Saturday, May 03, 2008 A prescription for sanity By Jun Sula Commentary
IF THEY ever get to amend the Constitution again, which seems fairly seductive at this time to Jurassic politicians on the endangered list, putting in a minimum qualification for mental fitness for elective officials must be considered.
For the longest time, I've felt that quite a number of elected officials, local and national, past and present, may not be mentally fit for the job. They may not be morons in the technical sense but they well could be borderline cases. It's about time we enshrined sanity in the basic law of the land.
It's really been a burden. Insanity has been sometimes defined as doing the same thing time and again and getting the same results. I thought we've been in that mode for ages, and there's seem to be no end in sight to this frame of mind.
Then the idea struck me like a bolt of lightning: The framers of our Constitution failed to ensure that those who get to lead our people should be mentally fit for the job. Really, is there a provision in the Charter that ensures those we pick to lead us are sane?
I say this because I've seen not a few looking and acting like their certified mental cases. Some of them had even run for president. Whether they were elected or not, I leave it to the readers' to guess.
Why is mental fitness that important? Well, maybe the world didn't have to deal with Hitler if somebody bothered to have him do an inkblot test or its equivalent. Got the idea? Maybe too late now to correct past mistakes along this line, but just in time to prevent future mistakes of this nature.
Governance is a serious business. It's a head job more than a heart one, although strength in both is advisable. But voters don't have all the skills and tools to test the sanity of candidates because they tend to look, act and sound alike. At times, even time-tested instruments like the lie detector can be fooled by them. But mind experts can easily detect mental candidates.
Even non-experts can easily spot a mental case among elected officials. Tell-tale signs include but not limited to sexual aberration as in too much preference for the opposite or same sex, unusual violent tendencies, as in showing a gun to a creditor, sudden swings in mood like unpredictable breaks in laughter and rage at the slightest provocation, especially by news headlines, excessive kindness or aloofness, fear of heights in any direction, north or south, and flights of fancy or fancy for flights.
Age can be a give away. Once, a neurologist told me that the human brain tends to shrink, as the person gets older. He says at a certain age, people should be careful when moving their head in any direction, especially north or south. If he's right, we can figure out why we're having problems in many branches of the government. I know one department that justifies this theory.
See, it might surprise us in the end that our problems are not really economic or political. That was the notion during the strongman Marcos' time. Everybody thought the problem was political. Then rumors of the dictator's kidney illness, known as lupus, spread. Eventually, it was agreed that the country's malaise was renal in origin.
The Greeks knew it all along. A sound mind can only reside in a sound body. Apolinario Mabini and Stephen Hawking may be an elite exception. For the rest, the rule applies strictly. Between sexes, or genders, if you will, hormones should form part of the diagnostic tact. When Queen Marie Antoinette told Frenchmen, at the height of the bread crisis, to eat cake, she could probably have her period. In short, her problem was hormonal but she was executed for her royal gaffe, anyway.
In the minds of many American voters, Hillary Clinton at the White House might cause some unseen headaches for the most powerful nation in the world that could be triggered either by menstrual or menopausal side effects. With Bill as the presumptive First Gentleman, it could likewise be hormonal or libidinal.
It's inescapable, the body and its internal processes affect the mind. Which is why a sanity test is relevant and plausibly constitutional.
If you observe any one of the foregoing in your elected leader, it's time to be concerned. If you see more than one, time to be alarmed. If more than two, take time to consult a shrink for your leader's and your sake.
But the public can be spared from a lot of these troubles if the Constitution is amended and sanity is enshrined as a sacred, inviolable provision.
Then we will not have to deal with morons and imbeciles every election, or worst, spend for them, spend a part of our life with them and stake our collective future on their insanity.
(May 3, 2008 issue) Write letter to the editor. Click here.
