Why is there no psychological screening for folks hired, appointed (self, or otherwise) or elected to public or celebrity offices? From the DMV counter clerk, all the way up to the President of a nation or the hottest radio personality (who may have more actual power(1), over all, than any president).
It’s too easy for damaged, broken, narcissistic, angry, even sociopathic personalities to hide out and to act out from such positions and to leverage great amounts of damage to the society, the nation and a never ending stream individuals who only need help, guidance or some perfectly valid service from this nuclear bomb in public servant’s clothing.
From the counter clerk at the DMV, up to “intelligence” operatives, Congressmen, Senators and especially the (so-called) Chief Executive: psych screening. The last few decades, if one looks dispassionately at the personalities of America’s Presidents and the “movers and shakers” of Congress, the need for such screening becomes painfully clear.
Or even major news commentators or public “rabble rousers”… they are in a position to do untold amounts of damage (and have done so, over and over again). One can’t silence such a person, but where’s the publicly published psych profile on folks who command such audiences?
There’s one case in particular that comes to my mind, though I won’t name names here. I often wonder, in his insistent, angry, fabricated stories, how many lives were ruined by this particular pundit? Even how many people died (indirectly) because of that person’s broadcasts and directed and misdirected anger. How many? Uncountable numbers.
These are jobs and they have job requirements. Even a celebrity has job requirements(2), and certainly a public responsibility. The price of fame, and all that.
At the very least a “public personality” should have a published (and annually updated) psychological profile easily accessible. However, that would require actually having psychologists who know and love their profession (and who, presumably, also have publicly published profiles) and the retirement of “Doctor Prozak” and all his minions that were substituted for actual mental health care. It would require that those evaluators also can not be bought off, bribed or threatened into producing reports other than an honest evaluation.
It would also require a society that embraces sanity as a Role Model and as a Target to strive for. A society that is upwardly pointed, rather than following the Bread and Circuses pathway downward(3)
So, what to do? One can not mandate sanity. One can not pass laws requiring clear thinking. One can not arrest some one for having had a broken childhood (though many crimes stem from such and people are arrested for what they do because of a broken childhood, because they were never given the tools to help them get over it, or even told that they can get over it). One person can not fix an entire culture.
In fact, one can not “fix” even another person. One can only “fix” oneself, and that takes effort, willingness, persistence, endless patience and an inner vision of how you would rather be.
So… unlikely as it is that psych profiles for major politicians (or even IQ results) will ever be required for office, nevertheless you can raise the standards for yourself. Right now.
Just a thought…
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(1) “Actual power” that’s power over the masses, power over the people, which is, after all, the only power and the only actual resource any nation truly has. A “nation” is, after all, only that collection of people that will actively identify themselves as its member citizens. I mean, what if everybody suddenly just left a given nation? Or stayed right where they were but suddenly refused to cooperate with the tax collectors and the enforcement agents any longer? No more nation. Not that one, anyway. People will always band together in some form or other though: the Herd Rules.
(2) Okay, that’s a complicated one and would take a lot of discussion to clarify. But I stand by it, all the same.
(3) When a nation spirals downward it doesn’t last too much longer. Historically speaking, that is. When a society and/or nation collapses it doesn’t just vanish. The people are still there (most of them). That nation gets replaced by another one (immediately or in time — and maybe even the name remains the same, though not often) and usually even the culture gets replaced (in a generation or two). Of course, this is a different time and an unusual situation in known human history: there is really no “outside” any longer. It’s a Global Village, like it or not. So… even “spiraling downward” as we are (many of the nations — scarcely all of them), we can only guess as to what that means this time around. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see a history book from four centuries from now?