"When Eden Was So Near“: The Surrender Of Love and Filialism To Imperial Fealty

Better people… better food… and better beer!

Why rule around the world

When Eden was so near?

“Territories"

Rush

lyrics by Neal Peart

One of the more ignominious episodes of the Obama years was the government's unconstitutional response to the 2013 bombing attack of the Boston Marathon. Nearby Watertown was placed under lockdown for several hours while a door-to-door search for the

 surviving alleged perpetrator was conducted by black-clad, armed stormtroopers marching through the streets astride military vehicles, hustling families and seniors from their homes (1).

Embarrassingly enough, the historically ironic import of the violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 in the Boston area—a legal stricture against military enforcement of domestic law originally inspired by the nation's Colonial experience—seemed lost to residents who came out en masse to applaud the departing occupation force when "its work was done" (as it turned out, the surviving perpetrator was located by a civilian, David Henneberry, after the lockdown was lifted [2]).

What makes this so eerie, however, was not so much the overt threat of state violence, but its attempted softer conflation with the priorities of family life when early on the media glorified the decency of Brookline police officer John Bradley for delivering milk to a family imprisoned in their own home (3); in a sort of stateside example of Noam Chomsky's "military humanism".

Seward's Sculptural Follies

Exploiting the universal social veneration of the family in order to make war and authoritarian goals a part of day-to-day domestic experience doesn't just serve Pentagon or State Department needs, but also finds its place as part of the sentiment-infused self-image of a society that is frequently at odds with reality.

Such is the case with sculptor Seward Johnson, whose pieces (thirty-six of which comprise the “Timeless” exhibit in Stamford, Connecticut this summer) evoke historical/pop-cultural tropes of twentieth-century Americana with all the undemanding appeal of over-sized Danbury Mint keepsakes, like the iconic 3-D rendering of the elative sailor embracing a nurse on VJ Day in New York City, or a 25-foot-tall skirt-blown Marilyn Monroe from the 1955 romantic comedy The Seven Year Itch. A piece from 1992, “Coming Home” attempts to squeeze the more recent wave of imperialist conflicts into the same nostalgia box, in its depiction of a Gulf War soldier hugging his grade-school daughter while in camouflage uniform (4).

A familiar scene popularized on the news and via countless home video uploads to Youtube for years now involving faithful pets, flag-waving ecstatic spouses and partners, to be sure; what's disturbing about Johnson's interpretation is that, contrary to most real-life examples, “Coming Home” depicts the soldier, not his daughter, clutching the stars-and-stripes on a stick, as if to suggest that he is so righteously devoted to his sense of duty, that he can't bear to relinquish it, even while suffused with the relief of reuniting with those whose safety justifies his tours abroad.

Entraining a New Generation

A more recent wrinkle on the wartime homecoming theme extends to the school setting, where, besides capturing traditional functions, smartphones now record returning service fathers and mothers surprising their children before their peers in the middle of a game, in class (5) and elsewhere. As with the previously-mentioned public's "Boston Strong" fawning over the suspension of their civil liberties, this trend in public schools (so reminiscent of Erich Fromm's observation in

Escape From Freedom [1941] of citizens' self-driven furtherance of imposed regressive changes in open societies) takes advantage of peer sentiment to normatize perpetual foreign conflict and rolling military service in the minds of a post-9/11 generation which has never had the chance to know anything else.

On the surface, the lunch room playfulness of a returning military mother dressed like a school mascot may be endearing, but it also implies institutional endorsement not just of the emotional impact such public encounters might have on the classmates of a student with a parent in the armed forces, but what their father or mother is being called upon to do (6).

By contrast, when was the last time the media reported on such a surprise pulled on behalf of a child whose father or mother was away on relief work for something like Habitat for Humanity, or freshly-returned from a cross-country trucking run? As for children of military families, how many are living hand-to-mouth because of „stop loss“ extended deployments; how many reunited families shown online and on television may have to face the suicide of a veteran parent (a loss of 20 daily, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs [7]) down the road?

First Blood--By Way Of Lassie?

Entertainment has been part and parcel of such propaganda for as long as there has been mass media, but with 2017's Max, youth marketing/book packaging company Alloy Entertainment (responsible for both the 2015 young adult novel by Jennifer Li Shotz and its film version) struck a new low by perversely purveying the enobilization of conquest through a boy-and-his-dog coming-of-age storyline.

Much to his mom's frustration and his Gulf War veteran dad's outrage, Justin Wincott is an insolent early-teen whose older brother, Kyle, has just died in Afghanistan. Although his heroism stemmed from his service uncovering caches of enemy weaponry, as well as threatening to expose gun-running in his own Marine unit, back home, Justin spends his summer competitive biking and selling bootleg video games. Softening the absurdly unfair comparison between this petty mischief with Kyle's self-sacrificing character in order to sell, however obliquely, young viewers on the supposed justness of the graver criminal act of illegal foreign occupation is Max, Kyle's gun-sniffing German Shepard.

