Posted on 01/11/2011 8:33:01 PM PST by Sioux-san
One or two commentators got it right, characterizing the shootings in Arizona of a congresswoman, judge, and four other bystanders -- including a 79-year-old woman and a nine-year-old girl, who attended the fateful event due to her interest in government and politics -- as an act committed by a deranged gunman. But the spin is on by the usual MSM suspects that the shootings were due to "hostility" and "polarization" caused by (guess who?) right-wingers who have ratcheted up the rhetoric about health care and immigration. Even the sheriff on the scene went to great lengths to politicize the tragedy, stating that the killer was a product of the vitriol emanating from talk radio hosts, Sarah Palin, and conservatives opposed to Obama and the Democrats.
But I knew immediately what was going on. Once again, a mass killing has sickened the nation, a killing perpetrated by a mentally ill trigger-man. And once again, the nation will carry on without examining what really happened, satisfied with political propaganda over the reality that mass killers are almost always schizophrenics who should be institutionalized to protect them -- and us -- from random and murderous violence.
Nothing is created out of whole cloth in the affairs of mankind, and mentally ill killers don't simply pop up and take down their victims randomly. And as always, public officials and the media ignore the specific facts and precedents that have caused this preposterous and appalling set of circumstances to continue.
Serving as chairman of a downtown advancement committee in the early and mid-'80s, I assigned a subcommittee to make an inventory of the homeless population that was thwarting our effort to lure people back to the city core after 25 years of white flight and a negative image that seemed permanent. The homeless were assaulting passersby and congregating wherever they chose -- and the police would not act.
The report was startling: of the 85 homeless in the downtown area, 80 were mental patients. And the reason the police could not act to control their behavior with arrests was also shocking. Concomitant with new rules passed in 1978 that released the mentally ill into the streets across America, a nationally linked cadre of activist law professors managed to have vagrancy and loitering laws expunged.
I approached various city and county agencies to ask what they could do to return the streets to taxpaying citizens. I was offered that look so common amongst the care-taking community, communicating the attitude that I was being mean-spirited to question the "rights" of the homeless and abusive to take action to curtail their behavior. And furthermore, the homeless were "fine" as long as they took their medications.
They obviously didn't take their meds, and we had a problem, as did cities everywhere. I decided to investigate how this ludicrous state of affairs could have happened, and I ran into nothing less than a conspiracy by the activist community to impose the homeless on America and identify the problem as the failure of the American free-market system. And they succeeded. Every day for ten years, the homeless were in the news, associated with the accusation the phenomenon itself of homelessness was caused by the unfeeling crassness of a capitalist society that throws the less fortunate on the street.
But the homeless, for the most part, were not rejects from a cruel capitalist system. They were mentally ill, creating the irony that the care-giving left conspired to mistreat these unfortunate patients and toss them out of institutions and into the street as sacrificial lambs, as a contorted vanguard elite to undermine American values. The left-wing lawyers did their bit to protect them, and Americans were made to look cruel and unfeeling in the eyes of the world.
The plot begins with British psychiatrist R.D. Laing, who theorized that schizophrenics were actually more in touch with the correct view of life than so-called "straight" people. Laing, a sort of Timothy Leary of psychiatry, experimented with patients acting as doctors, and doctors as patients, to make his point that we "squares" were out of touch, while his patients were at one with nature and inner spirituality.
It was absurd '60s pop theory, but it appealed to a Stanford graduate student named Ken Kesey, who wrote a play applying Laing's theories. The film made from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest turned into a huge hit and helped pave the way for major changes in the care of the mentally ill, which resulted in new laws in 1978 that forced institutions to release patients who could theoretically function in society -- most notably schizophrenics, since they are known to be smarter than the average bear. The point was that the mentally ill have "rights" too -- the clarion call of the era.
The homeless problem has receded, even in bad economic times, because it was actually not caused by economic cruelty. Those who still roam the streets are usually gathered up at day's end and shipped to overnight quarters --- and then transported back into the city to panhandle during the day. Like most fake social movements, advocates don't want to give up feeling good about themselves by helping out the unfortunate.
But numbers of schizophrenics are still out and among us due to the deinstitutionalization of the late 1970s. And ever since, we have experienced sudden and deadly rampages and attribute the cause to the issue du jour -- this time to vitriolic politics. The Arizona killer will claim to be insane and maintain that "voices" told him to act, as is usually the case.
But only a few will dare state the truth: these people need to be institutionalized.
But only a few will dare state the truth: these people need to be institutionalized.
And even invited Castro to send his nut cases and prison inmates to the U.S. by the boat loads.
