until public pressures built for her to move to the White House (mid-June)? The Donald is known to like his women young and pretty.

There is yet another uniquely Trump factor that you must consider. It can be summed up in an aphorism of philosopher Gadfly Zeeks: “The more things you own, the more that things own you.” Especially you, whose hotels and casinos go bankrupt with some regularity. Just wait till rising sea levels make your shoreline championship golf courses into giant water traps — you’ll have to provide launches instead of golf carts to get around. You can rationalize you way out of that by thinking that the novelty will attract more golfers, but Wall Street won’t buy it.

  

You may think you have the finest health insurance that money can buy, but you must have some awareness that it’s medical care that you’ve bought. Health needs a healthy life style, which requires some effort on your part: good nutrition, effective exercise, and a little meditation. That is as important  as medical care,

In Ancient Mesopotamia during the Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages, the kings of the early cities would avow  immortality by claiming to be half half god and half human. Gadfly will close with a relevant poem.  Do you see any parallels, Mr. Trump?

Ancient Mesopotamia

When Enlil was

     the god of wind 

     and Ea brought 

forth sweet water,

Ishtar offered

     mace and sword to 

     the kings she knew

who could not rest

until tribute

     arrived from four 

     quarters of the 

world, kings who sought

the company 

     of gods, yet knew

     that soon enough

Nergal would call.