Free Republic

I wrote this the other day:

You know what is going on now?
They are all looking at each other now.

McCabe Looks at Comey.

Comey looks at Strzok.

Strzok looks at Page.

Clapper looks at Brennan.

Brennon looks at Halper.

Halper looks at Clinton.

Clinton looks at Obama.

All of them wondering: “What is he going to do? Is he going to give everything up? Am I going to be left holding the bag?”

You know it. Everything has fallen apart. That 4,100 word apologia by the New York Times last Wednesday is the clearest indicator that the house of cards is down. Flat.

And THEY know it too. It is only dimwit hacks like Brennan who may not see the hood coming over their heads while others (just as complicit) have already seen the writing on the wall and skittered out of the way for the time being.

The phrase “Trapped Like Rats” has never been more appropriate. Ever.

Nope. Not what I am saying at all. But that is okay. You have a way of looking at it that is not how I do it.

It is my perception of them that is different, not at all their attitude towards what they have to do.

I can have different feelings about something even though I have to approach it the same way. I work in medicine so this is how it works for me.

You don’t. That is for you to decide.

That may be true, in just the same way a person who died hitting a tree or another car head on because they were driving drunk, and a person who died of incurable cancer are both dead.

They are both dead, but we don’t view them the same way, and we shouldn’t.

In the same light, I cannot view an addict with a painful, disabling injury in the same light I view a recreational user who got addicted because he popped an oxycontin into his mouth every time he got bored and wanted to feel something different.

I can feel compassion for both, but do not view them the same way.

I disagree with that characterization as an overall blanket.

I make special accommodation for various instances which I view as exceptions.

It was not uncommon for men wounded in battle and facing long, arduous surgery and rehab, to become addicted to morphine and other painkillers, or alcohol. They often had no real choice and became addicts out of a degree of necessity, as sometimes similarly happens to the minority of people who become addicted when they are prescribed pain killers for various injuries, surgeries, and other types of chronic debilitating conditions.

It sometimes happens because the addictive drug is far preferable to the pain of the injury, until the drug takes over their lives completely.

Who could blame them?

As for the “opioid epidemic”, when you read the obituaries and look at the pictures, there is largely a common theme. Most are young, recreational drug users who got in over their heads. These aren’t teenagers who had knee surgery due to a soccer injury and got prescribed pain medication that they abused.

Because they may have become addicted recreationally does not mean we cannot feel compassion for them, but it also doesn’t mean we give them a free pass.

That is a valid point, IronJack.

The issue is that you read and interpret what you want to hear. My response below is long, and I hope you will take the time to read it before you post to me again.

I said nothing that was comprehensively different between the two posts except for the personal viewpoint on it, so it wasn’t an issue for me of being “called out”. As a son of a lifelong alcoholic, I watched the strain it put on our family (my mother in particular) and had a ringside seat to what drug abuse is capable of doing to a family. I have a close nephew who went to jail as a heroin addict, and another who died likely as a result of his addictive behavior.

I have very strong feelings on this, so this is not personally directed at you, and specifically NOT at any individual addict.

IMPORTANT: My anger is not at the addicted. I feel compassion for them, since they are often beyond controlling what they can do, and usually that means they have a way to go before they hit bottom.

My anger is 100% at the elements of society who want to make addicts seem no more culpable to their plight than a man who sits in front of an oncologist who tells him that he has prostate cancer. So yes, I am angry about that, because as I outline below, it DOES NOT HELP THOSE WHO ARE ADDICTED IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER.

The fundamental issue is that people (usually Leftists, but apparently not always) want to separate people from personal responsibility. If people like homosexuals and addicts can be said to have a genetic condition that frees them from societal norms or personal responsibilities, that is a good thing for them.

If you can’t help what you are, you have no burden on you to adhere to behavior considered to be necessary to an orderly society, such as avoiding robbing people who love you to pay for your drug habit, getting into a car so intoxicated that you have a head on collision with another vehicle killing all the innocent occupants, or engaging in risky sexual behavior that causes you to be a burden on society because you have contracted AIDS.

It is also why leftists have worked so hard to identify genetic tags for criminality. If you have the genetics to be a criminal, you can’t be responsible for killing, assaulting or robbing people, because, hey, it is in your genetics, and is no different from your sex or your skin color.

Because if it can be pinned on genetics, it becomes a civil rights issue and not a personal behavior issue. The Left does the same thing with Poverty, Ignorance, and Disease. People can’t help what they are because they are poor, didn’t have enough money spent on their education, or are susceptible to disease (I side with them on disease to a degree)

Bottom line, using genetic makeup as an excuse absolves people from their flaws and doesn’t get in the way of the Leftist Utopia that the left tries to achieve.

According to them, all people can be made perfect according to the left, and it is possible because none of us has any control over what we are. If we are flawed, bad, or even evil, then our imperfect society MADE us that way, and we can fix society so there will be no individual crime, no addiction, no perversion.

Well they can’t.

Just as some people are evil, some people are imperfect and flawed, and no amount of fixing society is going to change that.

See, you think that because I take this stand, I lack compassion for addicts.

Not true.

I have a great deal of compassion for addicts first, because I lived through it, and secondly, because I believe I am prone to that myself. And even as small government person, I believe we should help these people when we can with things to address it, because I see it as a win-win. The addict can get free of their addiction, and society will save money over time through increased citizen productivity, tax contributions from working members of society, and reduced costs from the legal and medical side.

We do addicts no service by telling them it isn’t their fault and accepting this as normal, any more than pandering to transsexuals (by accepting their flaws on face value and normalizing their behavior instead of rejecting the “normality” and offering them psychiatric help) helps them.

