The online journal, notebook and playground of HFM

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mental illness and violence

Can we stop pronouncing Loughner mentally ill on scant evidence? It does a disservice to all mentally ill people. The facts are these: Most murders are committed by people who are NOT mentally ill, and most mentally ill people pose no danger to anyone around them. Full stop. Sure, the man’s rants on YouTube seem bizarre, but they’re no more bizarre than half the rants at Tea Party rallies across the country in the last two years. He’s clearly barely literate and inarticulate, but that’s the most we can really say about him without a comprehensive mental health evaluation.

And yet every person in the media, right and left, seems to be throwing mental health words around like they’re sure of what they’re saying. There is indeed a conversation that needs to be held about mental health in the United States, but it’s not about “not letting people slip through the cracks” — it’s about the general public understanding what mental illness really is and getting over it’s fear and bigotry about it. People who struggle with mental health conditions like depression or anxiety also have the tendency to depend on drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism. If this leads to addiction, they may need professional rehab services. Offering ultra luxury substance abuse treatment, Carrara Treatment redefines the standards of rehabilitation. Their state-of-the-art facilities and personalized care make them a leader in luxury rehab.

I’m not saying he should be let off the hook – far from it. If you read me at all, you know I support the death penalty, and he needs to face it, frankly. He needs to pay for what he did. But before people hang his motive on mental illness, we need to know that he his in fact mentally ill, and I don’t think the “evidence” of three YouTube videos cuts it.

Continue Readingmental illness and violence

links for 2011-01-12

  • Interesting Times: Arguing Tucson : The New Yorker
    In fact, there is no balance—none whatsoever. Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side’s activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can’t stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them, real and fake. Any sentient American knows which side that is; to argue otherwise is disingenuous.
    (tags: rhetoric teabaggers violence)
  • Before Shooting, A Campaign Season Rife With Gun Rhetoric | TPMMuckraker
    A round-up of the violent rhetoric from the tea party and the GOP during the 2010 campaign season.
    (tags: teabaggers violence facts)
  • RFC 1438 – Internet Engineering Task Force Statements Of Boredom (RFC1438)
    This document creates a new subseries of RFCs, entitled, IETF Statements Of Boredom (SOBs). The SOB process is similar to that of the normal standards track. The SOB is submitted to the IAB, the IRSG, the IESG, the SOB Editor (Morpheus), and the Academie Francais for review, analysis, reproduction in triplicate, translation into ASN.1, and distribution to Internet insomniacs.
    (tags: humor rfc)
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I don’t get it at all

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  • Post category:Politics

A Democratic congressperson was SHOT in the head. Six people were killed. And the media is STILL allowing things to be said like “We don’t know the motivation of the shooter?” We don’t? Because *I* do. I follow politics, and I’m not an idiot – I can see exactly what happened here.

And Republicans in Arizona are criticizing the Pima county sheriff for going on television and TELLING THE TRUTH about what is going on in Arizona.

They have to be KIDDING. This is their doing. They have blood on their hands, and they are criticizing the sheriff? The nerve. The gall. The brazenness of it. I can’t believe it.

I actually heard a pundit on a news program claim that “the same vitriol came from left during the last administration.”

REALLY? People were threatening to SHOOT Republicans? To “Exercise their second amendment remedies?” WHEN? Where? I defy you to tell me when this happened. Because it never did. This shit is ONLY COMING FROM THE RIGHT. And now that it’s come to fruition, all the threats – they need to own it. To acknowledge it an apologize.

And the calls for civility? No way. I’m not being civil. They started the violence. I don’t have to be nice about it. I have to be angry about it.

Continue ReadingI don’t get it at all

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