During this week’s NATO Summit, the world looked on as it appeared that Joe Biden’s brain malfunctioned in real time while being questioned by journalists.
The leader of the free world's brain just completely broke when he was asked if Putin is a "killer" pic.twitter.com/q1pEK4nMFp
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) June 14, 2021
For eight seconds, Biden seemed to be experiencing a slow reboot, and the words that he did manage to share would give Google Translate a headache.
As has become usual, Biden’s apparent cognitive slip triggered an understandable — and arguably valid — explosion of angry mockery on the Right, with critics pointing out what many of us have believed for a long time: that Joe Biden is mentally unwell.
Based on the symptoms, even the most objective onlooker could conclude that Joe Biden may be suffering from the onset of dementia, with confusion, disorientation, language difficulties, lack of restraint, and regularly getting lost all being signs of ongoing mental decline.
Of course, the same legacy media who are actively ignoring the daily parade of concerning behavior exhibited by the President of the United States were quick to make the same accusations against Donald Trump.
“Trump’s cognitive deficits seem worse. We need to know if he has dementia: Psychologist,” reported USA Today during Trump’s presidency, saying that “We see signs that the president’s abilities are declining.” While The Guardian reported, “Steve Bannon believed Trump had early stage dementia, TV producer claims.”
Meanwhile, similar concerns regarding Biden were rejected as “offensive and otherworldly” by CNN’s Brian Stelter — the same Stelter who argued that we can’t “tiptoe around” the issue of Trump’s “mental instability.”
The biggest problem here is that the measurement and judgment of mental fitness has become a pseudo-science practiced by political hacks who see such factors as tools rather than measures of ability.
This can only be solved by requiring consistent and apolitical testing when it comes to the mental health of those in leadership. Not for issues of personality disorder or rampant narcissism — such diagnoses are almost pre-requisites in the world of politics — but for issues of mental decline, for which the performative abilities of candidates change over time.
For any role in our society which involves monumental levels of responsibility, issues like physical and mental health are of paramount importance for the corporations or organizations involved. However, when it comes to the world of politics, we seem frozen, apparently incapable of questioning the mortal humanity of those we have elected to “lead” us.
If we wish to put the misuse of the mental health “debate” to rest, and ensure that politics remain disconnected from mob-rule diagnoses, then we must enforce the regular use of mental health testing in the upper echelons of government.
If Joe Biden can pass a non-partisan medical examination in terms of his cognitive abilities on a regular basis, we should happily cease our criticism of his apparent decline. If not, then he should be as far from the country’s steering wheel as possible.
Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.