Though combat-trained like his human counterparts, Max returns home with PTSD, where  Justin reluctantly agrees to look after him. Kyle’s gun-runner comrade returns home, too,  enmeshing Justin and his family in his efforts to destroy all evidence of his activities, which includes Max. The plot makes for a rather desperate twist on the guilt-ridden convention of a parent or older family friend favoring one son over another, based on which one served in war and which remained home--a theme played out from the 1959 Cold War potboiler Atomic Submarine and Norman Lear’s 1970s sitcom All In the Family, up through 2013's politically obsequious The Butler, with Oprah Winfrey.

Just a few titles from the expansive
Gossip Girl YA series

Implicit in Max is the seriously warped message that to grow up means not so much graduating from wayward self-indulgence to thinking and acting responsibly in consideration of oneself and others, but to submit unquestioningly to state authority, without weighing individual responsibility of the greater human cost; at first blush, a rather pious prescription from Alloy (a Warner Brothers subsidiary [8]), which previously created the narcissistic teen fiction line Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar (later a series on CW, also Warner's), yet largely in keeping with the Mars/Venus stereotypes embodied by the spat of recent playing field marriage proposals to be discussed later.

Military Bigamy and the Citizen Soldier

Following the outcome of the 2016 presidential election and the success the same year of American Sniper, the biopic about the late Chris Kyle, co-founder of the mercenary contractor Craft International, a new crop of network and cable TV military dramas came on the scene last year, including the History Channel's Six, NBC's The Brave, Seal Team from CBS (9), as well as National Geographic's mini-series, The Long Road Home (10).

In these programs, typical of the genre, there are customary threads of boredom trading with fear, frustration with military bureaucracy and corruption (a reliable narrative evasion from confronting the underlying legitimacy of global hegenomy), punctuated by an Odyssean longing for loved ones and the comforting familiarity of even the most prosaic conveniences and commonplaces of the stateside life civilians take for granted, while the protagonists risk their lives in thwarting regional opposition the world over.

All the more unsettling because it is directly based in fact, the eight-part National Geographic effort from ABC News journalist Martha Raddatz's account of a 2004 ambush near Sadr City, Iraq costing the lives of eight US soldiers (wounding 65), however, stakes a semi-totalitarian equivalence between the sanctity of family with military affiliations, almost giving voice to Johnson's "Coming Home" through a quiet, homey moment between a father and son, wherein Dad explains to his child that, in essence, his platoon mates constitute a second family, whom he has to go to Iraq to support.

While the profound bonds shared by soldiers in active duty are undeniable, it’s also hard to ignore the visceral warning of where such competing obligations could lead, as exemplified in Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's first (and most brutal) tragedy set in an historical composite of pivotal events covering the Roman era (not to mention a personal favorite of former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who executive produced a futuristic film version [11]). In its unflinching depiction of the titular Roman general, we see the folly of how his conditioned allegiance to his decadent emperor and a flagging empire override his loyalty to his family, in the end, costing the lives of almost all of his 25 conscripted sons and resulting in rape and mutilation for Lavinia, his one daughter.

Martialization Of Romance

For those still single, the recent fad of returning service men proposing in crowded sports arenas to cheerleader girlfriends readily serves. Here, the attempted merging of military devotion with civilian custom and relationships is more overt and aggressive, given the long-standing utility of professional and college sports as a means of nationalistic conditioning of the populace toward a simplistic, polar perception of multi-layered political and foreign policy issues.

 

In the case of airman Travis Ross and Houston Rockets Power Dancer Casey Potter, however, a two-dimensional idealization of gender identity is also being projected. Secretly returned from active duty in 2017, Ross snuck onto the basketball court as part of a prank pulled on his future wife during the half-time show, wearing camo coveralls and bearing an engagement ring while kneeling before Potter--

Venus and Mars symbols--stylized
pictograms of a woman's mirror
and a soldier's shield with spear

in a sense, defined by a uniform of her own (12), instilling in both the rest of the dancers and a packed stadium an inflexible, almost archetypally sexualized perception of what constitutes the ultimate American couple—the groom as stalwart Warrior, the bride as comely Maiden.

Now, an innocuously romantic comparison might be drawn with teenage couples christened King and Queen of their senior proms every year in high schools across the country (and one wonders if this is, indeed, one of the comparisons meant to be invoked), but considering we are talking about adults in this example, among others, these gushingly-covered episodes nevertheless come off as somewhat demeaning by comparison, not to mention potentially doubly coercive for the prospective (or "targeted") bride—it's one thing to receive a marriage proposal in a public space like a crowded elevator; who would dare spurn an active-duty GI's appeal, projected to hundreds via Jumbotron (Military1.com's coverage of Air Force Captain Eric Straub's own dramatic proposal to his cheerleader girlfriend during a 2014 Arizona Cardinals football game pointedly credits the officer, as a 2010 graduate of the Air Force Academy, for "apparently gain[ing] enough intelligence before the mission to ensure its success" [13])?

Conclusion

The catabolizing contradiction of extended wars of aggression has always stipulated one way or another that other nations and cultures must be subjugated in order to preserve „our way of life“--even as the vicious gouging of the very things that help define it (civil liberties, education, labor rights, health care and more)--are sacrificed to perpetuate terminal conflicts.