Liberal mindset as manifested through Sheriff Dupnik’s lack of action caused the shootings.
Trigger was the hate filled vitriol of Hollywood Films and video games and the DNC’s leader , President bring a gun and start hand to hand combat - Obama.
Which also happened in the Mariel boatlift that Reagan got suckered into.
The second-to-last sentence catches it for me. “Voices”.
The voices are those of demons.
The possessed should be restrained (institutionalized), or delivered.
Let those that have ears to hear, hear.
And that is why Dupnik is out there poisoning the water so that a jury will never be seated in that county. He sure doesn’t want anyone to hear his complicity in open court.
That consumate ass, Bill O'Weasely, tried to pin it all on Reagan on his show tonight. The Kraut quickly straightened him out with the information that it all started under JFK.
I just KNEW it would be a sob-sister Democrat regime making these fatal errors.
Leni
I could write pages on how screwed up the mental health system is, almost did not too long ago, but who would read it? I have no Phd or any other title by my name; suffice to say there’s way too many sacred bleeding hearts letting folks go and there’s to many talking heads in high places that care more about their pensions, the “healing rates”( means people are gatting better so there’s HUGE pressure to chart as such, and more...but that’s it from me. keep your powder dry kids, it’ll only get worse. I’m optimistic about this.
Wasn’t it a Supreme Court opinion that actually was the thing that opened up the mental institutions?
The real cause of the Arizona murders is the culture that has been created in America due to the 60s cunter-culture and sexual revolution.
People are taught in this culture to deny virtue and God and to be free-spirits. They then go on to form perverted identities.
Our culture has no limits anymore in regars to virtue and morality. In our media the vilence is extreme, the sexual perversion is extreme, the attacks on morlaity are also extreme.
Many murderous killers such as this kid have even been telling us that themselves. Manson wore it on his sleeve. This kid seems to be similiar as well so far.
I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s. My father worked in downtown DC, and we used to go downtown fairly regularly to pick him up after work.
In 1973 I went with him on a business trip once to Mexico City, and I recall being utterly shocked at seeing a homeless beggar there on the street. Why so shocked? I’d NEVER EVER seen anything like that in DC...
Now, after Carter, legions of intimidating beggars and crazy bums are scattered throughout the business and federal parts of the city...like every other American city. All in the name of “freedom” for schizophrenics, we allow insane people to rule the streets. Not only that, but instead of humane institutionalized care, we treat them like wild animals. RIDICULOUS!!!
Deinstitutionalization of the mental institutions started in the 1950s and picked up steam with the Kennedys who were heavy into “mental health” issues . New drugs made it possible to be in the community, with the proviso that you actually took your meds. Once the oversight from the institution was gone, some people just didn’t do it, and some of them went on to do some bad things. I am recalling that it wasn’t until the 1970s that the laws were changed to make it harder to have an involuntary commitment or to force someone to take the psychotropic drugs, and that is what this author was referring to - so if you don’t want to take the drugs, that should be your right, but then you need to go back into the institution for your & our protection.
Interesting point.
I have never seen a Sheriff so intent on aiding the defense and tainting the jury pool.
He is working to throw the case.
It still was a bit of a cooperative effort by (crazy) civil-libertarians (as mentioned in the article) AND fiscal conservatives.
Since state mental hospitals are extremely expensive to the government, to bean-counters, just providing psychotropic wonder-drugs to the previously-institutionalized looked like a HUGE cost saver. Of course without serious supervision...the seriously mentally ill do NOT stay on their meds, and wind up on the streets (or being a direct danger to themselves and others...)...viola, the problem.
I think given what the liberals have spewed in slander and lies over these past few days, that the mentally ill won't be who we know them to be. Healthcare reformation has place anyone in opposition to its (the gods of state) control and advisory panels as mentally unstable. This current bunch would institutionalize Sarah, Rush, and the rest of US that will not conform to their diagnosis. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I can’t find any evidence of that - there were class action lawsuits. It seems the whole impetus was to develop decent mental health services for the returning soldiers of WW2. The National Institute for Mental Health was formed in the late 1940s. I think it was the improved drugs that really paved the way for emptying out the big institutions. Mental health problems used to be the number one reason why people were hospitalized. Are we any less crazy now? I think not, and there’s way more of us now who need help but can’t or won’t get the help.
You bring up excellent points. I would say that a psychiatrist would need to document treatment (necessity and duration) and that would be subject to review and financial oversight. It worries me that so many of the psychiatrists in our country are foreign and often don’t speak English well. Don’t want to sweep with a broad brush, but I saw this in the VA and in community hospitals and wonder how good the doctor-patient relationship is.
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