The Inner Monologue

In an age saturated with confidence, the simplest tests have begun masquerading as triumphs. We live in a culture where baseline competence is confused with achievement, where “not failing” is recast as “excelling,” and where even a routine medical screen can be spun into evidence of extraordinary brilliance.

That is how we arrive at the spectacle of a public figure—famous, powerful, and relentlessly self-promotional—announcing to the world that they are a genius because they passed a dementia test.

A dementia screening is not a prize. It is not an award, nor an intellectual credential. It does not confer distinction. It is a check-engine light for the brain: is something obviously wrong? Passing it shows only that one is not visibly slipping. Yet in our performative era, even the absence of decline is re-framed as evidence of soaring ascent.

It would be funny if it were not so revealing—about the psychology of power, and about a society increasingly unable to distinguish not broken from brilliant.

When the Floor Becomes the Ceiling

Manufactured triumphs like this are not new, but they are becoming more brazen.

Historically, leaders signaled intelligence through:

Ideas

Accomplishments

Vision and coherence

Demonstrated ability to elevate others

Now, some attempt to signal greatness by passing a test designed to ensure they remember three words or can identify the current year. This is the intellectual equivalent of bragging, “I can breathe without assistance—therefore I am a world-class athlete.”

We don’t normally applaud adults for drinking from a cup without spilling. Yet give the right person the right spotlight, and suddenly the minimum becomes miraculous.

If a pilot announced during takeoff, “Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to report I passed a basic eye exam—truly I am among the greatest aviators of our generation,” we would demand a new pilot.

Yet in politics and celebrity culture, we clap.

The Delusion of Performative Competence

This is not dementia; it is delusion. And not the clinical kind—no psychiatrists required. It is the everyday delusion of confusing applause with ability, validation with intellect, confidence with competence. It is the same delusion behind the person who quotes their follower count as proof that every thought they have must be profound.

The medical test is not the point. The interpretation of it is.

The person does not merely say, “I am healthy.” They say, implicitly or explicitly:
I am exceptional.

But a screening test cannot crown a thinker any more than a breathalyzer can certify a sommelier. It is a negative proof: not impaired. And somewhere along the way, we lost the cultural immunity to laugh at someone who confuses “I cleared the minimum hurdle” with “I am a vaulted intellectual.”

This slippage matters.

The Erosion of Standards

When we applaud people for passing tests designed to identify decline, we lower the bar for leadership. We normalize a politics of survival rather than excellence. That is how democracies drift toward mediocrity—not through catastrophe, but through the slow erosion of expectations.

First we applaud the absence of failure.
Then we admire it.
Eventually, we expect nothing more.

And while standards fall, those who truly possess intellect—scientists, thinkers, scholars, artists—watch quietly as the commons becomes a theater of the bare minimum.

The tragedy is not that a public figure brags about passing a dementia screen. The tragedy is that it works. Enough people hear the claim and nod approvingly. Enough news cycles give it oxygen. Enough corners of the public square treat it as meaningful.

It is not meaningful. It is a warning sign in plain sight.

The Path Back to Discernment

The cure is not cynicism; it is discernment. We do not need to mock people for taking cognitive tests, nor stigmatize cognitive decline. We simply need to stop confusing health screens with IQ scores and performative confidence with leadership capability.

We need to remember that:

A passing grade on a medical chart is not a thesis.

Sound mind does not equal sound judgment.

Sanity is not genius.

A test that detects decline is not a measure of growth.

In other words: the absence of failure is not the presence of greatness.

A culture that forgets this invites mediocrity into its highest offices. It turns the public square into a talent show where the judges are enthralled by whoever can clap the loudest for themselves.

But healthy democracies do not elevate leaders for clearing minimum bars. They elevate them for lifting others over higher ones.

A Modest Proposal

Perhaps the time has come for a new norm: when someone boasts about passing a dementia screening, we do not applaud. We do not elevate. We simply say:

“We’re glad you’re well. Now, show us your ideas.”

If a leader cannot offer anything higher than a doctor’s note proving they are not catastrophically impaired, the problem is not their cognitive health. The problem is our cultural bar for brilliance.

And if we start rewarding genuine intellect rather than performative competence, the next generation might grow up aspiring not just to pass, but to truly understand, build, think, and lead.

That is how we reclaim seriousness.
Not through cynicism, but through standards.

And perhaps—if we are lucky—through a little less applause for the person who proudly passed the neurological equivalent of breathing on their own.