Part One: Aging with Freedom

Contrary to what the french existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre wrote about man being condemned by his freedom at birth this same freedom is taken away from him during his childhood and adulthood by the structural institutions of society, namely through learning and working to survive. It is only as he grows older towards his twilight years that he is eventually allowed to recapture some of his lost freedom to think and act as if he is free. This sense of lost and found freedom, however, is narcissistic and not reflected externally in his conservative baby boomer opposition to the younger generation because of his greedy hold on power and wealth. This paradoxical reality was no more startlingly revealed in the final stages of the democratic primaries with two old septuagenarians and one vibrant young colored progressive female remaining in the race.