I find it almost infinitely distressing to realize that our culture has no requirements for sanity, mental health, rationality or intelligence, for assuming any of the High Offices in the government.
No sanity requirements.
Huh?
In fact, if you look closer, we don’t really even have a definition for sanity, beyond standard dictionary definition, which is mostly “not insane.”
The longer I ponder this, the more this becomes “more than I wanted to know about our culture.”
Did you know that [the fictional character] Hannibal Lecter tested out “off the chart” on the rationality tests? Hannibal, by the way, was based on a real character. Not quite as romantic as Hannibal, but just as … well … just as much that way.
Ok… sanity requirements, or in fact any requirements to assume High Office can easily be manipulated and made barriers to getting into office even for qualified people. But really! It’s a job, and all jobs have job requirements, yes?
Yes?
Is not a sane and rational mind a requirement before getting access to all the nuclear launch codes?
Yes?
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