The video above attributes Cheney's inconsistency to financial interests. Maybe.
I just started reading Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
which in passing raises another possibility. After discussing how Cheney, before the run-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003, had always seemed like "a realist" who "demanded the hard facts" and was "very practical," Ricks writes "Cheney had changed... perhaps because of his heart ailments, which can alter a person's personality."This immediately made me think of Phineas Gage, whose personality drastically changed after a railroad spike accidentally was driven through his frontal lobe. He became obstinate, abusive, and profane. Since then science has come to understand that region of the brain to be important for judgment and impulse control.
I wonder if heart attacks could cause minor frontal lobe damage? Could Dick Cheney literally have brain damage? Not to the extent of Gage's obviously, but enough to make him more aggressive, less reasonable, and more profane? This is the guy who told Senator Leahy "go fuck yourself."
This is obviously pure speculation on my part, but it struck me as odd that I'd never seen this idea anywhere else.
3 comments:
An interesting idea, though I think our government needs more people who are willing to tell people to go fuck themselves, honestly. There's too much pomp and circumstance. Of course, having Cheney lead that charge may not be wise considering he may have brain damage.
I guess the relevant question would be if Cheney would have said that in 1994.
I'll agree that we could use more people in the DC establishment to have a "go fuck yourself" attitude towards the DC establishment.
Without doing any research to back up my claim (though I know it's there; let me know if you want it), I say, yes, he could certainly have some brain damage. Heart attacks cause, at a minimum, short periods of time where the heart cannot pump effectively, which means the brain is deprived of oxygen. You hope that it's not for too long, and you hope that the heart's function is restored with medical intervention, but if it's not or it isn't, you could have an ongoing situation wherein the brain isn't getting enough oxygen, and therefore, brain cells are dying. I don't know if it would be enough to cause a major personality change a la Phineas Gage, but nevertheless...
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