An empty podium is so potent. The microphone ensures you will be heard. The podium implies people will listen. Important people stand behind them and we all stop talking. They start out with a round of accolades to each other. Thanks and honor all around. It's hard to take seriously.
But the perspective is different if you see it from the side, when you see the guy behind the podium. The legs, the shoes, the fumbling of papers. For the first time you see not a stone-faced man getting blasted in the papers. You see a Grandpa. If the differences in clothing and culture are eliminated, the world's most powerful men become slightly different shaped versions of Mr. Rogers. It's hard to take seriously.
So I wonder, at the end of the day, towards the end of life, after they have spent years making decisions on a global stage, speaking to a world who has no choice but to listen, what is left to old men? The rest of the world is left to either laud or pick up the pieces of their lives' work. They exit stage left and watch from the wings. The future will judge them when it gets around to it. Bodies and minds deteriorate until they can no longer tie shoes or button sweaters. The world finds someone new to put behind the podium.
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