It has been years since I read Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, but damned if I don't feel as if I'm living it, these days.
If you've never read this classic tale of bureaucratic stupidity and the dehumanizing oppression often exerted by governments, I'll give you the going-from-memory-nutshell version:
The main character is continuously being told by members of the bureaucracy that he is guilty...they just never get around to telling him what he's guilty of, mostly because no one is quite sure, but the paperwork all seems to be in order.
Eventually our hero is stripped of his humanity, becoming smaller and smaller after each encounter with the mindless bureaucracy until he literally transforms into a cockroach.
I was reminded of the overriding theme of Kafka's masterpiece yesterday, when, for something like the fourth time in the last three years, I found myself standing in line at the NY State Department of Motor Vehicles in yet another futile attempt to prove that, yes, I do fucking exist, you Assholes!
Showing posts with label PTSD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PTSD. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Thursday, June 07, 2012
A Night In The Hospital...
This Lunatic was just released from a hospital yesterday.
Well, maybe not "released", as what happened was that I went to a hospital, and once I felt better I demanded they let me out, but you get the idea; I was in the hospital overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday morning.
The first thing I'd like to say is "Thank You" to the staff at Staten Island University Hospital. You folks do a bang-up job, and probably never get any credit for it. Especially when you have to deal with the world's worst patient (i.e. Me), although the part where you woke me up from a sound, bed-wetting slumber in order to give me a sedative still sorta-kinda mystifies.
Well, maybe not "released", as what happened was that I went to a hospital, and once I felt better I demanded they let me out, but you get the idea; I was in the hospital overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday morning.
The first thing I'd like to say is "Thank You" to the staff at Staten Island University Hospital. You folks do a bang-up job, and probably never get any credit for it. Especially when you have to deal with the world's worst patient (i.e. Me), although the part where you woke me up from a sound, bed-wetting slumber in order to give me a sedative still sorta-kinda mystifies.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Donald Duck Grabbed My Tits! Gimme 50 Grand!
People have entirely too much free time on their hands. Especially lawyers.
Event happened two years ago. Only gets reported now...via lawsuit.
Evidence? Doesn't appear to be any. At least no one is saying "there's photographs" or video. Even in 2008 cellphone cameras had video capability, and let's face it, people walk around Disneyworld with camcorders all the time. I'm not saying security tapes from two years ago still exist, but Disney is simply lousy with security cameras, isn't it? Are there any eyewitnesses?
Police report? Never even bothered to call the cops, or alert Disney security...to a sexual assault?
And only asking for 50k? Is that an indication that your case is weak? I should think that if you could definitively prove that Walt Disney hired sexual predators to molest the guests, you'd be asking for millions, wouldn't you? Fifty grand doesn't even begin to cover the legal bills, I should think.
I have no evidence to say this did or didn't happen, but I'm calling bullshit on it. Just an opinion, but it just doesn't pass the smell test. I think this is a woman who is either a bald-faced liar, or someone who might be trying to pass a probably-innocent, or easy-to-manipulate/misunderstand happenstance into a personal gain.
But, there was a Disney employee convicted of doing just this sort of thing, and 24 other complaints in the last 6 years (if you ran a business and got only 24 complaints about ANYTHING -- let alone alleged sexual abuse -- over a six year span, you should be congratulated for your exemplary performance), and so the only possible route this suit can go (to my untrained legal mind)is to try to convince a judge that a) there's a pattern of such behavior, which constitutes a threat to public safety, and b) that Disney was aware of such threats,and did nothing to protect the general public from sexual predators in costumes.
Get that to a judge stupid enough to pass that onto a jury full of people too stupid to get out of jury duty, and you just might have yourself a payday...or force a settlement.
I also have to take issue with the assertion that the plaintiff suffered Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome from having been allegedly groped. I have suffered from PTSD for a very long time, but that was only because I managed by mere seconds to have exited a building about to be hit by a hijacked 757 which flew directly over my fucking head. There are men and women returning from overseas service who have lost limbs, friends, and have seen things no human being should who will suffer horribly because of it.
Trust me, your "He grabbed my tit and I had a nightmare about it" routine doesn't even come close to being PTSD. Whatever "Mental Health Professional" made that diagnosis should have her (it's probably a Her) license stripped, and be horsewhipped in the public square. When a serious mental health condition like PTSD is (allegedly) abused and probably misrepresented in this way, you hurt everyone who really does suffer from the effects of this terrible syndrome.
Then there are the genuine victims of sexual attacks to think about. How do you think a probably-bullshit suit like this makes actual rape victims feel? How many legitimate attacks will go unreported, or not taken seriously, because this womanmightbe yetone more exampleofsomeone exploiting the legal system with a false allegation?
Perhaps she should be horsewhipped in the public square, too. I've seen a (really bad) picture of this woman, and I wouldn't grope her if she paid me to.
UPDATE: Read the comments in this article from the Daily Mail. People seem to think the Plaintiff is full of shit.
Event happened two years ago. Only gets reported now...via lawsuit.
Evidence? Doesn't appear to be any. At least no one is saying "there's photographs" or video. Even in 2008 cellphone cameras had video capability, and let's face it, people walk around Disneyworld with camcorders all the time. I'm not saying security tapes from two years ago still exist, but Disney is simply lousy with security cameras, isn't it? Are there any eyewitnesses?
Police report? Never even bothered to call the cops, or alert Disney security...to a sexual assault?
And only asking for 50k? Is that an indication that your case is weak? I should think that if you could definitively prove that Walt Disney hired sexual predators to molest the guests, you'd be asking for millions, wouldn't you? Fifty grand doesn't even begin to cover the legal bills, I should think.
I have no evidence to say this did or didn't happen, but I'm calling bullshit on it. Just an opinion, but it just doesn't pass the smell test. I think this is a woman who is either a bald-faced liar, or someone who might be trying to pass a probably-innocent, or easy-to-manipulate/misunderstand happenstance into a personal gain.
But, there was a Disney employee convicted of doing just this sort of thing, and 24 other complaints in the last 6 years (if you ran a business and got only 24 complaints about ANYTHING -- let alone alleged sexual abuse -- over a six year span, you should be congratulated for your exemplary performance), and so the only possible route this suit can go (to my untrained legal mind)is to try to convince a judge that a) there's a pattern of such behavior, which constitutes a threat to public safety, and b) that Disney was aware of such threats,and did nothing to protect the general public from sexual predators in costumes.
Get that to a judge stupid enough to pass that onto a jury full of people too stupid to get out of jury duty, and you just might have yourself a payday...or force a settlement.
