NEUROPOLITICS: CAMPAIGN IN THE MEMBRAIN ~Einstein’s apocryphal
comment stating, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting different results.” what~ta say Frank , 
Waiter: Telephone call, commissioner.
Commissioner Anabell Brumford: Thank you.
[picks up phone]
Commissioner Anabell Brumford: Hello?... He did what?... How many animals escaped?... Oh, my God...
Lt. Frank Drebin: Good evening, commissioner. You're looking lovely tonight.
Commissioner Anabell Brumford: Do you realize that because of you this city is being overrun by baboons?
Lt. Frank Drebin: Well, isn't that the fault of the voters?
[Frank walks away, leaving Commissioner Brumford with an astonished face]
NEUROPOLITICS
CAMPAIGN IN THE MEMBRAIN
However, those who send the messages about the conspiracies and cover-ups shows mistakenly call them political shows. I often grit my teeth whenever I hear them called political shows and I attempt to correct the person by saying, “I don’t do political shows, I do parapolitical shows.”
Parapolitcs is more about political science theory where I attempt to try to understand why something as flawed as the political system and those who run for political office are even seen as competent or even mentally capable of understanding what true leadership is. I also have a hard time understanding why one political party sees themselves as superior when both parties have enabled criminal behavior, corruption and moral decay in our government.
In all truth, I believe the politics are a distraction and to be blunt, they suck.
Politics suck. I can’t express how much they suck and so do blowhards that create division in this country by indicating the group they identify with has the answers to solving our nation’s problems.
We are always told before we go to the polls that every election is the most important election of our lives and the misfit toys which are forced on us in the end are always defective and have a row of skeletons in their closet that they hope the voters forget about as they take the throne of commander-in-chief.
I believe that every election exemplifies Einstein’s apocryphal comment stating, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I know it’s an over-used cliché but it more than applies to what I am about to talk about.
Insanity, futility, repetition, and epic failure describe our political system and there is a very good reason why.
Because if parapolitics can be seen as neuropolitics – we can ascertain that our political hopefuls are mentally ill.
I am not just saying that because I hate politics I am wondering why we have been so lucky to choose a president that has no mental deficiencies. I mean, are we incapable of voting for a potential Hitler or a narcissistic Mussolini or even a murderous Stalin?
What makes us so sure of the sanity of those who wish to occupy one of the most powerful positions in the world?
I was thinking about this when I was watching Saturday Night Live. The first one of this season was hosted by Miley Cyrus. Throughout the show, there was plenty of political satire hinting that our presidential hopefuls are mentally vacant.
There was an opening sketch where Taran Killam plays Donald Trump. He plays up Trump in a parody fashion that looks as if Trump has mood swings like an 8 year old.
A parody commercial for Abilify, especially prepared for delusional presidential candidates was especially funny, if not cruel and truthful. The commercial pointed out that Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and Jim Gilmore are crazy if they even think they have a shot at being President.
Abilify for Candidates - SNL
There was also a Hillary Clinton sketch where Hillary played by Kate McKinnon is depicted as a power hungry maniac who is drinking and lamenting on why the American people won’t just let her lead —give her the hammer and nails and let her fix it all. Ironically, the real Hillary Clinton shows up as “Val” the Bartender in the skit.
While we can write all this off as parody, the thought of a presidential candidate with something more than the flaw of narcissism is an intriguing thought and should be explored by the voting public.
Politico Magazine explored this issue with an extraordinary article by Alex Thompson. In the article called, “Could America Elect a Mentally Ill President?” Yes, in fact we probably already did we learn that we have seen many taboos in our leaders that we always seem to forgive.
Things like congressmen being openly gay, DUIs, mistakes made when young, dodging the draft, womanizing and using illegal drugs like cocaine and marijuana.
But when it comes to mental illness or even something as simple as a weakness, this may be the thing that is kept quiet and the question is why? Lately we have seen politicians and the media exploit mental illness in average citizens who commit crimes or even flee from the police.
It is a simple observation leading to the speculation that Donald Trump is narcissistic, Joe Biden suffers from depression, Hillary Clinton is paranoid, and that Jeb Bush has issues that may be resolved on a psychiatrist’s couch.
Learning of any mental deficiency in the Whitehouse would create a crisis of confidence and would be politically damaging, so any revelation would most definitely be covered up.
According to the Politco article:
“More than 40 years have passed since Thomas Eagleton, the 1972 Democratic vice presidential candidate, withdrew from the race after revealing that he had been hospitalized for depression. Since that political firestorm, the issue has remained firmly off-limits: No Democratic or Republican nominee running for President or Vice President has disclosed mental illness or treatment for it ever since —to do so would be politically incurable.”
After President Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinski, his mental health was called into question. Rather than seeing a psychiatrist for possible sex addiction, he told reporters that he was receiving counseling from Christian minister.
An even greater cliché is that you have to be nuts to be President, however once again, it may apply as there have been many accounts that we have already chosen Presidents having had mental illness.
It was reported further in the Politico that:
“Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy clandestinely filled their medicine cabinets with psychotropic drugs, according to recent declassified documents. In fact, Kennedy aide and historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. suggested in his journals that several modern presidents were mentally unbalanced; he recorded top aides arguing whether President Lyndon Johnson was clinically paranoid or a manic-depressive, and fretted that there was no constitutional procedure for dealing with presidents who are nuts.”
