The political weaponisation of sleep

Tireless dynamism has been fetishised by the likes of Donald Trump and Sanae Takaichi.

- Leo Lewis

It is nearly 30 years since the Guinness authorities officially ceased monitoring feats of extreme sleeplessness. So Mr Robert McDonald’s record 18-day, 21-hour and 40-minute stretch of self-imposed insomnia will forever remain unbreakable.

The reasoning behind this move was a combination of technical (it is tricky to screen accurately for momentary “microsleep” lapses during a record attempt), moral (there is a rare genetic disorder that causes potentially record-breaking insomnia, but also death) and blindingly obvious (sleep deprivation, like dehydration, becomes very dangerous very quickly, so perhaps best not to incentivise it).

And yet, for all the sanity and decency of that Guinness World Records decision back in 1997, we seem comfortable, day-to-day, with the casual weaponisation of sleep.

The political exploitation of such a basic human need feels particularly retrograde. Especially as governments everywhere must properly start contemplating a time when ever-greater (and whiter-collar) proportions of electorates who do require sleep will be losing jobs to technology that does not.

There are two blades to weaponised sleep. The first - time-honoured but deployed with modern flair by US President Donald Trump - is the framing of sleep as incapacity, indulgence or grounds for disqualification. Even before Mr Joe Biden's decline became unmissable, the former president’s advanced age handed the name-caller-in-chief an easy target.