I also have to take issue with the assertion that the plaintiff suffered Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome from having been allegedly groped. I have suffered from PTSD for a very long time, but that was only because I managed by mere seconds to have exited a building about to be hit by a hijacked 757 which flew directly over my fucking head. There are men and women returning from overseas service who have lost limbs, friends, and have seen things no human being should who will suffer horribly because of it.
Trust me, your "He grabbed my tit and I had a nightmare about it" routine doesn't even come close to being PTSD. Whatever "Mental Health Professional" made that diagnosis should have her (it's probably a Her) license stripped, and be horsewhipped in the public square. When a serious mental health condition like PTSD is (allegedly) abused and probably misrepresented in this way, you hurt everyone who really does suffer from the effects of this terrible syndrome.
Then there are the genuine victims of sexual attacks to think about. How do you think a probably-bullshit suit like this makes actual rape victims feel? How many legitimate attacks will go unreported, or not taken seriously, because this womanmightbe yetone more exampleofsomeone exploiting the legal system with a false allegation?
Perhaps she should be horsewhipped in the public square, too. I've seen a (really bad) picture of this woman, and I wouldn't grope her if she paid me to.
UPDATE: Read the comments in this article from the Daily Mail. People seem to think the Plaintiff is full of shit.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
"Jewish Money"
I would not have believed it, had I not read it. A democratic (small "d"intentional) Congressional Candidate calls his opponent out for taking campaign contributions from Jews. Are you serious? The party that worries that Hispanics might be racially-profiled apparently has no problem with open and obvious Anti-Semetism.
Against one of their own, too. Micheal Grimm is, nominally, a democrat challenging McMahon in a primary race.
Mike McMahon is a slimeball, and I'm ashamed that he's my Congressman (but I didn't vote for the POS). By comparison, his predecessor, Vito Fosella -- he of the DWI and Baby Momma --was a class fucking act. Had Vito managed to keep his pants zipped, and to call a fucking cab, he'd still be in office.
Now, one of the more amazing aspects of this Congressional race is that McMahon's opponents seem to be invisible. One of them, Micheal Grimm, is little more than a name on a sign in this neighborhood; he's never on television, you hardly ever see him or his name in the newspaper.
The other challenger, Micheal Allegretti, once flooded the airwaves with a commercial in which he never mentions his party affiliation. I have not seen that commercial, or anything Allegretti-related, for several months now. That tells me that these guys shot their bolts, Grimm never getting started, and Allegretti spending all his money running introduction-ads-with-no-information in fucking January-through-March ... and nothing since. I wrote about him, too, here and here.
The Staten Island GOP apparatus is so dysfunctional that it should probably be taken out and shot. It's dominated by cronyism, and if someone named "Molinari" isn't running for office, it's at a complete loss. The local Tea Party seems to be full of people I would eagerly cross the street to avoid -- what one might call the One-percenters, Buchannanites, or The Pantybunched Wing -- who have all the virtues of a broken clock; they might still be right twice a day only, but the rest of the time they're fucking useless and collecting dust. It's not that they're wrong on many issues, so much as it is them being such unattractive people; they whine, incessantly, and when they write articles, make blog posts,or a few dozen of them show up for a protest, you get the impression that someone with a 3rd-grade reading level is attempting to channel his inner Tom Paine. Listening to these people, one gets the distinct impression that they remember 1787 -- because they might have fucking been there. For the most part, these are the same people who remember when this island had dairy farms, and they had to walk to school through waist-high-snow, in bare feet, uphill, both ways, everything cost a nickle, the word "prostate"was never uttered in polite company, a lady never let her ankles show under her hoopskirt, and you could put a lawn jockey out in front of the house without having your racial beliefs, or taste, challenged or even questioned.
They tend to divide history into two distinct epochs; Before the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, and After-The-Bridge, when the Midwestern Music-Man Schtick of Staten Island was finally destroyed by the legions of "Guineas Crossing the Gangplank", as we say in these parts. The Staten Island Tea Party is probably a bigger waste of time for this very reason than watching yet another Obama-Potemkin "Recovery Summer" Speech at a government-funded factory that got stimulus funds to hire a buttload of workers to NOT produce any salable product (see: Chevy Volt, electric car batteries that don't actually exist, platinum-plated solar panels, etc). But I digress....
I guess what I'm getting to is that McMahon will probably win by default, and the double-standard will be forgotten in the aftermath of his victory -- a flagrant Anti-Semitic statement was made against American citizens exercising their rights to support the candidate of their choice, while McMahon and his party simultaneously court the illegal alien "vote" that is a sign of a coming Amnesty-by-another-name, and try to frighten them into the democratic fold with visions of Concentration Camps full of landscapers named "Manuel".
And there's nary a republican nor a real Tea Party to challenge him, and not a single voice in his own party was raised to rebuke him, or his campaign. A sad state of affairs, all around.
If blatant, but carefully-crafted, anti-Semitism from the Party of Diversity wasn't enough, we get the aptly-named Anthony Weiner putting on a five-star douchebag performance on the House floor. Weiner is little more than a second-rate machine politico with a voice and personality that could curdle motor oil...used motor oil. He's simply a Chuck Schumer-wanna-be who can't even match the sense of immediate revulsion one acquires as soon as Schumer's oily visage pollutes the television screen. Instead, Weiner engenders the slightly embarrassed and disgusted feeling one might associate with an enema. In keeping with the whole "Weiner" meme, he is what we used to refer to in Brooklyn as a Dildo -- a great big phony dick.
That virtuoso display of complete and utter bullshit had nothing to do with the health of the First Responders. Quite frankly, given the recent propensity of the local newspapers to run stories about firemen declared disabled by 9/11 lung problems who somehow manage to win Triathlons a decade later, and attach themselves to new lawsuits as a second job, the plight of some of those First Responders is beginning to look a bit contrived and exaggerated; many of them are now retired, and collecting huge pensions and lump sums from lawsuits and government payout plans. Here's another $7.5 billion that's going to people who are living quite well, thank you, and the few (relatively few) who are suffering serious long-term health problems probably have diamond-encrusted bedpans by now.
Here I am, having lost six years of my life to the after-effects of 9/11, and I've never seen -- nor been eligible for -- a solitary dime of any of this money,whether from the legal settlements, or the government handouts, because I wasn't a) a city worker who already had a gold-plated benefits package, and b) I was stupid enough to pay for my own medical insurance...instead of having that money extorted from the taxpayer, and c) One block north of the "cut-off point" when the towers actually fell. Am I glad that NYC has the finest Police and Firefighters in the world, and that they were available on 9/11? You bet your ass, I am. But you know what? In this day-in-age when the public unions are bankrupting governments all across the country with their pension and benefits packages, when is enough enough?
