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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025

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Trump looks really under the weather in his UN speech. He's stumbling through his lines, and while he still has a little bit of the Trump flair at times, overall he looks like he's half asleep, without his normal punchiness. He's almost nothing like his normal rally Trump fieriness from just a year or so ago. His ability to connect threads of thought and guide the monologue in a meaningful way is vastly better than Biden from last year, but his physical health seems bad.

I wonder if age is actually catching up to him or if he just didn't get enough sleep or something. If he's actually this worn out on a regular basis, one might ask the question reminiscent of the Biden administration, which is, what's actually going on in the administration?

Didn’t he just go from rally in Arizona to Europe; not surprising he’d be tired

That's the excuse some Democrats keep using. But, his trip to Europe ended more than a week before the debate and he took it off to rest. That is as well rested as someone can be.

If anything I find Trump supernaturally spry.

He's in his second term of some of the whackiest politics ever to happen to his country in which he almost got assassinated and almost went to prison several times and was almost constantly campaigning for a decade, in his seventies.

I don't know what sort of miracle diet coke based regimen he's on but it's definitely working. A normal person would have checked out a long time ago.

He's not as sharp or quick as he was a decade ago, the decline is plain to see, but I hope to God I'm half as energetic when I reach his age.

Still, can we stop trying to LARP the Soviet downfall so hard that it includes the octogenarian rulers?

Dude made it through COVID better than a lot of people in his weight class, too. Everybody talks about Butler as a timeline-branching point, but the world in which he died to COVID is even stranger.

I attribute it to not drinking alcohol or smoking. Though it's still a bit abnormal. Still, capable elderly politicians aren't actually super uncommon, with some heavy selection effects. Example: does this guy look 78 to you?

Felix Houphouët-Boigny ran the Ivory Coast for 33 years and was at least 88 when he died (his birth year isn't certain).

Malaysia has Mahathir Mohammed who turned 100 this year, did 2 years as a caretaker PM due to massive corruption in 2018-2020 and is still pretty spry and vocal considering his advanced age even if he's currently weathering corruption charges and being controversial.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=mAU8nR4qm7A