I have the (thank­ful­ly rare) dis­tinc­tion of genet­i­cal­ly-induced tun­nel vision. I gave up dri­ving before I was forced to, because of the dan­ger I posed to myself and others.

Known as retini­tis pig­men­tosa, my mal­a­dy is, in sim­ple terms, a non-reversible dete­ri­o­ra­tion of light recep­tor cells. I only see what is direct­ly in front of me, and even that appears fil­tered through fine gauze.
But those prob­lems pale to insignif­i­cance when com­pared to the ones wrought by what I  have tak­en the lib­er­ty of labelling politicini­tus pig­men­tosa.
Few­er than five in every 4,000 peo­ple in the world have some form of retini­tis pigmentosa.
Among politi­cians, the ratio of those afflict­ed with the politicini­tus ver­sion seems fright­en­ing­ly tighter.
Just con­sid­er how many demon­stra­bly lack vision that extends as far as the next elec­tion cycle, nev­er mind beyond.
If they were required to meet the equiv­a­lent of a dri­ving licence eye exam­i­na­tion or lose their author­i­ty, imag­ine how much safer the world could be.
The tun­nel effect of reti­nal dete­ri­o­ra­tion means that unless my head is on a con­stant up-down-up-side-to-side swiv­el  (which I con­fess I con­sis­tent­ly fail to  keep),  any­one approach­ing from the side, curbs, objects on the ground, rang­ing from plas­tic signs like  slip­pery floor warn­ings to dogs and small chil­dren etc, don’t exist until I bump into, or trip over them.
As a result, I tend to move at  a pace that must annoy every­one around me.
One of the most glar­ing­ly obvi­ous diag­noses of  politicini­tus pig­men­tosa  is Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Binyamin Netanyahu. The only thing he seems to see clear­ly is what­ev­er he believes threat­ens, or will ensure his polit­i­cal sur­vival, which he tries to dis­guise under the rubric of safe­guard­ing the Israeli state and people.
It’s fair to say that the pun­ish­ment the Israel Defence Forces (IDF)  dealt to Hamas and Hezbol­lah, and which even with politicini­tus pig­men­tosa  they both should have antic­i­pat­ed,  is jus­ti­fi­able on some lev­els, although not the one it has reached.
What has been done to  the peo­ple of Gaza and south­ern Lebanon and Beirut is exact­ly what one would expect from some­one with  politicini­tus pigmentosa.
If proof were need­ed, the main­stream Israeli news­pa­per Haaretz, report­ed that Netanyahu recent­ly declared that the south­ern Lebanon incur­sion and occu­pa­tion, should ensure “every­thing above ground and below ground that served [Hezbol­lah] as a means of attack­ing us – infil­tra­tion routes, ter­ror tun­nels, ter­ror­ist vil­lages – it’s all going down. That’s the direc­tive: Leave noth­ing behind.”
It was no idle threat. Lebanon’s state media report­ed that Israeli forces torched hous­es in two Lebanese vil­lages locat­ed in an area under IDF-control.

                      NECESSARY LEARNING

For the sake of myself and oth­ers, I try to avoid crowd­ed places that require slalom skills to move through, and am learn­ing (grudg­ing­ly, I admit), to rely on friends and loved ones as “guide dogs” when and where necessary.
That’s some­thing from which Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who con­sis­tent­ly demon­strates an inabil­i­ty to see any­thing except what he decides is there, real­i­ty be damned, could benefit.
But no one around him who fits the bill of friend, loved one or paid to do so, appears to be will­ing  — or indeed capa­ble and con­fi­dent enough — to offer such guid­ance. Not that Trump would accept it. But still, it would make things con­sid­er­ably eas­i­er for the rest of us if he could at least be nudged around obsta­cles and pitfalls.
For me, step­ping from dim to bright light, and vice-ver­sa, can be dis­con­cert­ing to the point of nerve-wrack­ing. I need to pause for sev­er­al sec­onds while my eyes adjust, and even when they do, things usu­al­ly don’t appear to be  what they real­ly are.
And there­in lies anoth­er warn­ing sign of the pres­ence of politicini­tus pigmentosa.
A leader who plunges with­out pause into the dark­er cor­ners of any issue fraught with unknown obsta­cles, is either igno­rant or in denial of an afflic­tion that ought to pre­clude ulti­mate con­trol of mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic forces.
The same applies, per­haps to an even greater degree, to step­ping with smug alacrity into the glare of overt fawn­ing and flattery.
There is at present no cure for retini­tis pig­men­tosa , but stem cell research is pro­vid­ing hope for those whom it will ren­der com­plete­ly blind (among whom I have, thank­ful­ly,  been assured I do not fit).
Treat­ment for politicini­tus pig­men­tosa is not, as far as I can tell, being researched.
So we’ll have to rely on pick­ing up the tell-take ticks and  man­ner­isms of a suf­fer­er, which will of course be labelled “fake news” by those  who man­i­fest the politicini­tus strain.
But at least we’ll have a bet­ter idea of whether we want share the road with them.

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