I used to think these guys deserved every penny they got. Now, after regularly seeing a shitload of them lining up at the local City Health Department offices for"9/11 testing" (yes, I'm still doing that, too), driving up in their restored vintage Mustangs, Custom Vans, Corvettes and Escalades, and talking about their (2nd this summer) weekend in Atlantic City or Vegas, the new "on-the-side" roofing business, the seven rounds of golf they shot this week, and the new 50" flatscreen in the bathroom -- next to the hot tub -- I'm not so sure some of them aren't scamming us.
(And yes,those are the subjects of the conversation these guys have while they're waiting for chest x-rays, a blood test, and a pile of paperwork for Workman's Comp).
Weiner's tirade was simply an opportunity to do what Republicans did to democrats for eight years, and wave the bloody shirt of 9/11 in their faces for a change. The fact that he's an asshole just took it to another level that makes you want to shit....but only after you've first beaten the snot out of Weiner. It's disingenuous, because Weiner doesn't really give a shit about sick firemen and cops; he's only thinking of running for Mayor after he's gets tossed out of Congress.
Anyways, now the entire country gets to see the genetic mistakes we've sent to Congress from this State, and it's enough to make you want to move to New Jersey, even if the taxes ARE higher.
Against one of their own, too. Micheal Grimm is, nominally, a democrat challenging McMahon in a primary race.
Mike McMahon is a slimeball, and I'm ashamed that he's my Congressman (but I didn't vote for the POS). By comparison, his predecessor, Vito Fosella -- he of the DWI and Baby Momma --was a class fucking act. Had Vito managed to keep his pants zipped, and to call a fucking cab, he'd still be in office.
Now, one of the more amazing aspects of this Congressional race is that McMahon's opponents seem to be invisible. One of them, Micheal Grimm, is little more than a name on a sign in this neighborhood; he's never on television, you hardly ever see him or his name in the newspaper.
The other challenger, Micheal Allegretti, once flooded the airwaves with a commercial in which he never mentions his party affiliation. I have not seen that commercial, or anything Allegretti-related, for several months now. That tells me that these guys shot their bolts, Grimm never getting started, and Allegretti spending all his money running introduction-ads-with-no-information in fucking January-through-March ... and nothing since. I wrote about him, too, here and here.
The Staten Island GOP apparatus is so dysfunctional that it should probably be taken out and shot. It's dominated by cronyism, and if someone named "Molinari" isn't running for office, it's at a complete loss. The local Tea Party seems to be full of people I would eagerly cross the street to avoid -- what one might call the One-percenters, Buchannanites, or The Pantybunched Wing -- who have all the virtues of a broken clock; they might still be right twice a day only, but the rest of the time they're fucking useless and collecting dust. It's not that they're wrong on many issues, so much as it is them being such unattractive people; they whine, incessantly, and when they write articles, make blog posts,or a few dozen of them show up for a protest, you get the impression that someone with a 3rd-grade reading level is attempting to channel his inner Tom Paine. Listening to these people, one gets the distinct impression that they remember 1787 -- because they might have fucking been there. For the most part, these are the same people who remember when this island had dairy farms, and they had to walk to school through waist-high-snow, in bare feet, uphill, both ways, everything cost a nickle, the word "prostate"was never uttered in polite company, a lady never let her ankles show under her hoopskirt, and you could put a lawn jockey out in front of the house without having your racial beliefs, or taste, challenged or even questioned.
They tend to divide history into two distinct epochs; Before the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, and After-The-Bridge, when the Midwestern Music-Man Schtick of Staten Island was finally destroyed by the legions of "Guineas Crossing the Gangplank", as we say in these parts. The Staten Island Tea Party is probably a bigger waste of time for this very reason than watching yet another Obama-Potemkin "Recovery Summer" Speech at a government-funded factory that got stimulus funds to hire a buttload of workers to NOT produce any salable product (see: Chevy Volt, electric car batteries that don't actually exist, platinum-plated solar panels, etc). But I digress....
I guess what I'm getting to is that McMahon will probably win by default, and the double-standard will be forgotten in the aftermath of his victory -- a flagrant Anti-Semitic statement was made against American citizens exercising their rights to support the candidate of their choice, while McMahon and his party simultaneously court the illegal alien "vote" that is a sign of a coming Amnesty-by-another-name, and try to frighten them into the democratic fold with visions of Concentration Camps full of landscapers named "Manuel".
And there's nary a republican nor a real Tea Party to challenge him, and not a single voice in his own party was raised to rebuke him, or his campaign. A sad state of affairs, all around.
If blatant, but carefully-crafted, anti-Semitism from the Party of Diversity wasn't enough, we get the aptly-named Anthony Weiner putting on a five-star douchebag performance on the House floor. Weiner is little more than a second-rate machine politico with a voice and personality that could curdle motor oil...used motor oil. He's simply a Chuck Schumer-wanna-be who can't even match the sense of immediate revulsion one acquires as soon as Schumer's oily visage pollutes the television screen. Instead, Weiner engenders the slightly embarrassed and disgusted feeling one might associate with an enema. In keeping with the whole "Weiner" meme, he is what we used to refer to in Brooklyn as a Dildo -- a great big phony dick.
That virtuoso display of complete and utter bullshit had nothing to do with the health of the First Responders. Quite frankly, given the recent propensity of the local newspapers to run stories about firemen declared disabled by 9/11 lung problems who somehow manage to win Triathlons a decade later, and attach themselves to new lawsuits as a second job, the plight of some of those First Responders is beginning to look a bit contrived and exaggerated; many of them are now retired, and collecting huge pensions and lump sums from lawsuits and government payout plans. Here's another $7.5 billion that's going to people who are living quite well, thank you, and the few (relatively few) who are suffering serious long-term health problems probably have diamond-encrusted bedpans by now.
Here I am, having lost six years of my life to the after-effects of 9/11, and I've never seen -- nor been eligible for -- a solitary dime of any of this money,whether from the legal settlements, or the government handouts, because I wasn't a) a city worker who already had a gold-plated benefits package, and b) I was stupid enough to pay for my own medical insurance...instead of having that money extorted from the taxpayer, and c) One block north of the "cut-off point" when the towers actually fell. Am I glad that NYC has the finest Police and Firefighters in the world, and that they were available on 9/11? You bet your ass, I am. But you know what? In this day-in-age when the public unions are bankrupting governments all across the country with their pension and benefits packages, when is enough enough?
