Is there really any guarantee? That is, could you adopt a behavior that would ensure a long life?


HEADLINE: “Japanese dad claims he sleeps 30 minutes each day for last 12 years to double his life expectancy.” *


True story: I dropped in to see my parents, then in their upper eighties, about lunchtime. My dad asked my mother whether they were having salami sandwiches for lunch. She said, “No, that’s for next week. We have baloney today.” They had lived through the Great Depression, poverty, and hardship. When he was eight years old, my dad lost his father, putting his survival and the survival of his two sisters in the hands of his mother. He finished high school and then after December 7, 1941, he joined the marines and fought in the battle for Okinawa. At age 15 my mother dropped out of school to help support her 7 siblings and her parents; she never finished high school. She worked during my teenage and adult years. Both parents smoked, she into her late fifties and he until he was  about 62—unfiltered cigarettes. Their diet was a 1940s and 1950s mix; white bread was in the bread drawer, processed meats in their refrigerator. Tuesday nights were unfailingly spaghetti nights. Picnics featured hamburgers and hot dogs. Bacon grease and lard were on hand for cooking. She drank coffee, but on only a few occasions did I see her drink water. Their faces were relatively wrinkle free, making them appear young by comparison with others their age. When he retired from his foreman’s job at a printing company, he took up golf, walking a hilly course five mornings each week before macular degeneration weakened his eyesight, forcing him to closet his clubs and take up bowling—and getting a trophy for the highest score in his league. He ate an apple every evening.


He died at age 97; she in the same year at age 95. They had celebrated their 75th anniversary.


Every Longevity Guru


Every longevity guru today would say there was no way my parents’ lifestyle would guarantee such a long life. Every such guru will be fortunate to live as long as my parents.


Depriving oneself of sleep, sleeping eight hours each night, taking this or that supplement, exercising hard, walking, running, going vegan, going carnivore, eliminating cholesterol, drinking water or green tea…you name it; you pick your longevity guarantee.


We’ll have to wait to see whether the sleepless Japanese man lives twice as long as… Well, what is the age by which we measure longevity? And what lifestyle truly guarantees 95 or 97 years?


Of course, there do seem to be lifestyles detrimental to longevity. But which lifestyle guarantees it? Jim Fixx, famous for writing The Complete Book of Running, is dead. He died of a heart attack when he was about half my parents’ age.


What if not drinking much water and eating an apple every evening make one live longer?






*Nicholas McEntyre. New York Post. Sep. 4, 2024.

Harris: “Well, there are a number of things. I will tell you first and foremost one of my highest priorities is to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class. When I look at the aspirations, the goals, the ambitions of the American people, I think that people are ready for a new way forward in a way that generations of Americans have been fueled by — by hope and by optimism.”


Apparently, on her first day in office, a President Harris will issue an executive order that mandates hope and optimism. Ambitious, really. Obama merely promised “hope and change.” Harris will make hope and optimism as secure as she has made the border.


This is CNN’s assessment of her interview: “The vice president preferred sweeping themes and aspirations rather than detailed policy blueprints and declined to fully explain reversals on issues like immigration and energy.”


Generous to a fault, that assessment. One wonders whether CNN would extend the same generosity in a comment on a Trump comment.


MSNBC saw it slightly differently: “To her credit, I think that the American media has wrongly contributed to what I’ll call the fetishization of a president’s first day in office. No, the vice president didn’t give a convincing answer when asked what she’d do “day one,” and yes, CNN’s Dana Bash asked the question again in a bid to try to force her to answer it. But the bigger problem isn’t so much that Harris didn’t give a straight answer; it’s an absurd question — even if it’s one that political journalists have come to think they have to ask.” **


In other words, Harris was not only unprepared for the question, but the question itself was not worth the asking. Shame on CNN for forcing her to think on her feet.


