Senior Slump

IN H. G. Wells’s 1895 novel The Time Machine, an inventor journeys to a distant future in which human beings, now called Eloi, have become infantilized and utterly dependent on machines for their daily sustenance. Horrible monsters known as Morlocks live underground and prey on the hapless Eloi. Wells’s hero flees back to the past with a foreboding of social devolution.

American politics today echoes Wells’s depressing story: Senior citizens have been infantilized by the political system, and they are easy prey for shameless political Morlocks who use fear to manipulate them. In the presidential race and many other contests, the issue of prescription-drug coverage is crowding out matters of greater concern to the average voter, such as taxes and education. Protecting Social Security and Medicare is a dominant theme in federal races.

About the Author

John Hood

John Hood is president of the John William Pope Foundation, a North Carolina-based grantmaker, and co-founder of Freedom Conservatism.

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Presidential Election

IN H. G. Wells’s 1895 novel The Time Machine, an inventor journeys to a distant future in which human beings, now called Eloi, have become infantilized and utterly dependent on machines for their daily sustenance. Horrible monsters known as Morlocks live underground and prey on the hapless Eloi. Wells’s hero flees back to the past with a foreboding of social devolution.

American politics today echoes Wells’s depressing story: Senior citizens have been infantilized by the political system, and they are easy prey for shameless political Morlocks who use fear to manipulate them. In the presidential race and many other contests, the issue of prescription-drug coverage is crowding out matters of greater concern to the average voter, such as taxes and education. Protecting Social Security and Medicare is a dominant theme in federal races.