I used to think these guys deserved every penny they got. Now, after regularly seeing a shitload of them lining up at the local City Health Department offices for"9/11 testing" (yes, I'm still doing that, too), driving up in their restored vintage Mustangs, Custom Vans, Corvettes and Escalades, and talking about their (2nd this summer) weekend in Atlantic City or Vegas, the new "on-the-side" roofing business, the seven rounds of golf they shot this week, and the new 50" flatscreen in the bathroom -- next to the hot tub -- I'm not so sure some of them aren't scamming us.
(And yes,those are the subjects of the conversation these guys have while they're waiting for chest x-rays, a blood test, and a pile of paperwork for Workman's Comp).
Weiner's tirade was simply an opportunity to do what Republicans did to democrats for eight years, and wave the bloody shirt of 9/11 in their faces for a change. The fact that he's an asshole just took it to another level that makes you want to shit....but only after you've first beaten the snot out of Weiner. It's disingenuous, because Weiner doesn't really give a shit about sick firemen and cops; he's only thinking of running for Mayor after he's gets tossed out of Congress.
Anyways, now the entire country gets to see the genetic mistakes we've sent to Congress from this State, and it's enough to make you want to move to New Jersey, even if the taxes ARE higher.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
The Pentagon Shooting...And Healthcare...
By now you've heard the name John Patrick Bedell, the now-dead man accused of shooting two Pentagon Police Officers (who knew the Pentagon had it's own police force, and why?). who was himself killed in the ensuing gunfight.
Naturally, the Homeland Security morons were right there to assure us all that an attack at the Pentagon wasn't related to terrorism, that there was no terrorist plot, and that these were the actions of a lone psychotic.
These were the same words they used to describe the Fort Hood Shooter and the Pantybomber, you'll recall.
Only this time, Homeland Security just happened to get lucky (hey, it happens from time to time), and someone actually came along who managed to fit their pre-generated profile of the White Male Weekend-Warrior Terrorist. But, this post isn't about bashing Homeland Security any more than it needs to be. It's about the shooter.
It turns out that John Patrick Bedell was bi-polar. Mentally ill. It also turns out that his doctor and his parents were quite concerned for his safety, and worried about what he might do. They informed the authorities that their son was out there, somewhere, and possibly dangerous. He was known to have a drug problem (He was smoking pot. Yeah, that always works -- anti-depressants and marijuana. Just what you need to defeat depression; another depressant) on top of his disorder, and was known to law enforcement in his hometown.
Well, now we know what he was capable of doing. How many people have to say "this guy is fucked up..." before someone decides that the current regime of outpatient treatment just isn't enough for some people?
In hindsight, people are now taking his internet pronouncements seriously. They didn't when he was alive, because that would have meant recognizing a problem, and they might have been expected to do something about it. Let's face it; whatever he wrote on the Web was probably the same stuff he repeated, ad nauseum, to his family, doctor and whatever friends he had, it was probably all he ever talked about. No one took him seriously then, and they probably dismissed him as some harmless kook spouting conspiracy theories on everything from 9/11 to the manipulation of the stock market.
Apparently, Mr. Bedell had been under a regime of "treatment" for a very long time. I put that term in quotes for a reason; most psycho-therapeutic treatment nowadays consists of "take this pill..." and endless $400-45-minute-hours of "tell me what your mother was like..." in which the patient gets to ramble on about whatever is on their mind that day, and the therapist simply nods her head and asks often-irrelevant questions. This form of therapy takes it as axiomatic that the patient has his own answers, and that if you let them talk enough, they'll eventually stumble upon them.
For some people, usually the smart ones, this works. They eventually come to some understanding of what their problems are, and they figure out some strategy for straightening their lives out. Then there is the especially dense crowd, for whom all the talking does nothing, and they require direct instructions or advice from a therapist or psychiatrist...and then they don't get it (that violates the underlying premise of talk therapy, you see!), and wind up in therapy forever.
For other people, this routine simply never works. For people like John Patrick Bedell, the combination of feel-good-self-esteem-and-talk-based psychiatry and prescription drugs often doesn't begin to examine, or even identify, the underlying causes of their particular issues. They don't get much benefit from therapy, and the drugs usually just serve the purpose of taking the edge off just enough...something that keeps these folks from slitting their wrists or from driving a semi-trailer into an Arby's, or something. They are either unable to describe what they're feeling, or worse, they can easily recognize what's wrong with them, but they have no ambition whatsoever to change it. The worst of all are the people who consider their "issues" to be virtues: they are in possession of some great truth, or hold some greater distinction which causes the rest of the world to have a problem with them; not the other way around.
Bedell's internet ranting about a certain Colonel James Sabow -- considered a key player in many 9/11 Troofer conspiracy theories -- probably explains why he tried to shoot his way into the Pentagon; he was probably convinced that it was the only way to get at some version of truth. Maybe, he even sought fame and fortune in the attempt -- I don't know. But, I can promise you, that people who think this way don't just wake up one morning and decide to do the deed; it's usually all they can talk about for weeks, maybe months, before they actually do it. The obsession literally consumes their lives. Where was his doctor? Where was law enforcement after his parents reported him? This is a critical stage in the story, and in his treatment.
A doctor who knows that his bi-polar patient -- probably with some form of severe obsessive compulsive disorder on top of it -- is smoking marijuana while under the influence of anti-depressants, and who is probably telling anyone who will listen about his insane conspiracy theories and determination to get to the bottom of it all, if that doctor does not turn his patient into the police for his illegal activity, or better yet, have his patient committed for his own safety, he or she is derelict in his duty as a physician.
Who knows just how long this "physician" was "treating" Mr. Bedell. It perhaps it was too good a cash cow to endanger with something stupid....like helping his patient get better, or getting him off the street.
John Bedell went to the Pentagon to do one, or probably both, of the following:
a. find out the 'truth' about 9/11, and
b. failing that, becoming a martyr to the 'cause' (9/11 Troofer-ism), while simultaneously ending his own, internal conflict.
Then again, maybe there was no help for John Bedell if he had gone that far. The sad fact is that for many folks with mental illnesses there never is any, despite the highest caliber of care and professionalism from his physicians. So, what does a crackpot shooting up the Pentagon have to do with healthcare?
Having been treated for a mental illness or two in my lifetime, I'm far more likely to sympathize with John Bedell. I don't condone anything he's done; Shooting at police officers, or attempting "suicide by cop" is a stupid thing to do. It solves nothing, and is far more likely to inflict pain on innocents, needlessly. That's selfish. I also don't go for the "Rambo" mentality that believes you can shoot your way into a heavily-defended objective just because you saw Bruce Willis or Sly do it a few times; if you think this way, you're delusional and a danger to yourself and everyone else.