So, in response, a complex of useful substitutions for (or diversions from) social values and commonplaces, be it manipulative media, or public stunts that cheapen honest affection and purpose, emerge as cynical palliatives, for as long as the collapse drags out.

However long that may be, it behooves us to be alert, to critique and challenge changes to that which define our universal humanity--be it love, filialism, friendship, conviction); for such things, there is never too little time.

--Rolf Maurer


___

Sources:

1. https://www.longislandpress.com/2013/05/14/u-s-military-power-grab-goes-into-effect/

2. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/09/29/man-who-found-boston-marathon-bomber-has-died/gptc5fZNG7C8yLBWbJvr4N/story.html

3. https://www.inquisitr.com/631020/brookline-cop-delivers-milk-to-boston-family-during-manhunt-photo/

4. stamford-downtown.com/events/timeless-the-works-of-seward-johnson/#.W2ZEJvZFzmQ

5. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/air-force-mom-surprises-son-13-basketball-game-article-1.1583543#

https://q13fox.com/2013/02/08/returning-military-dad-surprises-daughter-in-class/

6. https://www.inspiremore.com/mascot-military-mom/

7. https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2016/07/07/new-va-study-finds-20-veterans-commit-suicide-each-day/

8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alloy_Entertainment

9. https://deadline.com/2017/05/the-brave-seal-team-valor-trend-patriotic-dramas-military-heroes-upfronts-1202093571/

10. https://www.npr.org/2017/11/02/561334010/sadr-city-attack-on-u-s-troops-retold-in-the-long-road-home

11. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/11/29/titus-in-space/

12. https://thejewelerblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/returning-airman-proposes-to-blindfolded-rockets-dancer-during-halftime-stunt/

13. https://www.military1.com/air-force/article/539167-airman-brings-cardinals-cheerleaders-to-tears-with-marriage-proposal/

Rediscovering Our Political Voice

New Haven-based sculptor/painter, performance artist and teacher David Livingston will offer himself as a fictitious candidate for office in a mock speech to be delivered at The Ferguson Library this Saturday afternoon, December 3, using as his template the familiar tropes of national pride, gender, race and class, bound together by the provocative, yet deliberately imprecise imagery and language so typical of the mainstream political scene.

What makes this appeal distinctive from the canned character of the “real” thing is that

David’s presentation will be shaped by dozens of questions submitted to him by library patrons prior to the event—in response to a disarmingly convincing campaign video displayed in the library lobby since November 3.

In the aftermath of one of the most polarizing presidential elections in national history, Livingston’s “Vote Your Conscience” provides an opportunity to expand the conversation,  in the words of Terri C. Smith of Franklin Street Works, for the “many people living in the U.S. (who) find themselves to be more introspective than ever about what it means to be an American.”  

untitled, 2010

David is co-sponsoring his performance with the downtown art space/café and the library; "Vote Your Conscience" is part of the Ferguson’s contribution to The Aspen Institute’s national project “What Every American Should Know”, funded through a Regional Initiative Grant awarded to the library by the Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County, in partnership with the Connecticut Office of the Arts. David is an adjunct professor at the University of New Haven and Gateway Community College; he received his MFA from Pratt and has exhibited nationally.

After the presentation, be sure to join him at a reception at Franklin Street Works, just a block down from the library.

Both the performance and reception are free and open to the public.

Performance:

Third Floor Auditorium

The Ferguson Library

1 Public Library Plaza

Stamford, CT 06901

3-4 pm

Artist Reception:

Franklin Street Works

41 Franklin Street

Stamford, CT 06901

4:15-5:30 pm

Contact:

Terri C Smith

Creative Director

Franklin Street Works

203-253-0404

What Progressivism Is and Is Not: A Response To Anonymous Mail-In Propaganda

I suppose it's flattering someone would go to so much trouble at the last minute to generate confusion about the Stein campaign and what the Green Party is about. Please view before voting...

Submitted yesterday to the Stamford Advocate Facebook page

I wish to draw the attention of Stamford voters to Jill Stein, the Green Party’s candidate for president of the United States and the only candidate refusing to accept corporate contributions. As a local Green candidate for this year’s Stamford Registrar of Voters, I can attest to the amazingly low public awareness of Jill Stein’s run and what she stands for as a substantial alternative to the offerings of the Democrat/Republican duopoly.

This is no surprise, as, though it is the media that we look to to inform of us of our options, it is also this same media complex which presumes to define for us what is to be expected of our current political system and what is possible. 

When did we, as voting adults, lose sight that this is supposed to be OUR job? 

Even a quick perusal of her site (www.jill2016.com) and numerous Youtube interviews demonstrate that Dr. Stein is a practical, solutions-, rather than fear-driven, candidate who supports her convictions consistently and at repeated cost to her personal safety and liberty, such as in defense of those losing their homes at a New York bank protest in 2012. Trump and Clinton have yet to do anything comparable.

Contrary to what we are told, the numbers are actually against the Democrats and Republicans. A recent Gallop poll shows more than half of all voters are hungry for more than the limited number of options that can constitute a choice (Stein’s multiple proposals to eliminate student debt, alone, could mobilize over 40 million college voters to decide the election). 

