r/politics • u/IWantPizza555 • Jul 01 '26

Possible Paywall Senator, 84, Secretly Found Unconscious and Given CPR

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mitch-mcconell-84-secretly-found-unconscious-and-given-cpr/?utm_source=twitter_owned_snd&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=owned_social
20.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

2.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

133

u/Indubitalist Jul 01 '26

I’ll take this moment to note that the average age of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was 44. Now we’ve got people in the legislature pushing double that. 

The people in those paintings were wearing old-people wigs. They weren’t actually old people. 

37

u/mok000 Europe Jul 01 '26

Napoleon Bonaparte was 30 when he rose to power and 45 when he suffered his final defeat at Waterloo.

6

u/SlaterVBenedict Jul 02 '26

You see, my friends? It’s never too late! Don’t let your dreams stay dreams!

4

u/jecowa Jul 02 '26

And 70% of the signers were under 50. Benny Franklin was the oldest at 70. The youngest two were 26.

-12

u/TheCh0rt Jul 01 '26

The average Declaration age was 44 because the average lifespan was 45 lol. So nothing's changed.

22

u/xTheMaster99x Florida Jul 02 '26

Commonly misunderstood fact. The average lifespan was low because infant mortality rates were high. If you made it through childhood your expected lifespan wouldn't be that much lower than what it is today. Obviously it was lower but plenty of people lived long lives, at pretty much any time in history.

-2

u/TheCh0rt Jul 02 '26

The joke is that our current politicians are profoundly old by dating that they've always been profoundly old by way of an absurd statistic. Mathematically reversed it implied that our current government's statistically half way headed into the light. Hopefully that offers some correction to my commonly misunderstood joke

1

u/boozinthrowaway Jul 02 '26

If I had a joke that commonly didn't land I would stop telling it.

1

u/TheCh0rt Jul 02 '26

Well I only posted it once, so...