I suppose the interview she gave to CNN will satisfy her core supporters, you know those “intellectuals” who didn’t note the DNC’s juxtaposition of Bernie Sanders railing against the rich and a hotel heir’s bragging about being rich or didn’t see the irony of having Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey speak about the evil and selfish 1%. The apparent ironies escaped the delegates’ perceptions, so the platitudes and meaningless non sequiturs of Harris were probably music to MSNBC’s Democrat viewers, all seemingly convinced that Harris brings “joy” to the country.


Political Psychogenic Disease


Trump rallies and CNN/MSNBC pundits make one thing clear. We humans are subject to psychogenic thinking and behavior. Not psychosomatic, mind you, but psychogenic.


Let me explain.


In Chapter 4 of his The Expectation Effect, David Robson tells the story of Portuguese teenagers who developed symptoms of a mysterious disease in 2006. *** The illness stumped doctors. Was it a virus? An unknown bacterium? Some unrecognized inorganic or organic pollutant in the water or in something they consumed at school lunchtime? They all had similar symptoms.


Eventually, health officials traced the ailment to a popular TV program, a soap called Morangos com Açúcar. During  one episode, fictional teens were afflicted by a mysterious disease whose symptoms foreshadowed those later suffered by the ailing real teens who were the show’s devotees. The teens were suffering from a “disease” that was purely psychological. And they “caught it” accidentally; they had merely watched the show and subliminally caught the sickness.


Not so for third-decade twenty-first century Democrats. They have caught the Harris disease of Joy and Hope, just as previous Democrats had caught the Obama disease of Hope and Change. No specifics necessary. They watched and listened, and now before the 2024 election the disease is spreading faster than COVID among faithful Democrats.


But unlike the Portuguese malady, it is not spreading accidentally. The liberal media are the disease’s carriers, and the pundits and unwitting followers are infused with the joy and hope that a woman will become President, and not just a woman, but a woman of African and Indian heritage, a Black-Caucasian. Infused with joy and hope, they believe that after all those white and half-white (Obama) presidents, it’s “time for a change.”


What could go wrong anyway? Look at her ideas; she’ll save us from the weather while our enemies plot to destroy us. She’ll “unburden us” from “what was the last four years” by “what can be.” But the Democrats appear to live in a bizarre world in which the diseased suffering from high inflation, open borders costing billions of dollars for support for illegals, renewed dependence on foreign oil, high gas prices, and international chaos supported by Iran, ask for more of the same infecting agent. Wasn’t Harris herself part of the Biden-Harris pathogen?


Is the enthusiasm for the promise of a Harris-Waltz Administration contagious? Have you caught it? Are there psychogenically afflicted people all around you?


But Trump Supporters Also Have the Disease, Don’t They?


Yes and no. There’s a difference, I believe.  Just about every time I see a Harris-supporter interviewed on the street, I witness a person unable to articulate the reason for the support other than “She’s a woman”; “It’s time for a change”; and “Trump is evil.” Just about every time I see a Trump-supporter interviewed, I witness a person mention policies, like a closed border, a strong military, oil independence, consequences for offenders, and tax cuts not just for the rich, but also for everyone. Yes, Trump supporters are emotionally entwined, but they seem universally to have a cogent understanding of issues and causes.


Root Cause of the Spread


Like those Portuguese teenagers, adults have a tendency to exert behaviors suggested by what they hear and see on TV or in their peer groups. Political psychogenic disease is a recurring ailment, formerly striking Americans every leap year, but now afflicting people 24/7 in every year. America might easily be characterized as a land of shifting mobs, amoeba-like masses moving helter-skelter on the petri dish of political ideologies.   


*https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/30/politics/harris-momentum-cnn-interview-analysis/index.html


**https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/kamala-harris-tim-walz-cnn-interview-rcna168598


***Robson, David. 2022. The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World. New York. Henry Holt and Company. 79,80. Robson has written an interesting book on what we normally call self-fulfilling prophecy. But he covers more than effects on individuals. Chapter 4 is titled “The Origins of Mass Hysteria: How Expectations Spread within Groups.”