A culture of bitterness and learned helplessness stoked by the “major” parties’ offensive and frightening antics, while the global scene stands on the cusp of nuclear war can no longer be defended by the same complaints repeated every four years of “Anybody but (fill in the blank)!”, or “I can’t wait until the election is over!” 

Overcoming these issues depends on inspiring more voter participation at all levels, which is why I stand with Stein in advocacy of reforming the winner-take-all, binary approach to elections that only fosters anger, powerlessness and the apathy and misplaced blame the two-party system thrives upon. 

Ranked Choice Voting encourages more participation by more of the electorate left out of the process due to gender, ethnic or economic disenfranchisement by allowing voters to choose from several candidates of various political views at once, based on order of preference, rather than on a straight win/lose basis. Portland, Maine elected its mayor in 2011 on this basis; Cincinnati elected two African-American city council members in the 1950s using RCV and the state of Illinois had it for almost 100 years following the Civil War (in fact, Abraham Lincoln was a third-party candidate). It forces candidates to become more detailed and dignified in their platforms and eliminates the “spoiler” or “lesser evil” rationales for and against candidates.

From the end of slavery and child labor, to victories in workplace rights/safety and civil liberties and more, we didn’t get this far as a society by settling for just A or B; it’s time we drew on that pride and courage to reconnect with our pluralistic heritage.

Rolf Maurer
Green Party Candidate for Registrar of Voters. City of Stamford
Co-Chair, Fairfield County Chapter
Green Party of CT

Fullfrontalcontext.blogspot.com
Vote-rolf.org

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill's Channel 3 Song & Dance

Denise Merrill

The opening segment with Secretary of the State Denise Merrill on Channel 3's Meet the State program from a week ago, preceding discussion with Libertarian Party representative Larry Sharpe and Green Party of CT's Cora Santaguida (State Coordinator for the Jill Stein campaign; State Senate candidate in the 27th District), was as embarrassingly fawning as it was lacking in relevant detail: Merrill attempted to claim a "save" over the fact that a few years ago when Bridgeport polls didn't have enough ballot forms on hand, it was supposed to be to the system's credit that on-site copies were quickly printed so that people could cast their votes.

Such overblown claims of her department's flexibility during a 2014 "crisis" overlooks the fact that it is hard to see how the number of sheets needed for any municipality is hard to get wrong in advance, given that they would naturally use the same number used to send reminder notices to all registered voters in the area in the days prior to the CT governor's race. Yes, mistakes happen (although they happen too often in areas predominantly non-white). What she failed to mention was that the scanners did not accept the copies.

Of course, the fact that write-in votes were not counted in Stamford, Hartford, Bridgeport (again) and other cities in 2012 resulting in no legal consequences for those doing the tallying, even though such an oversight constitutes a felony, was also not discussed, among other important issues regarding the state's electoral process.

A Map To Public Safety--Or To Nowhere: Big Pharma’s Influence On Mental Health Policy Post-Sandy Hook

(originally posted on www.ctgreenparty.org  7/14/13; revised 10/18/15)

"Diagnosis [as spelled out in the DSM-IV] is part of the magic...you know those medieval maps? In the places where they didn't know what was going on, they wrote 'Dragons live here'...we have a dragon's world here. But you wouldn't want to be without the map."

-- Dr. Allen Frances, Editorial Director, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994)

Following the Newtown Massacre last December, national attention has focused with exhaustive detail on gun types and proliferation, while, at the same time settling for irresponsible vagueries when it comes to defining improved mental health policy. Given the disastrous role public/private sector-led psychiatric intervention programs have had on the young, this calls into question which is the real problem: too easy access to dangerous weapons by unbalanced individuals, or too much access to physiologically susceptible populations (and possibly the public at large) by pharmaceutical interests powerful enough to shape the terms of mental health and its effective treatment?

Governor Malloy

When you have the long-overdue disclosure of toxicology findings on Newtown shooter Adam Lanza's body first appearing in late May (with the complete report released last month following a suit lodged by AbleChild.org) preceded by months of dismissive stonewalling from both state medical examiner, Dr. H. Wayne Carver and even Governor Malloy in response to petitioning Newtown parents, you have to wonder where Hartford’s priorities lie. (1)

Even if the near-insultingly unconvincing media claims that emerged mid-May of no evidence of medication, alcohol, or illegal drugs in Lanza’s system are credible, officials fail
to acknowledge that numerous past shooters were known to act out violently in response to abruptly going off their medications (as was the case in two instances in 2008 and one in 2009) (2), as well as reacting adversely to faithful use of them.

Given the prominent role prescription psychotropic drugs have played in this and nearly fourteen other domestic mass shootings involving teens or young adults over the last few years (still more if you include international figures) (3), it is hard to understand how resorting to prescribing more of these sort of drugs to children in the name of "expanding mental health services" is going to do anything but result in more acts of mass violence.