I have been around enough addicts to know that until that person WANTS to be cured at the very core, they won’t be cured no matter how much sympathy, money, safe space, excuses, time, free needles and methadone you give them.

They have to be ready to be cured. And hitting the bottom is hard, not just for that person, but for the people who love them and have to watch them.

Watching someone “be ready” to be cured means having to lock your grown child out of the house and change the key. It means watching a marriage dissolve in front of your eyes. It means sometimes attending a funeral.

But until that happens, until an addict can accept responsibility for themselves, THEY ARE NOT GOING TO CHANGE. That is what AA is about. I carry my dad’s last AA coin (his 15 year coin) and have for the past 18 years. Every day. Everywhere I go.

Because it is an inspiration to me. My dad said that kicking alcohol was the hardest thing he ever did, harder than kicking smoking. But he did it, he accepted full responsibility for who he was and what he was doing, and accepted the responsibility of turning himself around. I went to more than a few AA meetings with him over the years, and had the good fortune to be able to talk to him about his alcoholism, and hear his viewpoints on it. He was not shy about facing it, which should come as no surprise because he had to discuss those things with complete strangers for many years in a public forum.

When I am having a tough time, or putting it in my pocket in the morning and taking it out when I go to bed, I feel it in my fingers, and think “One Day At A Time.” And that is one of the most profound gifts my father has given me. The strength to own my shortcomings, and the knowledge that they can be overcome.

We don’t do addicts any favors by denying them that.

Right. You know how I feel. It would have been one thing if the kid had gone out with a gallon of gas, spread it over something and maliciously lit it on fire, as some kids have done with their school.

This is just a kid who was probably enjoying watching it fall, and then hearing the bang echoing, not even giving a second thought to starting a fire.

He was a dumb kid. As so many people say, there but for the grace of God go I.

No, I don’t think I’ll stop commenting here.

I have plenty of experience with addiction, I’ve had it in my family and I am sure I am susceptible myself. Everyone has an excuse, and “suggested” genetics is a handy one.

Everyone who wants to duck responsibility has an excuse.

My dad was a lifelong alcoholic who got sober in the last years of his life, and dedicated a good part of his remaining life to helping others. It was a family intervention that helped him. He went to and ran AA meetings, sometimes as many as four a week for the rest of his life.

Not once, ever, for any reason, did my dad EVER blame anyone other than himself for his addiction. Never. And I respect him more than anyone else, and that is one reason. He was always an advocate of personal responsibility, and instilled that in us.

And my dad, who spent the last 15 years of his life among addicts of all kinds up to four nights a week, providing jobs for many of them at home if he couldn’t find one for them where he worked, knew what he was talking about even if he didn’t have some piece of crap degree from some piece of crap researcher that said people can’t help themselves and have no responsibility for their actions.

Perhaps you didn’t read my post. I’ll summarize it again for you: I sympathize with addicts and believe we should help them. But I detest people who say it isn’t the addict’s fault.

A person may have been dealt a bad hand, genetically, personally, or economically, but a lot of people are, and they don’t become addicts.

That is how I feel. I could have been that stupid kid. Hell, I WAS that stupid kid without the massive damage...just lucky.

When I was 9, living in Yokosuka, Japan, I light a field on fire because I was shooting smoke bombs over a road using a slingshot, and they would leave a cool trail of red, green, or yellow smoke as I shot them. Unfortunately, they also spit a steady steam of sparks, and when it landed in the playground across the street, it set the dry grass on fire and they had to call the Fire Department.

I huddled in terror all day in my room, waiting for the Shore Patrol to come pick me up and bring me to the brig.

Then, when we moved back to the states, my dad was XO on a small communication station, and me and a friend were playing with matches in a dry field (I know) and a small fire got out of control. My friend ran, but I couldn’t because my glasses had fallen off, so I grabbed him by the back of his jacket which he slithered out of...I used his jacket to try to put the flames out, but the Fire Department came down, and the base guard took me over to see my dad at work.

My poor dad. He looked at me like I was an alien.

Sigh. Not like he didn’t have other things to do.

I understand no jail time. Meaningful and time consuming Community service would have been far better than a stupid $36 million fine. Dumb kid. But it wasn’t deliberate arson from what the article said...just a stupid kid doing stupid kid things.

That’s a great story!

7 Degrees of Separation indeed!

Heh...Ted Williams flew those for the USMC!

I’m a Tomcat guy myself...love affair, though the engines were dogs! (at least for THAT plane)

Wait...what? A RETREAD from a NAVY plane???????????

Hehehehehehehe...take THAT you zoomies!

Heh, Grumman rarely had THAT problem...Wildcat, Hellcat, Bearcat, Tigercat,Tomcat...:)

Agreed 100%.

We spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars a year on ridiculous CRAP.

We at least get something tangible out of this. We get to support an ally and get the next best thing militarily to having to be there ourselves.

Where would we be today if the Israelis had not bombed the Iraqi Osirak nuclear site back in 1981?

Boy, talk about damning with faint praise!

I know. I understand the plane is not perfect and still has a lot of things to iron out and is still way too expensive...but I lived through the acquisition of other weapons systems that were screamed at as being so flawed they would make our troops sitting ducks.

Particularly, I recall the Abrams tank. I was following its development back then, and I read back on some old articles recently about that, and it was striking.

It is too complicated. It is too fragile. It eats too much gas. It can’t fire straight. It can’t be maintained in a sandy environment.

Pretty much the best battle tank in the world...still.

People just need to take a breath sometimes.