Anarchic Hand Syndrome

I don't know a thing about Anarchic Hand Syndrome.

I don't even know if it's for real. I was looking around on the Google Trends site, and saw it listed as a hot topic.

Apparently, AHS is a huge inconvenience for anyone who has experienced surgery that separates the two brain hemispheres. After one of these surgeries, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

Some people have called it "The Dr. Strangelove Syndrome".










I predict that middle schoolers will soon be using the phrase.




"Jason, why did you hit your sister?"

"I don't know.....Anarchic Hand Syndrome?"

I do know that Anarchic Hand Syndrome is a great metaphor for some of our problems.

For instance.....

We're spending millions subsidizing tobacco farmers and tobacco production.
We're spending millions encouraging people to stop smoking.

The right hand opposes the left hand.

Bill Clinton gave us a great economy for 8 years, due to his support of Free Trade, NAFTA, etc.
His wife, Bruno, is apparently willing to chunk all of that out the window in exchange for votes in Michigan and Ohio.


He builds it up, she's advocates tearing it down. Anarchic Hand Syndrome.

I was in a Family Pathfinders meeting last night (see previous post). This is a government program that tries to help families break the poverty cycle through training, mentoring, etc etc.
The family that my group is trying to help has several financial penalties to overcome. Almost all of these penalties were put in place by....government.

Ladies, Gentlemen, welcome to the world of AHS.

This election cycle will be partially defined by the high cost of health care. Various government agencies will Spend Like Spitzer^TM to study the problem.
On the other hand, the government will also spend a smaller amount of money regulating health care, putting up barriers to entry, restricting the roles of nurses, and allowing the medical schools to produce an artificially low number of M.D.'s each year.

We're going to spend an insane amount of money on a fence to keep desperate Mexicans from entering the U.S. illegally.
We wouldn't dream of helping Mexico fix what's wrong in Mexico, which would probably be cheaper than the dang fence.

I'm sure there are better examples. I'll add them as I stumble over them. But from now on, Dear Whited Sepulchre readers, any time I refer to "Anarchic Hand Syndrome", there will be a link to this post.