Inasmuch as how particularly devastating guns can be, curtailing their availability to any degree, however comprehensive, will no more curb violence if someone is determined to kill many people under the influence of Paxil or Zoloft than would the motive of a twenty-year-old in rural Connecticut to commit matricide be identical with the motive to kill schoolchildren he didn’t even know. After all, the same day of the shooting, a disturbed man went on a rampage in a school in China wielding a knife. (4)

TeenScreen

A more ironic coincidence from last December was the shutdown of TeenScreen, a nationwide in-school psychiatric counseling program cancelled because the lives of normal, healthy students around the country were either ended or ruined as a result of a psychiatrist labeling them with some disorder, resulting in prescriptions that made them violent or suicidal. This program was expanded from a single-state program under the auspices of the 2002 Federal New Freedom Commission, which was nothing more than a way for Eli Lilly to gain access to the country's students in an effort to eventually get everyone mentally screened (and, presumably, medicated) from “birth to old age” (5).

Devolved in the last administration from George Bush Junior’s catastrophic Texas Medical Algorithm Project (TMAP), when he was governor, TeenScreen, developed by psychiatrist and pharmaceutical consultant David Schaffer, involved targeting students for psychotropic medications under the guise of preventative intervention for at-risk teenagers. Bribing them

with free pizza, or even passes to the local multiplex, students would submit to a multiple-choice test evaluating their purported predisposition to depression or suicidal ideation. These tests would include such ridiculously general or leading questions as whether the student felt uncomfortable speaking before large crowds (who doesn’t?), or if they preferred being alone/or in groups (again, who doesn’t at different times?). If you’re a fan of the actor Jude Law you can glimpse his psychiatrist character going over the results of one such test in Side Effects, a thriller that, for all its egregious punch-pulling, does a fair job in exploring the collusion of medicine and Big Pharma.

Interestingly, as a UK national practicing stateside, Law’s character in the film is called into question by American authorities when one of his patients is accused of murder under the influence of a fictional medication he prescribed—ironic given how much more severe criticism there is in the UK against psychotropics than here.

The nationwide version of TeenScreen was often implemented on an “opt-out”, or “passive consent” basis, meaning parents had to submit express objections to their child participating, as no response would be construed as granting permission. Former investigator for the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General Allen Jones has attested to the consequences for both students and parents who trust in the judgment of authority figures leading to devastating results, wherein an intelligent, outgoing teen came home from school with a diagnosis of two disorders and was dead by suicide within months following her parents dutifully taking her to a doctor and putting her on prescriptions. (6)

Among Connecticut students, of the 760 offered screening between 2005 and 2010 at the state’s two participating schools/TeenScreen sites, 171 accepted evaluation. (7)

The NRA of Drugs
While less than 25 percent, it was frustration with a still lower turnout in Pinellas County, Florida on the part of Dr. Laurie Flynn of Columbia University (co-director of the program) that inadvertently helped contribute to its closure. Clearwater resident Sylvia DeWall

Leslie McGuire

became suspicious of TeenScreen’s real purpose after a TV news report aired in her area, leading to the resignation of Flynn and co-director Leslie McGuire (who subsequently joined AmeriCares in Stamford, CT in 2012 before relocating to assume a leading role in Australia's Headspace mental health program). (8)

Parent outrage only intensified when an email between Flynn and a TeenScreen school district liaison revealed the exploitive callousness of the operation, wherein the former head of the National Alliance on the Mental Illness (which, in receipt of 75 percent of funding from drug companies as of 2009, is a veritable NRA of the psychotropic drug field) (9) complained about the low turnout for TeenScreen in Pinellas: “I’m looking for a horse to

ride here!... I need to get some kids screened—if the schools are a road block (sic) we are interested in community organizations.” (10)

From How to Influence People to Telling Them What is Normal
But why the dominant push for psychiatric drugs to begin with? As it turns out, this trend goes back to the early 1970s, when, according to Dr. Peter Breggin’s Toxic Psychiatry (St. Martin's Press, 1991), drug makers agreed to assist a flagging talk therapy-based psychiatric field,

besieged by a variety of competing new approaches, by seeding peer publications and medical venues with studies promoting the efficacy of an exclusively biological basis for mental disorders. (11)

Historically, according to Barbara Ehrenreich in Bright-Sided (Picador, 2010), the morphing of the 1800s “New Thought” movement into today’s “Positive Psychology” beginning with the writings of Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, Napoleon Hill and many contemporary imitators, supported symptom--rather than cause-based--psychology, which snuggly suited the interests of the insurance industry.

Meanwhile, with each successive version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the definitive reference of the mental health field), published through the American Psychiatric Association, more and more emotional states are now considered forms of mental illness. The fifth and latest version of the DSM (an edition whose contents have been the subject of much controversy even years before publication) now characterizes just about EVERYONE as a candidate for mental health treatment, because of its reliance on symptomological breakdowns of supposed disorders based on nothing more objective than a vote by APA members as to what defines “Authority Defiance Disorder” here, or “General Anxiety Disorder” there.

