Who's Running This Body, Anyhow?
On the opinion pages of this morning's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, University of Washington psychology professor David P. Barash writes a "guest column" on some of the tricks various biological parasites play on their hosts. Through various mechanisms, up to and including rewiring of the host's brain, parasites manipulate their hosts to behave in ways that are beneficial to the parasite, but often not to the host. Take a look for a bit of an eye-opener.
He comments briefly on the analogies one could draw from this to the current political situation, but I would never do that myself. Never.