So perhaps mental illness is more common in Washington than we think?
After all, a fifth of American adults use psychotropic medication, mood stabilizers, and SSRI’s and millions go to talk therapy for their mental health. Why shouldn’t the people governing the country be able to as well?
We always say we want our government officials to be brain-healthy, with sanity, integrity, and high moral values.
But in all reality self-centered partisan politics in Washington DC – with Democrats and Republicans stalemating each other, and constant “witch hunts” aiming to destroy opposing party members – suggest that Congress is a dysfunctional playground for narcissists and sociopaths.
Our leader’s relentless instigation of international wars and conflicts also hints at psychopathic behavior. It is evident in the bullying self-righteousness of the executive branch. Wall Street’s reckless behavior, crippling the economy and requesting a bailout, indicates the “Too Big to Fail” attitude that reeks of self entitlement which is another component of narcissism.
One of the biggest indicators of narcissism is the over-saturation of candidates wanting to run on the Republican ticket. Many of them don’t stand a chance but can’t stand the thought of not being in the limelight and having “past presidential candidate” tacked on to their name.
The celebrity status of the Presidential hopefuls has been fueled by the media. Campaigns used to get underway a year or two before the election. Now, we have had three solid years of disproportionate bombardment and meaningless attention of Presidential hopefuls in order to feed their egos.
People don’t run for President anymore and that is a fact. That is because these politicians aren’t real people in the metaphorical sense; they are propped up as models, well-groomed and made up like rock stars with no real ideology or even vision.
If there were any morals or even any sense left in them they would step aside and allow for a person who is in touch with reality, take a swing at the office of President. Maybe it would be wise to at least allow for a civilian adviser to get the job of leading done while the president is preparing for their appearance on the Tonight Show.
We all know that Nixon appeared on Laugh In, but that was after he knew that the people saw him as a joke.
Now, we have politicians desperate for attention and would do anything in order to be top of the mind and getting headlines.
President Obama set aside funds for the decade-long Brain Activity Map project in his federal budget proposal.
Scientists involved in planning the project are hoping that it will have the same catalytic effect on brain research as the $3.8 billion Human Genome Project had on genetics and that it will spur the development of new therapies for various brain diseases.
Brain mapping is the politically correct way of brain fingerprinting. The unfortunate thing is that while the abuses are possible, the benefits are an important selling point. Brain mapping successfully helps neurologists to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease and other disorders without invasive surgical procedures.
The temptation to use brain fingerprinting for purposes beyond medical practice may be irresistible for governments and corporations with access to the technology.
They of course could use it to screen out people who have mental issues in places of employment, and colleges. Perhaps it would be fair to turn this new brain technology on the leaders themselves, and in order to weed out the psychopaths and narcissists they would have to submit to a procedure known as Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging or FMRI.
There have been numerous philosophical attitudes towards human consciousness and subjective experiences to create a hypothetical subset of philosophical “zombies” who are human beings that do not experience the same reality as the consensus.
Their electrical activity in the brain differs from the majority sub-set of humans and can be seen as function in a spectrum that can be determined as being dysfunctional or may even be determined to have a propensity for bullying, a sense of entitlement and violent behavior.
According to Hank Pellissier of Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies:
“FMRI scans are increasingly able to identify narcissism. Studies since 2013 indicate that brain regions associated with narcissism can be measured.”
For example, “Those with Narcissistic Personality Disorder had smaller gray matter volume in the left anterior insula” and “smaller gray matter volume in fronto-paralimbic brain regions comprising the rostral and median cingulate cortex as well as dorsolateral and medial parts of the prefrontal cortex.” Thinness of brain tissue in these regions indicates a weakened ability in “processing and generating compassion”, i.e., a lack of empathy, an absence of caring for others.
If this is combined with excessive activity in brain regions related to self-absorbed thinking – narcissism is flourishing.
Politician’s financial records are already scrutinized, plus reports of their medical health. Their monetary and physiological data is deemed crucial enough for the public to examine.
Mental health transparency is even more imperative to publicly view. We want trustworthy public servants to represent us, not callous, paranoid, power-hungry narcissists.”
He goes on to say that “The horror of Adolf Hitler would have been prevented, for example, if 1930’s technology included MRI scanning that revealed, via transparency politics, his messy brain to the public. Psycho-Historical analysis have categorized the Nazi terror as schizophrenic, paranoid, anti-social, narcissistic, and sadistic.”
FMRI’s are being used in India as “lie detectors” or to identify those who function on a different cognitive level. People are being jailed after lie-detecting brain scans find them guilty. The science is flaky, but this is just the latest instance of neuro-imaging being used to ‘read’ the human mind – in fact authorities who use this technology have already been called ‘neuro cops‘.
Cephos Corp of Massachusetts has been marketing what it calls “commercially available FMRI-based deception-detection services”, based on software analysis of subjects’ MRI brain scans. In a study of 61 people, Cephos claimed better than 90 per cent accuracy in determining deception. In California, meanwhile, No Lie MRI charges clients $4,000 to $5,000 to conduct lie-detection tests using the technology.
You see, brain mapping is already being used on regular people —perhaps it should be used on politicians.
But that would be unethical, wouldn’t it?
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