The question I'm asking is this: at what point -- after how many John Patrick Bedells and Joseph Andrew Stacks (the I.R.S. Kamikaze in Texas) -- do we begin to realize that there are legions of people out there who are suffering from largely-controllable mental disorders that are ticking time bombs? The care they get is often inadequate, spends too much time on pap sociology and political correctness, instead of on real medicine, and it isn't always geared towards doing much more than putting money in someone else's pocket.
Since everyones all up in the air about Health Care Reform, how about we start somewhere where a difference can be made almost immediately? Most people suffering from depression, bi-polar disorders, stress-and-trauma-related disorders can be treated effectively, and cheaply, and way before they reach a critical mass to play hide-and-seek-with-bullets with a bunch of cops. They also make up a large percentage of people who are typically treated for a range of associated physical problems; heart problems, overeating, alcoholism, drug abuse, child-and-spousal abuse, and those just start the list off. Fix those problems by changing the way the medical profession, and society, views the mentally ill, and you'd go a long way towards fixing many of the underlying issues of our "Health Care Crisis".
Many fewer people would be shot at, or have small airplanes launched at them if you did.
Just don't let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid do it.
The reason we probably won't overhaul the mental health care business is because it isn't "sexy". It's not a cause du jour like AIDS, Childhood Obesity and Breast Cancer. You'll never see Scarlett Johansson or something wear a ribbon for Mental Health on a red carpet. But, it probably does just as much, if not more, damage to people and society than all three of those other maladies put together. Until someone decides that mental health issues warrant as much ink, publicity and attention than these other things, we'll see a steady stream of John Patrick Bedells on the evening news.
Shame on us.
Naturally, the Homeland Security morons were right there to assure us all that an attack at the Pentagon wasn't related to terrorism, that there was no terrorist plot, and that these were the actions of a lone psychotic.
These were the same words they used to describe the Fort Hood Shooter and the Pantybomber, you'll recall.
Only this time, Homeland Security just happened to get lucky (hey, it happens from time to time), and someone actually came along who managed to fit their pre-generated profile of the White Male Weekend-Warrior Terrorist. But, this post isn't about bashing Homeland Security any more than it needs to be. It's about the shooter.
It turns out that John Patrick Bedell was bi-polar. Mentally ill. It also turns out that his doctor and his parents were quite concerned for his safety, and worried about what he might do. They informed the authorities that their son was out there, somewhere, and possibly dangerous. He was known to have a drug problem (He was smoking pot. Yeah, that always works -- anti-depressants and marijuana. Just what you need to defeat depression; another depressant) on top of his disorder, and was known to law enforcement in his hometown.
Well, now we know what he was capable of doing. How many people have to say "this guy is fucked up..." before someone decides that the current regime of outpatient treatment just isn't enough for some people?
In hindsight, people are now taking his internet pronouncements seriously. They didn't when he was alive, because that would have meant recognizing a problem, and they might have been expected to do something about it. Let's face it; whatever he wrote on the Web was probably the same stuff he repeated, ad nauseum, to his family, doctor and whatever friends he had, it was probably all he ever talked about. No one took him seriously then, and they probably dismissed him as some harmless kook spouting conspiracy theories on everything from 9/11 to the manipulation of the stock market.
Apparently, Mr. Bedell had been under a regime of "treatment" for a very long time. I put that term in quotes for a reason; most psycho-therapeutic treatment nowadays consists of "take this pill..." and endless $400-45-minute-hours of "tell me what your mother was like..." in which the patient gets to ramble on about whatever is on their mind that day, and the therapist simply nods her head and asks often-irrelevant questions. This form of therapy takes it as axiomatic that the patient has his own answers, and that if you let them talk enough, they'll eventually stumble upon them.
For some people, usually the smart ones, this works. They eventually come to some understanding of what their problems are, and they figure out some strategy for straightening their lives out. Then there is the especially dense crowd, for whom all the talking does nothing, and they require direct instructions or advice from a therapist or psychiatrist...and then they don't get it (that violates the underlying premise of talk therapy, you see!), and wind up in therapy forever.
For other people, this routine simply never works. For people like John Patrick Bedell, the combination of feel-good-self-esteem-and-talk-based psychiatry and prescription drugs often doesn't begin to examine, or even identify, the underlying causes of their particular issues. They don't get much benefit from therapy, and the drugs usually just serve the purpose of taking the edge off just enough...something that keeps these folks from slitting their wrists or from driving a semi-trailer into an Arby's, or something. They are either unable to describe what they're feeling, or worse, they can easily recognize what's wrong with them, but they have no ambition whatsoever to change it. The worst of all are the people who consider their "issues" to be virtues: they are in possession of some great truth, or hold some greater distinction which causes the rest of the world to have a problem with them; not the other way around.
Bedell's internet ranting about a certain Colonel James Sabow -- considered a key player in many 9/11 Troofer conspiracy theories -- probably explains why he tried to shoot his way into the Pentagon; he was probably convinced that it was the only way to get at some version of truth. Maybe, he even sought fame and fortune in the attempt -- I don't know. But, I can promise you, that people who think this way don't just wake up one morning and decide to do the deed; it's usually all they can talk about for weeks, maybe months, before they actually do it. The obsession literally consumes their lives. Where was his doctor? Where was law enforcement after his parents reported him? This is a critical stage in the story, and in his treatment.
A doctor who knows that his bi-polar patient -- probably with some form of severe obsessive compulsive disorder on top of it -- is smoking marijuana while under the influence of anti-depressants, and who is probably telling anyone who will listen about his insane conspiracy theories and determination to get to the bottom of it all, if that doctor does not turn his patient into the police for his illegal activity, or better yet, have his patient committed for his own safety, he or she is derelict in his duty as a physician.
Who knows just how long this "physician" was "treating" Mr. Bedell. It perhaps it was too good a cash cow to endanger with something stupid....like helping his patient get better, or getting him off the street.
John Bedell went to the Pentagon to do one, or probably both, of the following:
a. find out the 'truth' about 9/11, and
b. failing that, becoming a martyr to the 'cause' (9/11 Troofer-ism), while simultaneously ending his own, internal conflict.
Then again, maybe there was no help for John Bedell if he had gone that far. The sad fact is that for many folks with mental illnesses there never is any, despite the highest caliber of care and professionalism from his physicians. So, what does a crackpot shooting up the Pentagon have to do with healthcare?
