13 search results for "amygdala"

The Neurobiological Proof Of The Rept-publican Brain: Left Insula V Right Amygdala

by Mick Zano • January 15, 2018

Does Donald Trump represent some political aberration, or is he fast becoming the new abnormal? Republicans themselves are certainly downplaying the president’s odd behaviors, mannerisms, fits and tweets. The reason? It’s the parallel downward tracks for both our president’s cognitive health as well as the Republican collective as a whole. There is simply not as much distance as there should be between Trump’s level of consciousness and the average Republican voter. Is there even any room left in their tent for complete sentences? Neurobiological explanations are starting to surface that offer clues as to why conservatives can’t seem to process information effectively. Meanwhile, the last of the rightwing intelligentsia is pulling an Elvis. Darryl Issa (R-CA) marks the 30th Republican retirement, and apparently the remaining brainiacs are full-blown insomniacs. Trump and Hannity reportedly get very little shut-eye, so they’re probably actively hallucinating during their important coaching sessions. Going down in a blaze of auditory? Meanwhile, Trump is the first president in history that dementia might actually help his legacy. Good thing we didn’t go with the competent woman with that terrible cough *cough*.

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by Mick Zano • June 10, 2021

The republican descent into paranoia and madness has plagued me long before the arrival of this current scourge. I started venting about rightwingers around the time of the Spanish flu, when Woodrow Wilson rather controversially referred to it as the Spic-ey Sick-ey. And, yes, that’s a joke making fun of racists, so you mindless cancelers can fuck off as well. Meanwhile, our MAGA citizens remind me of that old Kinks’ song, Paranoia, self-destoyer. My blogvesary still resides in some Illuminati-style cave under a Free Mason building built on the flat-earthy side of Lemuria. Half of our nation’s citizenry seem lost in the weeds of this grassy knoll. On that fateful day, my friend would have thought, “Now there’s a good Texan, practicing his God-given 2nd Amendment rights. He’s creeping up into the grassy knoll of freedom! But why did Kennedy demand I do something for my country? Sounds like liberal oppression of the highest— [cue the motorcade footage].”

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by Mick Zano • September 23, 2019

We don’t need to track the mentally ill, Mr. President, they already self identify with bright red hats. Modern conservatism is a form of collective mental illness powered by a cluster of cognitive distortions, dysfunction, and dissonance, oh my. But I’m finally onto a cure, folks! Moron that in a bit. Meanwhile, I loved when Kellyanne Conway’s husband recently suggested Trump be dropped off at Walter Reed Hospital. The threshold for involuntary commitment is simple: is someone a danger to themselves or others? If the president arrived on my shift at the old crisis unit, my conversation with the Secret Service might go down something like this:

“Can someone keep the nuclear football safe until the president can be fully assessed? What? Yes, sir, he can still be on Twitter …under supervision. And you can bring him a Happy Meal, but he can’t have the toy …because it could be a choking hazard, or fashioned into a shank. A shank …just tell him, you know, what he’s trying to pay someone to do to his old lawyer in prison. Oh, and he’s going to have to relinquish his tie. Why? …well, for starters, you could hang everyone on the crisis unit with that thing.”

[Gallows Poll & Fit to be Tied jokes outsourced to China.]

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by Mick Zano • October 13, 2018

Tweet Tower—Did anyone else get that Presidential Alert on your cellphone? I’ve gotten Amber Alerts when kids go missing, and Silver Alerts when the chronologically-challenged wander into the woods, but what the hell is an Orange Alert? Can we block our president from texting me? I blocked FEMA and Homeland Insecurity, but WTF? The actual message from our president was even more disturbing: This is just a text, had this been an actual social media emergency you would have been instructed to ‘like’ or ‘retweet’ the president’s latest psycobabble on twitter #RetweetEmergency. I’m actually not kidding about the Presidential Alert part, so what is this administration preparing for? Oh right, they don’t prepare for stuff. My bad.

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by Mick Zano • September 3, 2018

Concern for our Republican friend’s ability to process information is growing throughout the scientific community. This is especially true when it comes to ones ability to identify dangers. Thanks to recent studies using MRI and brain scanning technology, science is getting ever closer to understanding the conservative brain. Too much Fox News viewing can result in an overly-worked and oversized amygdala. This important brain structure helps us identify dangers and is the part of the brain associated with survival instincts. Our perception of danger can become skewed with long term 24/7 news propaganda. A nonstop fear response results in excessive blood flow to this region that over time causes a form of political PTSD. Certain themes can trigger the amygdala shifting our perception from the mundane to the monstrous. This is why Fox-watching is now the fifth F of primal human behavior. Once the reptilian brain is activated many of the higher functions of the frontal lobes are overridden. Sound familiar? This can even happen in a polling booth. Take this simple test to see if your amygdala suffers from Fox Fatigue Syndrome (FFS). These questions get progressively harder and progressively more progressive. If at any point this test becomes too intense, turn on Fox News or your favorite AM radio station and bitch about border security, minorities or millennials before completing this important assessment tool.

