Manning’s brain

I am sometimes accused of attacking everybody. This is not true. I do not attack people who are poor, handicapped, or fat — well, except poor writers, the ethically handicapped, and those who get fat off the public purse. But my usual targets are people who are powerful, stupid and narrow-minded (though two out of three will still get you in my pensights). Thus, a Prime Minister is always a prime bullseye for my bull-you-know-what. But now I am faced with a dilemma in respect to Prime Minister Patrick Manning. You see, I have always assumed that Patrick had got his degree in geology by studying neurology — ie his own. But I’ve never minded his stupidity: he just made my job as a satirist easier. As the American humorist and journalist Will Rogers once said about covering politics, “I don’t make jokes, I just report the facts.” Lately, though, I’ve begun to think that Patrick would have been better off if he had studied brains instead of rocks, because it seems to me that sheer stupidity is no longer a good or even adequate explanation for his increasingly outlandish behaviour.

My logic is simple: nobody could be that dotish without it being clinical. I mean, sure politicians will do anything to stay in power — the thing is, Patrick’s doing stuff that will get him kicked out of office faster than Basdeo Panday at a Teetotalers Truth Tellers meeting. So it seems to me entirely possible that Mr Manning may have suffered some sort of brain damage — specifically, to the ventromedial frontal lobe. You see, damage to this part of the brain can result in a condition called anosognosia, which means “unawareness of illness.” So not only may Mr Manning be brain-damaged, but he may not even know that he’s brain-damaged. Indeed, he may have been suffering from anosognosia for several years now. Remember when he went to Cuba for heart surgery? His closest colleagues in the PNM didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. Then party chairman, now Senate president, Linda Baboolal even told the media that her leader was on vacation, because apparently that was what he had told her.

When the truth came out, I assumed like everyone else that Patrick had merely lied, as is the habit of all politicians, even those who claim to be born-again Christians. But now I’m not so sure: people with anosognosia are usually paralysed on one side of their body but will still claim to be able to walk or do anything a normal person can. So maybe Patrick really believed he was on vacation in Cuba, and that part of the vacation package happened to be heart surgery. He probably thought, “Hey, I’m in perfect health but it’s free.” Mind you, the condition could not at that time have been too chronic since, once the truth came out in the media, Patrick did admit that he had undergone a heart operation. On the other hand, he also told the crowd at a PNM meeting that the boy was working better than ever. Even if I’m wrong and Patrick’s ventromedial frontal lobe is fine and dandy, it still seems to me likely that he has suffered some sort of damage to his right hemisphere. Cognitive neurologist VS Ramachandran says, “The left hemisphere’s job is to create a belief system and to fold new experiences into that belief system. If confronted with some new information that doesn’t fit the model, it relies on Freudian defence mechanisms to deny, repress or confabulate — anything to preserve the status quo.”

Clearly, then, Patrick’s left hemisphere is working fine. He is obviously quite happy with the status quo since it gives him enormous power as Prime Minister — indeed, as his handling of CoP Everald Snaggs’s appointment, Unit Trust chairman Clary Benn’s dismissal, and City Clerk Marlene Coudray’s transfer shows, Patrick is obsessed with making his status even more quo. He’s also marvelous at repressing: consider how he repressed his memory of his meetings with the British Gas and Repsol executives. And he’s quite astounding at confabulation: look how he insists he isn’t asking himself to forgive himself his million-dollar debt. Ramachandran goes on to say, “The right hemisphere’s strategy, on the other hand, is to play Devil’s Advocate, to question the status quo, and look for global inconsistencies.” Now, as a devout Christian, I am sure Patrick would be aghast at having a Devil’s anything anywhere in his head, so maybe he damaged his neocortex trying to exorcise it at one of those many revival meetings he goes to, where they slap you on the forehead before taking your money. Moreover, he clearly doesn’t detect global inconsistencies at all, or else he wouldn’t have been so proud about his five-minute meeting with George Dubya Bush.

But I may be wrong. The brain’s right hemisphere also deals with metaphor, allegory, and ambiguity; and Patrick is clearly still skilled at all three. After all, gang leaders are community leaders, CEPEP labourers are entrepreneurs, Hazel passed her exams, kidnappings are bogus, and the Red House is too small for Parliament. But, even if Patrick isn’t suffering from right hemisphere damage, it is still possible that he has another condition called temporal lobe epilepsy. People who suffer from this condition don’t always have fits, but they sometimes become extremely religious and form what psychiatrists call a “temporal lobe personality”: pedantic, argumentative, egocentric, garrulous, humourless and self-important. Maybe that’s why Patrick thought there was nothing wrong with taking the trip on the energy companies’ private jets, since a private jet is no less than his due and would bring him closer to Heaven. Such persons also find cosmic significance in trivial events, so Patrick could easily have seen a leaking roof as a sign from God that he should build a new $500 million Parliament building.
 
Moreover, people with this condition are less sensitive to violence and sex. Could this be why Patrick is so dismissive about crime? And did he give the Education Ministry to wife Hazel to keep her busy sending out platitudinous press releases? I don’t know. But you see my dilemma. If Patrick really is mentally handicapped, I can no longer attack him; and that would deprive me and Newsday’s readers of a rich vein of ridicule. So I hope that I am completely wrong about all this, and our Prime Minister really is just a damn fool.
E-mail: kbaldeosingh@hotmail.com Website: www.caribscape.com/baldeosingh