Political psychiatry is nothing new in the world, or even in the United States. Every dictator or crackpot ruler who wishes to invalidate his opposition will claim said opposition is psychotic. Why would anyone of sound mind seek to undermine such a workers’ paradise and such a benevolent and caring Dear Leader?

The old Soviet Union slapped a “crazy” label on political dissidents and sent them away to psychiatric prisons. And in the U.S. the so-called “Siberia Bill” of 1956 would have established a million-acre psychiatric reservation in Alaska with very loose commitment procedures. And last year, Russia was locking Crimean Tatars up in psychiatric hospitals.

Last year an NPR Morning Edition segment titled “Hidden Factors in your Brain Help to Shape Beliefs on Income Inequality” cited some research studies that purport to show opinions are simply a matter of brain function. It is a rather short leap from that statement to “The people who believe X are crazy. The people who believe Y are sane.”

So according to this research, opinions are the result of brain function. The study compares “egalitarian thinking” (which is good) with “hierarchical thinking” (which is bad.) Drunks like hierarchical thinking, according to the story, and the drunker they are the more hierarchical they are. The more evolved they are, the more egalitarian (which is good, remember) and thus more sane. So people with hierarchical opinions – Republicans for example – are apelike cretins which is proved by research, remember, and only Democrats are highly evolved and caring.

So the conclusions one is left with, is that people who tolerate income inequality – where productive people can become wealthy providing useful products and services while bums who produce nothing of value stay relatively poor– are insane and have something wrong with their brains.

Now that we have established a “brain based” cause-and-effect relationship for political opinion, we can perhaps begin to “normalize” those hierarchical brains out there for their own good, give them pharmaceuticals, electroshock, the new brain implants being tested by DARPA, psychedelic drugs and other mental health “treatments.”

And of course, recently a number of psychs violated the Goldwater Rule — which prohibits shrinks from diagnosing people they’ve not personally met and obtained permission to publicize their findings — and decided in their vast wisdom that President Trump is crazy.

Putting aside the fact that the people of the United States elected him President, the head shrinkers would love to have the authority to decree this or that person crazy, as it would put them in charge — and power is something they’ve lusted for. Or perhaps they could examine candidates for office and say: “let this one run” and “institutionalize that one.”