On Emotional Dysregulation

Has Trump Derangement Syndrome been amplified by neurological inflammation, perhaps caused by COVID-19 vaccines and boosters?

About a year ago I watched a Tucker Carlson interview with Dr. Michael Nehls about his book, The Indoctrinated Brain.

As Dr. Nehls describes it, both SARS-CoV-2 (a bio-weapon made in a laboratory) and the mRNA vaccines are key elements of a general assault on the human mind and the individuality that emerges from a healthy, autonomous mind.

It is no coincidence that COVID-19 arrived during the same year that the World Economic Forum announced its Great Reset agenda. As Klaus Schwab stated:

The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world.

The hallmark of a person who is ideologically possessed or programmed is that, no matter what questions you ask him, he always answers with the same slogans and dogma. An ideologically possessed person is literally unable to think.

With astonishing clarity, Dr. Nehls enumerates all of the ways in which our ability to think is being assaulted on a daily basis.

I’m frequently reminded of Dr. Nehls’s book by an increasingly common spectacle these days—namely, that of emotionally dysregulated middle aged adults and seniors.

It was especially conspicuous during RFK, Jr.’s Senate confirmation hearing. The word “Senate” comes from the Latin “senatus,” which means “old man.” The Romans conceived of the Senate as a council of elders who are calm, reasonable, and wise. I wonder what Cicero and his colleagues would have thought about the spectacle of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders acting completely unhinged.

Then there was the bizarre conduct of Democrats at Trump’s recent address to Congress—people so consumed with anger and other negative emotions that they couldn’t applaud a single positive and optimistic sentiment expressed by the president.

It’s true that President Trump enjoys trolling and baiting them, but that is partly because they alway rise to the bait. Much of their problem is that they are incapable of bringing a sense of humor to bear on anything, which strikes me as a fatal condition.

Contrast their conduct with the English essayist Charles Lamb, who once tried his hand at writing a play. Attending the premiere, he was initially shocked by the crowd booing and throwing tomatoes at the stage. However, he then quickly recognized that it was, in truth, a bad play, so he joined the crowd in throwing tomatoes at the stage, which earned him legendary status in the high art of laughing at oneself.

Nowadays, humorlessness is accompanied by fanaticism and fetishism for strange attachments and antipathies. Consider the ravenous desire to keep the Ukraine War going “bis zur letzten Patrone” (“until the last cartridge”) as Nazi fanatics liked to say about continuing the fight even after it became clear that nothing constructive could be gained by it.

In attempting to speak with such fanatics, one gets the distinct impression they would prefer a general military conflagration on the European Continent rather than concede Russian speaking territories in Eastern Ukraine to Russia. Europe’s leaders seem to think that in order to save Europe from a state of general war with Russia, it is necessary to start a general war with Russia.

Such people regard the entire concept of a negotiated settlement as necessarily conforming to Chamberlain’s appeasement strategy with Hitler. This ignores the fact that for most of European history, it was standard practice to conclude military conflicts with a negotiated settlement, usually with one side losing some of its territory. This is why the territorial borders of Central and Eastern Europe have constantly shifted around over the centuries.

During Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin, many thought that Putin was being pedantic with his recital of Ukrainian and Russian history. I believe he was subtly pointing out the irony that—while we find the political history of the region and its conflicts obscure and tedious—we are (for some reason) passionately consumed by its current conflict, the causes of which few will remember or care to remember 100 years from now.

Thinking about this reminds me of Lord Palmerston’s remark about the Schleswig-Holstein question, which was, at the time, a matter of passionate debate in Europe and in England. Years later, Palmerston said of the conflict:

Only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business – the Prince Consort, who is dead – a German professor, who has gone mad – and I, who have forgotten all about it.

Note that no reasonable adult makes all or none calculations in his personal affairs. Very few men in this country would risk their personal safety and fortunes to stop other people in their immediate vicinity from violently quarreling. As Daniel Penny learned the hard way, doing so in places like New York City can come at an enormous personal cost.

And yet, despite having a vast ocean on either side of us, we Americans can’t resist getting involved in the quarrels of people who live over five thousand miles away.

It this conspicuous deficiency of cool reason attributable to normal human emotionality, or are new environmental factors causing people to behave like scalded chimps?