Having been treated for a mental illness or two in my lifetime, I'm far more likely to sympathize with John Bedell. I don't condone anything he's done; Shooting at police officers, or attempting "suicide by cop" is a stupid thing to do. It solves nothing, and is far more likely to inflict pain on innocents, needlessly. That's selfish. I also don't go for the "Rambo" mentality that believes you can shoot your way into a heavily-defended objective just because you saw Bruce Willis or Sly do it a few times; if you think this way, you're delusional and a danger to yourself and everyone else.
The question I'm asking is this: at what point -- after how many John Patrick Bedells and Joseph Andrew Stacks (the I.R.S. Kamikaze in Texas) -- do we begin to realize that there are legions of people out there who are suffering from largely-controllable mental disorders that are ticking time bombs? The care they get is often inadequate, spends too much time on pap sociology and political correctness, instead of on real medicine, and it isn't always geared towards doing much more than putting money in someone else's pocket.
Since everyones all up in the air about Health Care Reform, how about we start somewhere where a difference can be made almost immediately? Most people suffering from depression, bi-polar disorders, stress-and-trauma-related disorders can be treated effectively, and cheaply, and way before they reach a critical mass to play hide-and-seek-with-bullets with a bunch of cops. They also make up a large percentage of people who are typically treated for a range of associated physical problems; heart problems, overeating, alcoholism, drug abuse, child-and-spousal abuse, and those just start the list off. Fix those problems by changing the way the medical profession, and society, views the mentally ill, and you'd go a long way towards fixing many of the underlying issues of our "Health Care Crisis".
Many fewer people would be shot at, or have small airplanes launched at them if you did.
Just don't let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid do it.
The reason we probably won't overhaul the mental health care business is because it isn't "sexy". It's not a cause du jour like AIDS, Childhood Obesity and Breast Cancer. You'll never see Scarlett Johansson or something wear a ribbon for Mental Health on a red carpet. But, it probably does just as much, if not more, damage to people and society than all three of those other maladies put together. Until someone decides that mental health issues warrant as much ink, publicity and attention than these other things, we'll see a steady stream of John Patrick Bedells on the evening news.
Shame on us.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
On Lunatics and God...
For those of you who may be new to this blog, there's a specific reason why it's called The Lunatic's Asylum. This will be pretty long, but bear with me; I promise, there is a point.
Thanks to nineteen Islamonazis with a death wish and an inability to get laid, I found myself under the nose of a hijacked airliner as it was deliberately slammed into One World Trade Center. Soon after, my life and behavior began to change in ways which, at first, were not very noticeable, but which eventually transformed me in ways I would never have thought possible.
With the mental scars came the mental issues: Post-traumatic stress disorder, Anxiety disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Clinical Depression, Agoraphobia.
Any of these on their own can be a terrible burden on anyone. To acquire them all at once can be overwhelming. Every day was a struggle to simply "hold on", as every waking moment seemed as if were to be the last. I walked a precipice all the time; I was in sheer terror every minute of every day, for no reason that could I could discern. I was hyper-alert at all times. Sleeping was a problem, and I could often go three or four days without sleep, until sheer exhaustion brought unconsciousness. Eventually, the pains began. A constant, dull ache in the center of your chest that grows worse or better depending on your ability to ignore it. Multiple visits to the Emergency Room, one of which resulted in Five Days on the Cardiac Ward, and no one could find a physical problem. I soon began to seek solitude. The smaller and darker the refuge, the better it was. Black curtains went up on every window in the house, and when a blacked-out living room or bedroom became too big and uncomfortable, I started looking for smaller and more-enclosed places in which to hide; bathrooms, closets. I could spend hours in them, always in the dark.
I would just call in sick for work. Sometimes, I might take an entire week off. I'd make up any excuse I could, and this inability to do what was needed to earn a living depressed me to no end: I couldn't work. I wanted to -- but I just couldn't leave the house; it was too dangerous out there, it made me too uncomfortable, I would get to the corner, and turn right around and run back. Leaving the house involved a complex ritual; I would place folded up index cards in my pockets and shoes, with my name, address and contact information on them -- just in case something happened to me and they only found my body parts -- at least they'd know who they used to belong to and next of kin. Then I started carrying my medical records in my briefcase -- just in case I wasn't dismembered but injured badly enough so as not to be able to speak. I had to plan my travel in such a way so that wherever I went, I would never be more than 10-15 minutes from a hospital. I would always avoid bridges and crowded places like train terminals or bus stations, if I could. It made going anywhere incredibly difficult -- I would be super late for everything, and if I couldn't adjust the route to fit all that criteria, I just wouldn't go.
It became too obvious to deny anymore, and I sought treatment. Treatment, unfortunately, came with a lot of drugs. And, Oh Joy! Oh Rapture! you often have to experiment with drugs, combinations of drugs and levels of dosage before you find a regimen that works for you. Which is always a lot of fun; especially when you pop a pill and five minutes later are literally bouncing off the walls with sheer manic energy for the next 24 hours, and to counteract, you get a really nifty tranquilizer which makes you nauseous, and they have to yank that away because you might puke in your sleep and choke to death. I went through four or five meds in combo, keeping some, chucking others, before we found the two that 'worked' for me (i.e. either knocked me out so I would sleep for 18-20 hours a day, or was capable of making me forget the pain and fear for an hour or two after I took it).
Eventually, I wouldn't even leave my own house...for anything. I pretty much didn't for the better part of three years. Three years in a darkened house, sometimes in a closet, always in the dark, I would only venture outside for food and cigarettes and to keep medical appointments, dodging from tree to tree, and trying to avoid being seen, as if I were a soldier in some kind of house-house fight. There was the one time when I took a really bold leap and decided that staying in New York City -- with all of it's reminders of 9/11 -- was a living Hell; I drugged myself up (lots of Zoloft, lots of Xanax, and lots and lots of Absolut) and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. I needed to leave the Big Apple, my birthplace, the place where all my friends and family were, something fierce. I felt I would have died if I hadn't.
It didn't work out the way I had planned it, mostly because I wasn't a well man. I probably did more damage to myself, but that's par for the course with some of these issues; you hit absolute rock-bottom, often painfully. You know what you're doing, you know what not to do, but you can't stop yourself. Things got awfully bad: I was even homeless for a spell, and the only thing left to do was to come back to New York. My family had never understood what was happening to me(that's fairly a common phenomenon), and was never much of a support (but that's my problem) -- but they were all I had left.
And then I vegetated for another couple of years.
