Hillary’s Amygdala Under Load

A reader emails in this article:

In March, Mrs. Clinton lost her temper with a Greenpeace Activist who asked her about donations from the fossil-fuel industry. After Mrs. Clinton answered that she takes donations from a lot of people who work in various industries, she told the activist, “I am so sick — I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me!”

And it’s not the first time Mrs. Clinton has lost her cool…

“When in public, Hillary smiles and acts graciously,” Mr. Kessler wrote. “As soon as the cameras are gone, her angry personality, nastiness, and imperiousness become evident. … Hillary Clinton can make Richard Nixon look like Mahatma Gandhi…”

This fall, when her poll numbers were slipping in the race against Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders, the New York Post reported: “Hillary is furious — and while Clinton advisers think that may save her, it’s making the lives of those who work for her hell.”

“Hillary’s been having screaming, childlike tantrums that have left staff members in tears and unable to work,” a campaign aide told the Post. “She thought the nomination was hers for the asking, but her mounting problems have been getting to her and she’s become shrill and, at times, even violent.”

In one incident, Mrs. Clinton berated a low-level campaign worker for making a scheduling mistake, the Post reports, and when the girl turned her back on Mrs. Clinton to walk away, Mrs. Clinton grabbed her arm.

I’ll bet she’s a sight. I could recount the mechanisms, highlight the triggers, and describe her amygdala, but none of it will begin to describe the effect of being in its presence. I have a pretty resilient amygdala, but even I would wake up with dread if I had to face that erratic, unpredictable, intermittently exploding monster every day. Being a rabbit, and being forced by circumstance to tolerate it because I needed the job, is beyond imagination.

George Stephanopoulos experienced it in the first Clinton administration, during which he described Bill’s rages as brutal. Eventually Stephanopoulos’ brain began to break down:

The pressures of the White House and living on the Clinton roller coaster were overwhelming. Since Vince Foster’s suicide, I had been seeing a therapist. Although I wasn’t ashamed of seeking treatment, I had instinctively calculated the political fallout. When I told Clinton, he responded perfectly–with a shrug of his shoulders that said it was no big deal for him and a look in his eye that said he was concerned about me.

The therapy helped, but there were always worries at work… Ten to 12 times a night, I’d wake up to check the clock. Phew, it’s only 2. My eyes were red, and the underside of my skin felt like it had been scrubbed with steel wool. My problems weren’t physical: I descended into a real depression.

Much of the darkness had lifted by mid-1995, but my nerves were shot, and it had started to show. During June battles on the budget and affirmative action, hives had erupted across my chin. I grew a beard. The rash subsided after an August vacation, but my most pernicious symptom persisted unseen. It was a sound: of fingernails screeching across slate or the tines of a fork scraping a bone-china plate. Several times a day, for up to an hour straight, it would loop around my brain and reverberate through my torso like feedback from an overamplified guitar. My therapist suggested and recommended a specialist in neurology and psychiatry. I resisted. The spartan in me said, “Suck it up”; the spin doctor saw future headlines.

But by December I couldn’t take it anymore. I sat on the edge of the sofa as the psychiatrist told me what I already knew: I was burned out.

Hillary’s article continues:

“Bill Clinton and Hillary’s campaign team are concerned that her anger may surface at the wrong time,” the Post reported. “They are concerned that she could have a serious meltdown in front of TV cameras, which would make her look so out of control that voters would decide she doesn’t have the temperament to be commander in chief.”

One campaign adviser told the Post, “We’re having some success in giving her some chill pills.”

This is what they don’t understand. When you have this problem, you don’t just “take a chill pill,” anymore than Stephanopoulos could just tell himself to calm down, and make the guitar feedback reverberating through his body go away.

Hillary’s brain doesn’t rage at people because it wants to. If her brain did what it wanted, it would be decent, both so her operation would be more effective, and so she wouldn’t become known as such an out-of-control tool. But her brain can’t do what it wants, so it does what it has to – it rages to blow off steam, relax her amygdala, and avert an overload.

Hillary rages because if she doesn’t, if she tries to bottle it up, her brain will approach, and maybe surpass overload. I have seen this first hand, and I see all the indices in her. The glazed eyes, the forced smile, the angry aura lurking just beneath the surface, the periodic outbursts which she struggles to contain – they are all symptoms which anyone who has seen it will recognize.

Hillary is in a spot far worse than many realize. Not only is her amygdala already on fire from a multitude of “unfairnesses,” “mean people,” and the one big opportunity in her life about to pass her by. If she makes it to the debate she will face a bemused master of psychology, bent on triggering her mercilessly, who perfectly fits the model of an Alpha father-figure who demeans her intellect and doesn’t take her seriously – just as her father reportedly did.

On the night of the first debate, with all the pressure, with the embarrassingly low poll numbers, with the nation turning against her, with all the potential for humiliation, and with the Donald effortlessly taking what should be hers, it will be awful even if she keeps herself contained. And that will only train her amygdala to be even more loaded for the next debate, which will probably be a sit-down, where Donald can apply eye contact on top of everything. On top of that, her staff is telling her to bottle in the rages, the rages which she needs to avert an amygdala disaster. They will only make it worse.

Given that she faces the Donald, her poll numbers will begin plummeting in earnest soon. That tangible sign of rejection and out-grouping may prove too much. Once she realizes that it is over, and yet she is still forced, every day, to get up and endure being humiliated and rhetorically slapped around by Donald to the amusement of her enemies, then each day will become an amygdala-triggering nightmare. That is when she should begin to enter Stephanopoulos territory, because she will begin to dread the tomorrow. Her sleeps will suffer, her appetite will wane, her stomach will act up. It will be the whole package. Think her rages are bad now? Just wait. And then there will be Donald.

I expect that if she isn’t indicted, we may get to see a full mental breakdown manifesting physically as illness. If she is lucky, it will be something intermittent which will be blown off as exhaustion, or some recurrent stomach flu. But if she isn’t lucky and it all comes to the fore at once, we could see a pseudo-stroke, full stroke, blackout, or maybe even a heart attack or seizure.

At this point, I will just be happy to see the national nightmare we know as the Clinton Crime Machine put to bed once and for all.