Carney: Infrastructure Insanity Introduces ‘Aging Individuals’

One of the best tricks of elites is constantly introducing new terminology to keep the unanointed masses on their back feet.

Knowing the newest words is a way for members of the elite to send out a signal of their membership. It also has the added benefit of chilling expression by instilling fear in those who are worried they might utter the wrong words and get canceled.

And so in the infrastructure bill, whose text was first revealed by Breitbart News, we learn of a new category of citizen: the Aging Individual.

It’s a ridiculous term on its face. We are all aging individuals from the day we are conceived. Time passes and we age. This is the way of the world.

Yet the bill uses aging individuals in the calculation of how much money states are entitled to collect in broadband subsidies. So it cannot really mean everyone.

It’s some subset of everyone that the authors of the infrastructure bill think are entitled to or needful of extra broadband bucks.

So who are they?

Here’s what the bill tells us: AGING INDIVIDUAL—The term ‘aging individual’ has the meaning given the term ‘older individual’ in section 102 of the Older Americans Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. 300).”

Wait? What? It just means ‘older individual?’ So why not use that term? It’s just an elitist word game. “Older” has gone out of fashion. So now it is the nonsensical “aging.”

By the way, in case you are wondering, the term “older individual” in that 1965 law means “an individual who is 60 years of age or older.” The infrastructure act could have defined “aging individual” the same way instead of cross-referencing a 56 year old law. But that would have not have baffled enough people, which is the point of changing things in the first place.

The irony is that the people most likely to get tripped up and utter the now-outdated “older individuals” are older Americans.

Sorry. I mean: Aging individuals.