In the meantime, my career was ruined. Even if I could get over the mental issues, I had been out of work for a couple of years, and in an industry where currency is everything, that's not good. Also, technology has advanced, and there was a reduced need for manpower. What jobs were left in the field were being shipped overseas, or being moved to godawful places like North Dakota and Delaware. It didn't help that I was brutally honest about why I had been out of work for so long; see how many second interviews you get when you tell people you've been treated for a mental illness. The insurance money ran out, and then my money ran out, and I owe everyone on the planet, it seems. I'll probably never get out from under my debts. I can forget paying for more schooling to get those "qualifications" everyone wants. I'm chronically unemployed, and the jobs that I do find never last for very long; I either get frustrated and quit because it isn't what I want to do, or I find something I want to do, but they don't need me permanently. Full-time employment is almost impossible to get: I could do most any job I set my mind to do, but nowadays people want qualifications up the ying-yang, which is not so much a way to get the best qualified people as much as it is to discourage minorities from interviewing for jobs they aren't going to get in the first place and then filing discrimination lawsuits when they don't get them.
It's a constant battle, trying to sort yourself out when you're laboring with these sorts of problems. But, I've been working on them for years now, one thing at a time. I started on the PTSD and Anxiety first; haven't had a panic attack or a nightmare involving airliners and flaming cityscapes for a good long while now. Then the Agoraphobia -- started getting out more, walking, playing with my nephews, eventually, getting up the nerve to get on public transportation or cross bridges again. The OCD? Getting somewhat better, and I don't carry a briefcase with medical records anymore, nor do I use hospitals as waypoints. I do, occasionally, need to "hide", but that's not a response to anxiety anymore; it's more a matter of comfort -- when I need to relax, I want to do it in solitude and quiet, and you could say "I've come out of the closet"...
Depression, however, is the killer. If there was ever anything you might wish to inflict on a blood enemy, someone you truly despised and detested and wanted to inflict the worst upon, then pray they get stricken with Depression. It is truly a paralyzer. It can often put a person in a state of complete and utter inertia. It saps the will, it breaks the spirit, it is perhaps the Worst Thing Ever Created. You, the person gradually disappear, one piece at a time falling into a pit of dark despair, a little more of you gone today, another tomorrow. And you can't stop it, even as you're totally aware it is happening. The really amazing -- and truly-frightening thing -- about it all, is that it's your own mind that does it all to you. The Human Mind is perhaps the most dangerous weapon in existence. You are under a constant assault from yourself. Your brain doesn't 'shut off', and you are compelled to relive the same traumas, the same mistakes, the same issues over and over again, and each time the process starts, you become even less of a person. It takes everything that is YOU and eats away at it like acid. You start to feel hollow, aimless, with no ambition, no apparent purpose. Some people fall in deep enough to kill themselves, some -- like the guy who crashed his pane into the IRS building this past week --decide to take others with them.
For me, it was matter of getting the right information,and figuring out what was happening to me. The physical symptoms, understanding the mechanisms and symptomology, learning what the disease was, what it did, and why it happens. I'm better now, much better, but the depression always comes back. It makes me angry, it makes me bitter, it makes me snarky and sarcastic.
And you get to read it. It's like another form of Tourette's Syndrome. Go back and look at some older posts, and you'll see the effects of mental illness, drinking, SSRI's and plain old CRAZY have had over the years.
Anyways, the battle against any of these things is never truly "won". You may be able to control your symptoms for a while, maybe even many years, but at some point in your life these things will return to haunt you again. They never go away. You will need to learn to live by different rules so that your issues don't consume you. Often, this means changes that are difficult and painful, and result in you losing some of the things, activities and people that meant something to you.
You just have to be able to throw things away. You have to be able to say "No, I don't want to keep this, it's not worth having", because if you don't, you're dead. There is only one destination at the end of Depression and so you have to go out and do what must be done to see that doesn't happen -- confront the problem, solve the problem -- do whatever you need to do.
Recently, I have been extremely nasty on the subject of religion. It has upset some readers, who have found my comments extremely rude and demeaning. Those comments cannot be taken back, and they won't be; I still believe religion is a crock and has created more problems than it has ever solved, but I could have been a lot more careful and respectful in how I expressed my feelings on the subject (it's funny, however, how those who complained the most apparently had no problem when I was having a go at Islam -- it's only when I start talking about Other Invisible Man from the Desert that they all get their noses out of joint, but that's a post for another day).
So, I apologize to you Bible Thumpers, but NOT for what was said -- only for it's condescending and insulting tone. I will now confront my issues with religion, and hopefully I will overcome them, probably by ignoring them. I can promise you that it won't, as some have suggested, involve me getting washed in the blood of the lamb or me doing any praying. It'll be more in the vein of figuring out just why it is that I'm hostile to the very idea of faith. When I get the answer, I'll post it here, and another of my great internal battles -- the Question of "Does God exist, and if so, why is She such a Cast-Iron Bitch?" might finally be answered, and I will be one step closer to the goal of complete sanity.
Wait a minute, I think I have it! Maybe it was because faith is what motivated nineteen morons to do something so savage that it has ruined my life that has given me the idea that not only is faith dangerous, when placed in the hands of mouth-breathing morons, it's downright deadly.
You can keep your extremely-twisted explanations about "mysterious plans"and how even a "Loving God" can allow 3,000 murders (Hell, She allowed the Holocaust, didn't She? September 11th must have been Bush League to Her, right?), or how such a thoughtful and caring deity could even invent, and then inflict, things like PTSD and Clinical Depression on those It loves; that's pretty fucking sadistic. Maybe it could explain how my being deprived of my sanity, nine years of my life, my career, my fortune, my property, a lot of good women and good friends, is supposed to make me a better person or bringing some benefit to the world?
Perhaps having my brain chemistry possibly altered by ever-increasing dosages of drugs who's ultimate effects are complete mysteries to the doctors who prescribe them was all part of that Merciful God routine, too?
Your God doesn't exist -- there is no all-powerful, merciful, loving being. If there were this world would be quite a different place (spare me the Free Will routine!). If God exists, She is a capricious, vengeful, spiteful, disinterested, petty little beast. I could find far more proof for the existence of that sort of God than you can for the one you believe in. Either you're terribly mistaken about who and what God is or isn't, or you choose to ignore the evidence before your eyes.
I'll tone down the assault on your so-called faith when you finally have the courage to admit that faith doesn't necessarily save -- it far too often destroys.
Update: If there are readers out there who may be suffering from any of the disorders I've talked about here, and you need someone to help, or just listen to you, or maybe give you a little bit of hope and advice...I'm here for you. We're all-too-often dismissed as dangerous, or treated like lepers, and so if we don't help each other out, we're probably doomed, right? You can contact me at Excelsior502@gmail.com.
