Much will be written about the U.S. presidential election in the weeks ahead. But imagine what that election looks like through the eyes of young people in America.

The two almost-certain major party nominees are ancient even by historical comparison. President Joe Biden is 81. Donald Trump is right behind him at 77. Age was also a major issue when Ronald Reagan was first elected in 1980, but he was a youthful 69 by comparison.

The signs of mental decline in Trump and Biden seem more obvious all the time. At an event last week Biden mistakenly thought he had taken a photograph with a congresswoman who wasn’t there. Then Trump went on a long verbal tear about how his chief Republican opponent, Nikki Haley, was responsible for security on the day his supporters rampaged the U.S. Capitol three years ago. He makes this charge often (and falsely) against former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Trump had convinced himself that Haley and Pelosi are actually the same person.

These are not the mental qualities we want in someone with their finger on the country’s nuclear trigger. In one national poll after another more than half of all Americans say they think both candidates are too old to serve as president going forward, and yet here we are stuck with a choice between them.

It is not just their old age, however, that alienates the young from this presidential vote. There is also a giant gap in the way the young and the old think about the issues before us.

Climate change is another example. More than half of Americans ages 18-34 believe that global warming will pose a serious threat to them in their lifetime. Less than a third of old people believe that for themselves. To be young today is to look ahead to an ever more dangerous planet, with more monster storms, more killer heatwaves and wildfires, and more waves of desperate climate refugees knocking on our borders. But it is the old who are in power and who drag their feet against the changes we need to protect a future they won’t even live in.

Elections should be about what is to come, not the past. But to be young in America today is to be trapped in a political system in which the old refuse to cede power, across both major parties.

So tight is the grip of the old on our national politics that leaders in both the Democratic and Republican parties seem willing to risk losing rather than pass the torch to a new generation. Almost any Democrat younger and more dynamic than Biden would seem to have a better chance against Trump in November. If Republicans dumped Trump for someone younger, it seems likely Biden would be political toast.

On issue after issue the future of the young is being dictated in America by the old. It is the young who die in school shootings and who dive under their desks in gun shooter drills. It is the old who keep us from doing anything meaningful about gun violence. It is the young who will inherit a national debt now equal to roughly $100,000 for every child and adult in the country and it is the old who keep running up the tab. We live in a world at war over disputes from the time of the young’s great grandparents.

It is easy if you are young in America today to feel like the Egyptian slaves who were thrown into the tomb with the dead pharos they served.

In a country where half the population is younger than 40, having owned a black and white television and knowing how to dial a rotary phone should not be requirements to be president. Yet in 2024, here we are.

What do young people in America say about this? The sentiment I hear from the young people I know, including my 21-year-old daughter, is summed up in lyrics by one of their generation’s most beloved singer/poets, Taylor Swift:

They aren’t gonna help us. Too busy helping themselves.

They aren’t gonna change this. We gotta do it ourselves.

They think that it’s over. But it’s just begun.

Only one thing can save us. Only the young.