In other words, the psychiatric field is in the business of literally fabricating mental illness to justify putting more people on selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRI) and other

classes of psychotropics (12); as of June 2013, it is estimated 70 percent of the population are on at least one prescription, more than half are on two, with the second most common type being antidepressants. (13)

In fact, so corrupt is the situation regarding the release of each edition of this reference, even Dr. Allen Frances, once described by the New York Times’ Daniel Goleman as possibly “the most powerful psychiatrist in America at the moment...", resigned from his oversight duties on Volume IV with apologies. “Our panel tried hard to be conservative and careful” he said in a 2010 op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, “but inadvertently contributed to three false ‘epidemics’--attention deficit disorder, autism and childhood bipolar disorder.” (14)

Dr. Leon Eisenberg, quoted by Der Spiegel in Germany as the “scientific father of ADHD”, averred seven months before his death that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is a “prime example of a fictitious disease.” (15)

Leon Eisenberg

In yet another print media appearance from 2010, Frances glibly summed things up for Wired with: “There is no definition of a mental disorder. It's bullshit. I mean, you just can't define it.” (16)

There are many admissions like these, authoritatively unimpeachable, yet unable to gain any lasting mainstream attention because so much advertising revenue comes from the prescription drugs—especially via television (something that used to be illegal for obvious reasons). To date, only the United States and New Zealand sanction this practice. (17)

Beyond how loosely mental orders are defined there is also an equally imprecise organic basis for what causes them—the catch-all “chemical imbalance” for which mood stabilizers, psycho-stimulants, antidepressants (including SSRIs, which, in particular, have a dramatic effect on the fast-developing judgment centers of the brains of teens and young adults) in the right dosage and combination are supposed to set things right.

There’s only one catch with this catch-all explanation: it’s never been verified.

The Imaginary Imbalance
According to other outspoken critics, like Breggin, Dr. Joanna Moncrieff, Department of Mental Health Services, University College in London and even provisional defenders like Dr. Russell Barkley, Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, there isn't any credible basis for the idea that brain chemical imbalances are responsible for psychiatric disorders, nor a baseline established for what can be reasonably considered a "normal" balance for any one person. (18)

In fact, you can walk out of a doctor’s office (they don’t even have to be psychiatrists, anymore to prescribe psychoactives) with a prescription or sample of a mood-altering drug without even one specialized blood test, or other form of lab work being performed to measure the presence of a suspected imbalance in the patient’s brain.

To judge by the defensive behavior of Hartford officials following the Newtown shooting, the unwillingness to take a radical view of what happened to Lanza to make him do what he did—namely the effects of medication--suggests the intention of bringing more of the public into the pharmaceutical fold in the future on an institutional basis.

The prevalence and morbid normalization of childhood psychiatric medication, beginning with the use of Ritalin in the early 1970s begs the question of not just what the shooter was taking, but what prescription drugs were the population of his grade-school victims taking, as well? (19)

Besides contributing extensive financial backing to NAMI, Mental Health America and other advocacy groups, the drug industry, as represented by its state policy-shaping membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (20) (the organization responsible for the NRA-inspired “Stand Your Ground” legislative defense of George Zimmerman in Florida for the shooting of Trevan Martin) (21), has a formidable impact on enshrining psychopharmacology at the

centerpiece of treatment plans, with substantive talk therapy and PTSD treatment considered only as adjunctive, or modalities like time-tested nutrition-based orthomolecular medicine as outright quackery. (22)

To be sure, more constructive, healing approaches which incur no lasting iatrogenic side effects, such as mental deficits, tremors, blindness, organ damage and more are occasionally acknowledged, but because insurance will not recognize their efficacy, are unavailable to many caught up in this web spun between the drug companies, compromised medical/social service agencies and the insurance industry. (23)

Due to the debilitating effects of medication, which frequently compound an already challenging psychological condition, the neuro-atypical are unable to work--or, find anything more than part-time work—independent housing and are in no position to afford the hefty out-of-pocket expenses associated with genuinely healing approaches to their condition.

Bedlam’s Return and Legislative Overreach
Following the bombings of the Boston Marathon, now Governor Christie is the latest voice joining opinion-leaders like Steve Forbes in calling for the mainlining of state-mandated psychiatric commitment (24), a practice notorious for its abuses in the nineteenth-century

through to the late twentieth, when long-term institutionalization was supplanted by outpatient clinical services.

Last January’s H.R. 274, endorsed by the president and known as The Mental Health First Aid Act of 2013 (a revision of H.R. 5996: Mental Health First Aid Higher Education Act of 2012), would now not only induct administrators and teachers into a training course qualifying them to spot at-risk youth ages 12 through 25, but also include members of the student body, as well. The social consequences of a popular student, or members of an exclusive clique using such authority to target classroom rivals or undesirables could potentially make the cruel backstabbing of an episode of Gossip Girls look like a round of first-grade dodge ball, by comparison. The rollout of this program in Connecticut began with an initial training session held last August attended by one male and 26 female students in the Stamford Government Center. (25)

Local proposals include warranting of state psychiatric evaluation for all Connecticut children who are home-schooled, and, according to Sheila Matthews of AbleChild.org, granting access of the State Department of Children and Family Services to neglected or abused children three years of age and younger for drug/behavioral health research at Yale (Senate Bill 0652), as well as the authority to medicate and even perform surgery on them while in temporary state custody, without informed parental consent (Senate Bill 0833). The latter two passed the Senate in May. (26)

Now if by chance, one were willing to take some comfort that such reforms would be limited to Connecticut, it’s worth noting that Malloy has expressed his hope for the nationwide impact of his Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, charged with submitting its recommendations for state school safety and mental health (with, presumably, plenty of private sector input) by late 2013/early 2014.

