Mental Illness, Airport Security

Another sniper attack, this one in AZ and coming a day after 14 decapitated bodies are found in Mexico, more children gone missing, abducted or murdered...and the media is once again trying to herd the nation in front of the electronic hearth for some cathartic chest pounding.

I quickly separated out my sympathy for the Gifford family and the other unknowns who died and those still in the hospital, but my nausea remains unappeased as bullet trajectories are pondered, diagrams and hypothesis that the particular shooting is a result of political rancor-either the media is now fully under the control of the current administration and this is the official stance, or stupidity reigns more supreme than I imagined.

There are thousands of folks who lost their jobs, homes, financial security, millions of others who see right through the political lies and politicians who keep selling out America to foreign interests because being a whore expeditiously lines their own pockets for their own families and why not, the ship is sinking, might as well make the best of it for ME...and of all us disenfranchised folk, dont see nobody going around shooting politicians. The radicals amongst us have joined a tea party, some like Sarah Palin and I suspect after a shooting as yesterday's, we can now add muslims to the list of people who privately say behind closed doors, 'Oh g-d let it not be a muslim who did this.'

I'm truly hard pressed to feel anything but pity for the young man who did everything in his power up until the day he was saying goodbye and leaving messages to his friends, 'dont be mad at me, dont be angry with me' He posted everywhere he felt isolated, alone, peculiar, afraid of what he was feeling, wanting to hurt people in power, police. Reports coming he was tossed out of college 5x FIVE TIMES and told to come back once a shrink certified him mentally able to attend class. Five Times. So, parents he lived with knew about his mental illness, friends knew he was mentally unstable, college admins clearly knew he was mentally ill and like so many before him, Loughner was dinner table fodder, someone to point out, point at and avoid at any cost.

Thought to myself since we've had a decade of young adults committing murders, murders of parents, siblings and total strangers there must be some protocols in place on how to handle someone clearly in pain and out of control. There it seems there is, you get dismissed from school, joked about, not taken seriously, thought to be looking for attention on YouTube or Facebook...its like the stakes keep getting higher, because the more he cried out for help, the louder he had to call out, the more violent and threatening he had to become and still his words were met with silence.

Health "reform" was passed with barely a glance at the needed reforms for mental health issues in America-and it is mental health driving people to do all kinds of things, just turn on the Tube, watch the hoarders, compulsive eaters, shoppers, killers, drug and alcohol users. If you stay up late you might catch 'strange sex' where people actually go on camera to show you they make love to balloons, dolls, fruits and veges and predators still show up even though Chris Hansen has been exposing perverts for years. We are a nation incapacitated by depression, grief, anxiety, in denial and surrounded by clusters of child molestors, a population so huge there aren't enough 'safe zone' to keep them out of communities. They're everywhere.

A person who cannot bear the pain of living in this circus explodes and kills. And the wash/rinse/spin media cycle goes round and round, they just stop short of telling viewers to grab a bowl of popcorn as they enthusiastically interview relatives of the dead and dying. A mother whose 9yr old daughter was born on 9.11 is on television in less than 24 hours after her child's murder.

A professor and a brilliant poet I studied with once shared a story many years ago about the late poet George Oppen. Oppen was so appalled at the state of affairs in America during the 30s-40s that he stopped writing. He didnt write any poetry for 11 years. The story told was in the context that Oppen chose to not write in protest of human obscene behavior against humanity.

I'm a Jew first and foremost. Is it good for the Jews? Of course not, bad news is never good for The Jews because there's always someone to point a finger and announce Jews Are Responsible. The media, always looking for the next hook to keep viewers tuned in, made the astute observation that Gifford is Jewish somewhere backthere and Loughner read Mein Kampf.

Americans can no longer distinguish where liberty, freedom and responsibility separates from what is intolerable, unacceptable and an infringement on everyone.

We are worried about the govt interfering with the Internet, we are adamant that no one pat us down, dont touch my junk, at the airports, and officials agree we could never have a tight security system like Israel, Americans are a diverse group and wouldnt tolerate profiling or intense inspections.

Dictatorship (check out Venezuela) is paternalism swathed in lies and enforced by the hungry over the hopeless.