The ridiculous exaggeration of the state of mental hospitals led to a landmark ACLU lawsuit, with the yellow journalism assistance of Geraldo Rivera, which "won" the "freedom" of mental patients, who were then released en masse to become a nuclear explosion of "The Homeless" on the streets of every city in the 1980s.
Michael Douglas may be a suave actor but as a producer he has been a demon to this nation with his twin propaganda films - this film, and the absurdist paranoid film "The China Syndrome" that led America to stop its nuclear energy expansion cold.
Most movies are fake caricatures of real life. Unfortunately too many think it is real life. Very few movies ring true
Jack Nicholson.
I had never heard of the move “the China syndrome”
thanks
Brilliant comment and spot on.
A frequent comment over at Patriots.win is “Make Mental Hospitals Great Again.”
Many see the need for them, what we’re doing, nothing, is absurd. On the other hand, many don’t trust the government to control who is involuntarily committed. Would you trust the leadership of your local Dem party with this? The people who forced Covid vaccinations on the world?
So we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t.
Excellent post and I was going to write something similar - about this very movie being the catalyst - asking the questions: “Are they really the mentally ill? Or are WE mentally ill for locking them up?”
This led to mental institutions closing en masse and the patients released “back into society” - with all kinds of new legal “rights” not to be locked up in a “snake pit” or forced to take drugs - drugs that either kept them calm or kept their mental illness in check.
Now, we have the catastrophic results: Unmedicated, mentally ill homeless all over the streets of our cities and in our parks making them unusable, decreasing the quality of life for them and for us. California (OF COURSE) has the most - with the billions ear marked for “helping the homeless” disappeared.