Take this test today. You have the right to know!

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by Mick Zano • January 22, 2018

The liberal anxiety surrounding a successful Trump presidency is creeping into our comment threads lately. You don’t even want Trump to succeed, do you?! True story. Why would we ever want more people like him in power? The liberal intelligentsia is focusing on the carnage, post Trump’s downfall. Knowledge, like the GOP itself, is a burden. There’s a non-published Zano article in the archives that weighs all the potential outcomes of a Trump presidency and, yes, a triTrumphant term ranked rather low on the scrotum poll. What?! A Trump win is not going to happen, which is precisely why that post languishes in the Discord draft folder, right alongside my debunked theory: Is The Dark Web Entirely Comprised Of Dark Matter? Sorry folks, but Donald J. Trump is poised for a mega-fail, and sooner rather than later. A full Trump victory lap in 2020 is about as remote as the hut of an Aleutian tribesman suffering from social anxiety.

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by Mick Zano • March 6, 2017

Back around 1840, Horace Greely encouraged pioneers to “go west, young man” with decidedly mixed results. He likely made this proclamation safely from a Greenwich Village pub. In that spirit of spirits, on this the first day of the week, aka Mojito Monday, I’m encouraging a shift progressiveward. Half measures will no longer suffice (see: Obamacare, or Hillary Campaign). Go big, or go Rome. We must run on a more progressive platform. Republicans keep doubling down on their wrongness, so why not double down on our rightness? Novel idea, eh? If you follow political trends, our nation tends to muddle through under liberal-centrists, but struggles mightily under more conservative leadership. So let’s do something completely different! Let’s break away from the indifferent model. We’ve thoroughly vetted the pragmatic political passivity approach, which, like that depressed body builder, stopped working out. Apapathetic?

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by Mick Zano • September 29, 2016

Anxiety is on the rise in this country and all this extra cortisol in the air is starting to stress me out. After reading a recent New York Times article I realized someone who knows about politics and anxiety should cover this topic ….with jokes! This NYT piece, which used Google-search trends as evidence, suggests our country’s recent stress-spike is not due to either Trump, Hillary or ISIS. As it turns out, poverty may be the biggest determinate of anxiety. This is no surprise when one considers Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We all know what happens during a zombie apocalypse, and in parts of the Middle East such an event would go unnoticed. The Walking Daesh? My colleague Pokey thinks this Mess-o-patamia is due entirely to ideology. He is neglecting our own involvement, oil revenues, The UN, despots, rampant poverty, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. So why are 99.99% of American Muslims behaving, Poke? Did I mention Maslow? It’s much harder to radicalize someone with a full belly and a roof over their head. In fact, American Muslims are behaving even amidst this heightened redneck retaliations (RNR). Hey New York Times, I found a correlation of my own between ‘free tequila’ and instances of drunken mosque vandalism. In related Google-search trend news, Midget Porn has finally surpassed Hot Asian Sluts! Why not take a fiver NYT guy, and let the spoof newser take it from here?

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by Mick Zano • August 26, 2016

In the 21st century, the ‘Me’ generation is clearly pitted against our sociopathic CEOs and politicians. Yikes. Who does one root for in this egocentric Drudge match? It’s like watching Katy Perry and Russell Brand at a couples retreat in Aleppo, during an airstrike. Today, citizens across the political spectrum are constantly attempting to out-douche one another. If you’re the CEO of a company, you’re sick of all the entitled attitudes. After all, you earned that 100K bonus this quarter by gutting employee benefits. The rise of the ego is increasingly present in the workplace from entry level to executive management, but there are clear differences between liberal narcissism and the republican version. I’m quick to cover conservative shortcomings, but in some ways the liberal flavor is equally skewed. Think about it, libs want to end hunger, obtain world peace, while maintaining a clean ecosystem. The problem in lies how they want to accomplish these feats (via their mad Del Taco, deep-fry skills?). I see the increasing plight of both the CEO and the Sander’s supporter. It’s unscrupulous vs unconscious. It’s tough to pick sides when it’s Sunni vs Shiite. We are better than this, people! Remember, there’s no ‘I’ in ‘Team America’ …except that one.

*Huffington Post just released an article on narcissism right before mine. Bastards! Of course, Mine is better but that sounds a little…

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by Mick Zano • January 15, 2016

I’m furious with the mainstream media, but probably not for the same reasons you are. How dare they let republicans rewrite history? How do you let these blatant falsehoods go unchallenged on your “news” shows? Even our debate moderators seem asleep at the switch. During the last undercard round, Carly Fiorina implied Obama “fired all the good generals, like David Petraeus.” Everyone who follows politics knows why General Petraeus left the military. Everyone. I’ll give you a hint, it rhymes with Lewinski.