Behind the predictable and over-the-top friction between Federal authority and defensive gun advocates, changes below the surface could do far more in the subtle, increased intrusion of psychiatric intervention into the mainstream. One of a series of post-Sandy Hook presidential directives, for instance, permits physicians to inquire if their patients own guns, particularly if they believe there is any cause for concern—given how liability-phobic our health care system has become, it is reasonable to assume doctors would be inclined to err on the side of caution. (27)

Brandon Raub

In view of the undeniably authoritarian direction Washington has taken in recent years—the disclosures of NSA contractor Edward Snowden only bringing renewed attention to the strangling web of global surveillance post 9/11—drugs as a tool of widespread social control is a real and frightening prospect; the psychiatric incarceration of 9/11 whistleblower Karen Lindauer and, more recently, Facebook dissenter Marine Brandon Raub are precedents that invoke the spectre of the Gulag Archipelago. (28)

Ultimately, though, even removed from such a creepy context, these complicating proposals would probably be as workable as shooting an irritating housefly with an elephant gun—and still missing the target.

Being Serious and Honest—Before Being So Becomes Seriously Abnormal
No, if we are to get realistic about reducing acts of mass violence, we have to be honest enough to look to the causes of such behavior on a societal and cultural scale. Focusing on the dangers of one mode of violence, such as guns (or what types of guns), only diverts attention from confronting the long-denied passive aggressive violence of institutionalized inequality and injustice ever-present in American society and foreign policy, roiling beneath the surface… and getting worse all the time.

It’s not just the medicated/overmedicated who are suffering—be it in response to an inept attempt to address an actual condition, or authority’s contrivance of it; it’s also those still outside the reach of the biopharmacological complex struggling with the circumstances of a society liable to put everyone’s peace of mind at risk, sooner or later.

That man in China mentioned earlier is acknowledged as part of a wave of similar stabbing incidents, attributed to the stress of the many left behind by the country’s tumultuous economic advancement.

Only rarely is social privation as reason for violence acknowledged here with such little reservation, like the particularly shocking 2008 incident at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian

Jim Adkisson

Universalist Church in Knoxville where Jim David Adkisson opened fire in the middle of a children’s play to strike against the nearest “liberal” bastion. Unemployed for several years and having just learned his food stamp allotment would be cut back, he as much as admitted he was lashing out on the local level because he felt powerless to be heard by a corrupt political establishment. (29)

These are just some of numerous other factors that also go completely unaddressed in this American debate. Switzerland, for instance, has a comparatively low rate of violent crime, yet gun ownership and responsible proficiency is widespread. But, as cited along with numerous other state and regional examples by Pickett and Wilkinson’s The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger (Bloomsbury, 2011), Switzerland also has a more

participatory democratic system, has better health care, education, foreign policy, labor/economic, housing outcomes than the US, so obviously, the problem is not simply too many weapons, but too few of those things in life whose absence would drive one to committing violence, or other dysfunctional behavior. (30)

Compare this with the ultimate response in the offing for mental health advancement in the United States: something called the Brain Activity Map Project, a White House $3 billion high-tech proposal affiliated with its BRAIN Initiative program, tasked with curing autism, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s Disease (embodying a methodology with the nasty potential of controlling human minds from a distance). (31)

Unless we demand something better from Washington and our institutions, as with so much of our social policy, this same old mesmerizing, church-around-the-village thinking will continue to exacerbate, rather than remedy our difficulties.

And as mesmerizingly dangerous as they can be, we must not lose sight that guns are still the symptom of a much larger problem: the unjustified disadvantages, exploitation and medicinal quick-fixes with the potential to turn anyone into a weapon.

