Aging gracefully…

I’m on a cross-US plane, traveling home to Virginia after a poignant visit with my 96-year-old
mother-in-law, who lives in a small town in northern California. Being
with Granny and seeing her struggling to deal with her daily routine put me
in mind of two other older people elsewhere in the world who are going through
their own versions of these tough struggles of age-related infirmity– but
under situations where:

1. they are both the nominal heads of significant polities that have no
   formal provision for head-of-state retirement,
2. each is surrounded by a tightknit conservative coterie of men who have
   an interest in keeping him at some visible level of human functioning, and
3. each of these coteries can be presumed to have access to all the very
   latest in life-elongation technology.

I am referring to the Pope, and to Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd.

Almost as soon as I started composing the above description of the situation
these two men find themselves in I found myself feeling sorry for them. I’m
assuming, in both cases, that there’s a strong likelihood that the ruler in
question may well have passed the stage of brain/physical decay at which he
loses the ability to make his own wishes known even if they’re in defiance
of the wishes of his advisors.

In both cases, the man’s advisors
seem to evince an all-too-evident desire to keep some some minimally credible
biological simulacrum of the old ruler alive. And in both cases, the
old man’s age-related decline seems to have progressed beyond the point where
we could expect him to be able to summon the guile, the planning ability,
and the implementing ability that would be needed to effect an end run around
the advisors.

So I see both these old guys as, effectively, the captives of their advisors’
designs for the polity. Which may well not be–indeed, probably isn’t–at
all the same thing as the best interest of the aging lion himself.

Maybe I do the pope a disservice with this analysis. Maybe he still
does have sharp cognitive skills and is quite prayerfully sincere about his
desire to continue enacting in public the role of Exemplary Elder that he
is said to have chosen. But seeing him nodding off there in public aboard
his La-Z-Pope chair somehow makes me think there must be a happier
way for him to be.

King Fahd, however, seems an easier case to analyze. I think it’s been quite a while now since anyone has even
seen him in public and provided independent verification that he is indeed
still alive. In the mean-time, with all the Kingdom’s levers of power
having fallen into the hands of the experienced and intelligent Crown Prince
Abdallah, the CP is quite happy to be able ever further to postpone the once-key
issue of who it is that gets to be the next in line, after him.

I call this a “once-key” issue, because until recently, it was always assumed
that being CP and then finally winning the brass ring of the monarchy was
just about the most desirable role imaginable for any one of the Kingdom’s
thousands of princes. Now, though, this seems like far from being a
sure thing.

The Kingdom is in internal turmoil as two generations’-worth of easy oil
income and the resulting combination of over-fertility and slothfulness suddenly
catches up with its people. The conflicting demands of the Wahhabis and
the (considerably less numerous) liberalizers are clashing head-on throughout
the Kingdom’s state organizations– and this, at a time when the eponymous
royal family’s coffers are suddenly dry–leaving them suddenly unable to use
the time-honored tactic of buying off any authors of oppositionist or critical
views.

Plus, at a time when Washington–which for the past 70 years has been main
guarantor, one might even say the raison d’être, of the Saudi
monarchy– has also, suddenly, turned extremely balky and unhelpful.

Plus, at a time when the regional order in the Gulf has also been upturned,
rendering the strategic environment for the Saudis suddenly terrifying unpredictable. (See next post.)

So these are times of dizzyingly rapid and unpredictable
change for the rulers of Saudi Arabia. Maybe the incentive system among
the senior royal princes has actually changed? Maybe instead of jockeying
to be the one who gets to be the next Crown Prince, instead they are
suddenly jockeying not to be forced to take the role? How much
happier and predictable a life they could lead if they were merely doing some
mundane task like managing the investments in London; or something enjoyable
but essentially powerless like writing poetry?

On the other hand, if you’re a senior royal, your own personal happiness
or personal wellbeing may well be of little account. Exhibit Number
One: King Fahd.

Oh dear, the burdens of monarchy! (Or, papacy?)

[Written Saturday, 12/27.]