Whom the gods would destroy ...

Tea Party candidates did only so-so in this week's Republican primaries. Still, in a number of states this year, the Tea Party seems to have hijacked the party away from the Republican "establishment," defeating candidates preferred by party leaders and presenting voters in November with a Republican party that has swung strongly to the right.

We could end up with a strongly conservative Congress in November -- or, to the contrary, the Tea Party may end up helping Democrats snatch a November victory from the jaws of expected defeat.

I thought of the Tea Party this week, strangely enough, as I read an article describing the life cycle and psychological effects of a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii. (Economist, 6-5-10.) This interesting parasite's life cycle requires it to alternate between cats and mice as its host. It reproduces in the cat, forms a cyst in the cat's intestine, is defecated, and is then ingested by mice (primarily, but also occasionally by certain other mammals, including humans). In order to complete the cycle, the little feller needs to return to a cat, preferably by having a cat eat its mouse host. How to encourage this happy result? T. gondii apparently has evolved the ability to change the personality of the mouse, once inside its body, by triggering the production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in motivation and behavior.

A mouse infected with T. gondii begins showing un-mouselike behavior around cats. He will begin wandering around aimlessly, behaving in ways that appear designed to call the attention of any nearby cats to himself. He finds the smell of cats to be actually attractive -- and thus is lured willingly to his own doom, like a moth to a flame, while in the process perpetuating the life of the parasite he's carrying around.

The writer of the Economist article was interested primarily in the effects of T. gondii on humans who are infected by, for example, eating poorly cooked meat -- increased neuroticism, decreased interest in novelty, poor reaction times, shorter attention spans, and some correlation with schizophrenia. An earlier study showed that men harboring T. gondii were more likely to be aggressive, jealous and suspicious, while women became more outgoing and showed signs of higher intelligence (!). (The Guardian, 9-25-03.)

About 80 percent of the French, but only 33 percent of the British, are infected. Make of that whatever you will.

Anyway, it occured to me that Republican primary voters this year -- like mice begging to be devoured by cats -- seem to be voting (egged on by the Tea Party) in ways that will increase the odds of their party's being devoured by the Democrats in November. Is it far-fetched to view the Tea Party as a parasite that seeks to succeed as a species at the expense of its host -- and does so by altering the host's behavior? Is the Republican party going even loonier because it's been infected by T. partii?

Ok, ok. It was just a dumb thought. A stupid metaphor. I'm sure it has no relationship to reality.