References:
1.
“Sandy Hook Shooter Adam Lanza Had No Drugs, Alcohol In System”
http://articles.courant.com/2013-05-13/news/hc-adam-lanza-toxicology-20130513_1_nancy-lanza-adam-lanza-no-drugs
“Adam Lanza's Body Tested By Medical Examiner For Insight Into Newtown Shooting”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/11/adam-lanza-body-tests-newtown-shooter_n_2456431.html
“Parents File Appeal Against Connecticut Medical Examiner’s Refusal to Release Adam Lanza Toxicology Results”, http://www.cchrint.org, 4/5/13
“Parents vs. Gov. Malloy for Lanza Medical Records”
http://ablechild.org/2013/07/07/parents-vs-gov-malloy-for-lanza-medical-records/
“Full Report Confirms No Drugs, Alcohol In Lanza's System”
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-sandy-hook-lanza-toxicology-20131029,0,1098095.story
“Ablechild’s Appeal For Newtown Shooter’s Medical Records & Toxicology Report Goes to Full CT Fio Commission”
http://ablechild.org/category/breaking-news/
2.
http://www.ssristories.com/index.php?p=school
3.
http://www.ssristories.com/index.php?p=school
4.
“China: Man with knife slashes 22 school children”
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/china-man-with-knife-slashes-22-school-children/310432-2.html
5.
“Linking Zyprexa and TeenScreen Controversies”
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/usa/zyprexa-teenscreen
6.
“TeenScreen: A Front Group for the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex”
http://www.psychsearch.net/teenscreen.html
“CCHR: Whistleblower Allen Jones/Mental Health Screening Of Kids”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GhBfDMW2Fo
7.
“Adolescent Mental Health Fact Sheet: Adolescent Mental Health in CONNECTICUT”, www.ct.gov/dss/site/default.asp, 12/15/11
8.
“’TeenScreen’ Directors Resign – Collusion with Pharma cited”
http://deadlinelive.info/2012/07/10/teenscreen-directors-resign-collusion-with-pharma-cited/
“Leslie McGuire” (via Linkedin)
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/leslie-mcguire/41/30/96
9.
“NAMI: Nearly 75 Percent of Donations from Pharma”
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/10/22/nami-nearly-75-percent-of-funding-from-pharma/
10.
“making progress in Florida—CONFIDENTIAL”, PDF of Flynn email to Jim McDonough, 3/22/04
11.
“The Lying Liars Who Lie About Psychiatry”
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/the-lying-liars-who-lie-about-psychiatry/
12.
“Psychiatry Goes Insane: Every Human Emotion Now Classified As a Mental Disorder in New Psychiatric Manual DSM-5”
www.naturalnews.com/038322_dsm-5_psychiatry_false_diagnosis.html
13.
“Study shows 70 percent of Americans take prescription drugs”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57590305/study-shows-70-percent-of-americans-take-prescription-drugs/
14.
Ibid, 11.
“It's not too late to save 'normal'”
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/01/opinion/la-oe-frances1-2010mar01
15.
“Inventor of ADHD’s Deathbed Confession: ‘ADHD Is a Fictitious Disease’”
http://www.worldpublicunion.org/2013-03-27-NEWS-inventor-of-adhd-says-adhd-is-a-fictitious-disease.html
16.
"Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness"
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_dsmv/
17.
“Should Prescription Drugs Be Advertised Directly to Consumers?”
http://prescriptiondrugs.procon.org/
18.
Ibid, 11.
“Depression Chemical Imbalance Doesn’t Exist, Experts Say”
http://naturalsociety.com/depression-chemical-imbalance-doesnt-exist/
19.
“The Drugging of Our Children”
http://kevinkolack.com/garynull.htm
20.
“Mental Health America (Formerly National Mental Health Association)”
http://www.cchrint.org/psycho-pharmaceutical-front-groups/mha/
“The State Legislators Guide to Prescription Drug Policy”
http://www.alec.org/wp-content/uploads/Rx_Guide_111009.pdf
21.
“Seven Faces of NRA/ALEC-Approved ‘Stand Your Ground’ Law”
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/06/11384/seven-faces-nraalec-approved-stand-your-ground-law
22.
“Nutritional Approaches And Diets Safely Cure Mental Illness”
www.naturalnews.com/040016_mental_illness_omega-3_happy_foods.html
“Psychiatric Diagnosis and DSM 5: Maps to Nowhere”
http://www.corepsych.com/
23. Ibid 11.
24.
“Gov. Christie Commits to 'Fully Implementing' Mental Health Treatment Law”
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/01/christie_says_hes_committed_to.html
“Steve Forbes: Why The Treatment Of Our Nation's Mentally Ill Is An American Disgrace”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2013/01/02/an-american-disgrace/
25.
“Testimony by Patricia Rehmer, MSN, Commissioner Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services Before the Mental Health Services Group of the Bipartisan Task Force on Gun Violence Prevention and Children’s Safety”, PDF
www.dmhas.state.ct.us
“Stamford Teens Take on Mental Health in School”
http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/Stamford-teens-take-on-mental-health-in-school-4721264.php
26.
Sen. Harper, 10th Distr., Rep. Walker, 93rd Dist., State Of Ct, Proposed Bill No. 374: An Act Requiring Behavioral Health Assessments For Children, 1/13
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2013/TOB/S/2013SB-00374-R00-SB.htm
“Legislative Action Alert for May 20th – Connecticut”
http://ablechild.org/2013/05/19/legislative-action-alert-for-may-20th-connecticut/
27.
“Legislative Action Alert for May 20th—Connecticut”
http://ablechild.org/category/legislation-alerts/
“Malloy’s Newtown Panel Hoping for National Impact”
http://www.newstimes.com/news/crime/article/Malloy
“Judge rejects ban on pediatricians asking patients about gun ownership(barf alert)”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2902278/posts
28.
“Susan Lindauer--Reporter Held Political Prisoner
to Cover Up U.S. Genocide in Iraq”
http://911review.org/Lindauer/
“Former Marine Held Involuntarily Over Facebook Posts Now Plans to Sue FBI”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/29/former-marine-facebook-sue-fbi
29.
“Affidavit: Man Admits Church Shooting, Says Liberals Should Die”
www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/28/church.shooting/
30.
Halbrook, Stephen P., “Guns, Crime and the Swiss”
www.stephenhalbrook.com/articles/guns-crime-swiss.html
31.
“All the President's Neuroscientists”
http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/obama-brain-control-map
https://www.whitehouse.gov/BRAIN

 Rolf Maurer is a member of the Fairfield County Green Party and a former candidate for Stamford Mayor