Bush, Brain Damage, and the State of the Union
by Mickey Z.
Dissident Voice
January 29, 2003
"One can lie with the mouth, but
with the accompanying grimace, one nevertheless tells the truth."
--Nietzsche
President-Select
George W. Bush delivered the yearly State of the Union address last night
(January 28, 2003). While members of congress appeared to be auditioning for a
Ritalin commercial, bouncing up and down to applaud and yell at the slightest
provocation, Bush talked of "dramatically improving the environment"
and the importance of "visiting prisoners."
"This
Nation fights reluctantly," he told us. "We exercise power without conquest,
and sacrifice for the liberty of strangers... Americans are a free people, who
know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every
nation."
"We seek
peace," he assured the folks who tuned in, before warning: "If war is
forced upon us, we will fight in a just cause and by just means - sparing, in
every way we can, the innocent. And if war is forced upon us, we will fight
with the full force and might of the United States military – and we will
prevail."
At this
juncture, I was reminded of a chapter from Oliver Sacks' remarkable book,
"The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales," in
which Sacks detailed the reactions of people with aphasia and agnosia as they
viewed a televised speech by President Ronald Reagan.
While the
multiple language and speech problems of aphasia can be caused by any disease
or injury to the brain, the most common cause is stroke. "The hallmark of
aphasia," explains Dr. Antonio Damasio, a behavioral neurologist at the
University of Iowa, "is the use of words that are off-target, words that
are related but not quite correct." Therefore, this condition can often be
masked and difficult to diagnose.
This can also be
true when treating those with agnosia. Agnosia, while it can present an
extremely broad range of symptoms, sometimes causes aphasia-like speech and
language problems. Such a person with agnosia may suffer from tonal problems
and be unable to recognize the tone, timbre, feeling, or character of a voice,
but can understand the words and grammatical constructions perfectly.
Sacks, a noted
neurologist, has been in the position to encounter many rare cases of agnosia.
"Such tonal agnosia (or 'atonias') are associated with disorders of the
right temporal lobe of the brain," he explains, "whereas the
aphasiacs go with disorders of the left temporal lobes." According to Sacks,
people with atonia may sometimes be found in an aphasia ward. Therefore, as it
is for patients with aphasia, treating someone with aphasia can occasionally
become more complex because many patients will display a level of understanding
that seemingly belies their condition.
In addition, Dr.
Sacks found that some people with aphasia, when addressed "naturally,"
could grasp some or most of the meaning of one's words. Thus, he was compelled
to utilize an unusual approach in his treatment. In order to satisfactorily
confirm their condition as aphasia, Dr. Sacks stated that he had to go to
"extraordinary lengths, as a neurologist, to speak and behave un-naturally,
to remove all the extra-verbal clues-tone of voice, intonation, suggestive
emphasis or inflection, as well as all visual cues (one's gestures, one's
entirely unconscious, personal repertoire and posture)."
Such
de-personalizing of voice renders speech devoid of tone or color. It is this
machine-like way of talking that will usually be unrecognizable to people with
aphasia and quite possibly cause them to laugh at the incomprehensible sounds
being uttered. The words mean nothing, it is the way they are spoken that
matters. Through such unusual treatment, Sacks was able to truly demonstrate
his patients' aphasia.
Quite
unexpectedly, this peculiar method exposed a rather fascinating side-effect:
political savvy. In the mid-eighties, Sacks studied the reaction of people with
aphasia as they watched a televised speech by the former-actor-turned-president.
Despite being unable to grasp the skillful politician's words, the patients
were convulsed in laughter.
"One cannot
lie to an aphasiac," Dr. Sacks noted. "He cannot grasp your words,
and so cannot be deceived by them; but what he grasps, he grasps with infallible
precision, namely the expression that goes with the words, that total
spontaneous, involuntary expressiveness which can never be simulated or faked,
as words alone can, all too easily."
So, why did
those patients with aphasia cackle at Reagan's speech?
"It was the
grimaces, the histrionics, the false gestures and, above all, the false tones
and cadences of the voice which rang false for these wordless but immensely
sensitive patients," explained Sacks.
Conversely,
Sacks remarked on a woman with tonal agnosia who was also watching the
address-stony-faced. Emily D., a former English teacher and poet, was deprived
of any emotional reaction to the speech but was able to judge it in the
opposite way the patients with aphasia did. Her response? "He does not
speak good prose," Emily D. told Sacks. "His word-use is improper.
Either he is brain-damaged or he has something to conceal."
"We
normals," concluded Dr. Sacks, "aided, doubtless, by our wish to be fooled,
were indeed well and truly fooled. And so cunningly was deceptive word-use
combined with deceptive tone, that only the brain-damaged remained intact,
undeceived."
Those "well
and truly fooled" lined up the next day to demonstrate who remained
intact.
A New York Times
editorial declared, "No one watching the somber Mr. Bush's delivery could
doubt his determination," Bush's "obvious sincerity."
Times reporter,
Todd S. Purdum: "He spoke feelingly."
CNN.com stated
Bush looked "determined and focused" as he presented a "powerful
State of the Union address."
In Japan, Chief
Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda called Bush's speech "a forceful, strong
message," while Sweden's Prime Minister Goeran Persson found the address
to be "an important signal''
A Houston
Chronicle editorial explained: "Bush is good at conveying confidence and
strength, and certainly did last night," arguing "Few would quarrel
with Bush's conclusion: 'We exercise power without conquest, and sacrifice for
the liberty of strangers.'"
The New York
Post weighed in, declaring it "a remarkable speech" that Bush delivered
"precisely, tactfully and with an occasional twinkle in the eye"
"Either he is brain-damaged or he has
something to conceal."
The words of
Emily D. rang in my ears, and I couldn't help wondering if, last night, there
was laughter echoing down the corridors of the hospital where Dr. Oliver Sacks
once worked.
Mickey Z. is the author of The Murdering of My Years: Artists and
Activists Making Ends Meet (www.murderingofmyyears.com) and an editor at Wide
Angle (www.wideangleny.com). He can
be reached at: mzx2@earthlink.net.