Febrile Brain Disorder - New Scientific Research On Political Hate And Cognitive Dysfunction

Professor Anton Rabinowitz, Chief Scientist at NIH's Department of Neurobiology, Adjunct Professor at both Johns Hopkins and Georgetown medical schools, and a well-known researcher into political phenomenology recently came out with a new paper entitled Febrile Brain Disorder - The Socio-Neurological Basis For Political Virulence. 

The paper published by The New England Journal of Medicine, the premier medical journal in the United States and known for the rigor of its peer review process contended that there was a systemic, functional link between inchoate, irrational, political belief and disturbances in the cerebral cortex which over time were adapted by the brain as predictable behavior. 

In a series of double-blind experiments, he showed that the neurological circuitry of the brain did indeed flare up when what he called 'true believers' (TB) got into a state of inflamed, irregular 'passion'.  He assembled his subjects and attaching them to sophisticated state-of-the art neuro-patterned electro-magnetic receptors, invited them to a lecture by a a political advocate far to the left or right of their stated views.

The experiment was like the old Stanford experiment where subjects were asked to play the roles of guards or prisoners, and reactions noted (even in a laboratory setting, the subjects became either brutal or submissive); or the Yale experiments where students were told that painful shocks would be administered but they could drop out if they couldn't stand the pain (hoax, of course, no pain was to be delivered, only the mental discipline of students from different socio-cultural backgrounds be measured). Similarly the Rabinowitz subjects were given a plausible but untrue explanation as to the purpose of the experiment when the objective was to see how they reacted when they got when politically exercised. 

 

The subjects were all true believers - partisans on both sides of the current political debate - and 'invited' to hear opposing views.  The 'speakers' were trained to presents political philosophy in the most exaggerated, intolerant way, but within academic rules. 

The initial results of the experiments were surprising. There was a marked difference in brain activity between progressives and conservatives.  The progressive subjects became angry, then hostile, than near hysterical, shouting down the speaker, standing and waving their fists, bellowing insults and threats; while the conservative subjects simply laughed and snickered and what they later described as the absolute 'bullshit' they heard. 

The progressive subjects were asked (and paid) to return to Baltimore and be retested, this time without political provocation, and there Rabinowitz made his surprising and unique discovery - the brainwave patterns of the subjects who had gotten so inflamed and hysterical remained upset and in neurological terms 'incoherent' weeks after the original event.  To be sure he tested again after six months and found the same results. 

He could only hypothesize that repeated febrile episodes like the one staged at Hopkins, could only further disturb brain circuitry; and that the more these TBs became exercised and febrile, the greater likelihood that the episodes would be repeated, with even more agitation.  It was, in Rabinowitz's words, 'A pernicious loop'. Events affected brain electronics, the next episodes became more exercised and incoherent because of brain interference; and before long the political partisan would become a whirling dervish, a permanent St. Vitus' dancer.

'Why were conservatives not so affected?', academic and political critics asked; and while Dr. Rubinstein could not point to any neurological differences in brain structure or function - there is no evidence concerning physiological or structural differences in liberal and conservative brains - political 'agitation' (or any persistent exaggeratedly expressed emotion), usually only confined to differences in the way they think, itself conditioned by history, economics, geography, family, and a thousand other environmentally conditioning factors, may be a product of something far more fundamental. 

Liberals and conservatives have access to the same information, yet they hold wildly incompatible views on issues ranging from global warming to sexual diversity. 

These things do not make sense — unless you view them through the lens of political psychology. There’s now a large body of evidence showing that those who opt for the political left and those who opt for the political right tend to process information in divergent ways and to differ on any number of psychological traits; and Rabinowitz added the irrefutable physiological dimension to the debate.  It was not so much a question of psychological variables, but neuro-chemical destiny.

'I always knew they were fruitcakes', said P. John Haynsworth. Haynsworth had been criticized by many of his Yale classmates for his conservative views and, surprisingly for an environment supposedly reasoned, logical, and temperate, he was attacked in what were feverish and almost unprintable hateful screeds submitted for publication in the Yale Alumni Magazine. 

The Rabinowitz article of course did not remain within privileged academic circles, but was reprinted and widely circulated through the popular medium.  'WE KNEW IT ALL ALONG' was the banner headline of conservative New York Post while The Nation, New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic yelled foul, demanded a retraction by JAMA, the dismissal of Rabinowitz, and the burying of any or all references to the study. 

Hopkins and The JAMA stuck by their guns and praised Rabinowitz for his groundbreaking discoveries enabled by meticulously ethical and professional investigation. 

Yale alumni aside, once the report circulated outside of the narrow confines of elite readership, the howls of delight from Trump supporters were loud and exuberant.  Their man had been the subject of rabid attacks for over ten years, and the longer he remained a popular public figure, the harsher and more irrational they became - The Rabinowitz Theory proven again and again - political hysteria feeds on itself, and is a viral agent that permanently distorts normal cognition. 

If there were any doubters, a thousand incensed, enraged students at Hopkins and Georgetown stormed the administrative offices and demanded Rabinowitz's immediate firing.  The demonstrations were even more wild and damaging than the recent anti-Israel protests on the Columbia campus. They were not only 'agitated' but violent. 

'They can't help it', said one mild-mannered, well-meaning professor at Harvard medical school. Supporting his colleague Rabinowitz, he said 'Biology trumps psychology', and for that was properly dunned and demands for his dismissal were as loud as that in Baltimore and Washington. 

Dr. Rabinowitz has weathered the storm, and has gone on to investigate the phenomenon further, has confirmed his initial findings again and again, and has written additional papers all in the public record.  He continues on in his tenured enclave but intends to retire in a few years after a long and distinguished career.