Thanks to nineteen Islamonazis with a death wish and an inability to get laid, I found myself under the nose of a hijacked airliner as it was deliberately slammed into One World Trade Center. Soon after, my life and behavior began to change in ways which, at first, were not very noticeable, but which eventually transformed me in ways I would never have thought possible.
With the mental scars came the mental issues: Post-traumatic stress disorder, Anxiety disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Clinical Depression, Agoraphobia.
Any of these on their own can be a terrible burden on anyone. To acquire them all at once can be overwhelming. Every day was a struggle to simply "hold on", as every waking moment seemed as if were to be the last. I walked a precipice all the time; I was in sheer terror every minute of every day, for no reason that could I could discern. I was hyper-alert at all times. Sleeping was a problem, and I could often go three or four days without sleep, until sheer exhaustion brought unconsciousness. Eventually, the pains began. A constant, dull ache in the center of your chest that grows worse or better depending on your ability to ignore it. Multiple visits to the Emergency Room, one of which resulted in Five Days on the Cardiac Ward, and no one could find a physical problem. I soon began to seek solitude. The smaller and darker the refuge, the better it was. Black curtains went up on every window in the house, and when a blacked-out living room or bedroom became too big and uncomfortable, I started looking for smaller and more-enclosed places in which to hide; bathrooms, closets. I could spend hours in them, always in the dark.
I would just call in sick for work. Sometimes, I might take an entire week off. I'd make up any excuse I could, and this inability to do what was needed to earn a living depressed me to no end: I couldn't work. I wanted to -- but I just couldn't leave the house; it was too dangerous out there, it made me too uncomfortable, I would get to the corner, and turn right around and run back. Leaving the house involved a complex ritual; I would place folded up index cards in my pockets and shoes, with my name, address and contact information on them -- just in case something happened to me and they only found my body parts -- at least they'd know who they used to belong to and next of kin. Then I started carrying my medical records in my briefcase -- just in case I wasn't dismembered but injured badly enough so as not to be able to speak. I had to plan my travel in such a way so that wherever I went, I would never be more than 10-15 minutes from a hospital. I would always avoid bridges and crowded places like train terminals or bus stations, if I could. It made going anywhere incredibly difficult -- I would be super late for everything, and if I couldn't adjust the route to fit all that criteria, I just wouldn't go.
It became too obvious to deny anymore, and I sought treatment. Treatment, unfortunately, came with a lot of drugs. And, Oh Joy! Oh Rapture! you often have to experiment with drugs, combinations of drugs and levels of dosage before you find a regimen that works for you. Which is always a lot of fun; especially when you pop a pill and five minutes later are literally bouncing off the walls with sheer manic energy for the next 24 hours, and to counteract, you get a really nifty tranquilizer which makes you nauseous, and they have to yank that away because you might puke in your sleep and choke to death. I went through four or five meds in combo, keeping some, chucking others, before we found the two that 'worked' for me (i.e. either knocked me out so I would sleep for 18-20 hours a day, or was capable of making me forget the pain and fear for an hour or two after I took it).
Eventually, I wouldn't even leave my own house...for anything. I pretty much didn't for the better part of three years. Three years in a darkened house, sometimes in a closet, always in the dark, I would only venture outside for food and cigarettes and to keep medical appointments, dodging from tree to tree, and trying to avoid being seen, as if I were a soldier in some kind of house-house fight. There was the one time when I took a really bold leap and decided that staying in New York City -- with all of it's reminders of 9/11 -- was a living Hell; I drugged myself up (lots of Zoloft, lots of Xanax, and lots and lots of Absolut) and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. I needed to leave the Big Apple, my birthplace, the place where all my friends and family were, something fierce. I felt I would have died if I hadn't.
It didn't work out the way I had planned it, mostly because I wasn't a well man. I probably did more damage to myself, but that's par for the course with some of these issues; you hit absolute rock-bottom, often painfully. You know what you're doing, you know what not to do, but you can't stop yourself. Things got awfully bad: I was even homeless for a spell, and the only thing left to do was to come back to New York. My family had never understood what was happening to me(that's fairly a common phenomenon), and was never much of a support (but that's my problem) -- but they were all I had left.
And then I vegetated for another couple of years.
In the meantime, my career was ruined. Even if I could get over the mental issues, I had been out of work for a couple of years, and in an industry where currency is everything, that's not good. Also, technology has advanced, and there was a reduced need for manpower. What jobs were left in the field were being shipped overseas, or being moved to godawful places like North Dakota and Delaware. It didn't help that I was brutally honest about why I had been out of work for so long; see how many second interviews you get when you tell people you've been treated for a mental illness. The insurance money ran out, and then my money ran out, and I owe everyone on the planet, it seems. I'll probably never get out from under my debts. I can forget paying for more schooling to get those "qualifications" everyone wants. I'm chronically unemployed, and the jobs that I do find never last for very long; I either get frustrated and quit because it isn't what I want to do, or I find something I want to do, but they don't need me permanently. Full-time employment is almost impossible to get: I could do most any job I set my mind to do, but nowadays people want qualifications up the ying-yang, which is not so much a way to get the best qualified people as much as it is to discourage minorities from interviewing for jobs they aren't going to get in the first place and then filing discrimination lawsuits when they don't get them.
It's a constant battle, trying to sort yourself out when you're laboring with these sorts of problems. But, I've been working on them for years now, one thing at a time. I started on the PTSD and Anxiety first; haven't had a panic attack or a nightmare involving airliners and flaming cityscapes for a good long while now. Then the Agoraphobia -- started getting out more, walking, playing with my nephews, eventually, getting up the nerve to get on public transportation or cross bridges again. The OCD? Getting somewhat better, and I don't carry a briefcase with medical records anymore, nor do I use hospitals as waypoints. I do, occasionally, need to "hide", but that's not a response to anxiety anymore; it's more a matter of comfort -- when I need to relax, I want to do it in solitude and quiet, and you could say "I've come out of the closet"...
Depression, however, is the killer. If there was ever anything you might wish to inflict on a blood enemy, someone you truly despised and detested and wanted to inflict the worst upon, then pray they get stricken with Depression. It is truly a paralyzer. It can often put a person in a state of complete and utter inertia. It saps the will, it breaks the spirit, it is perhaps the Worst Thing Ever Created. You, the person gradually disappear, one piece at a time falling into a pit of dark despair, a little more of you gone today, another tomorrow. And you can't stop it, even as you're totally aware it is happening. The really amazing -- and truly-frightening thing -- about it all, is that it's your own mind that does it all to you. The Human Mind is perhaps the most dangerous weapon in existence. You are under a constant assault from yourself. Your brain doesn't 'shut off', and you are compelled to relive the same traumas, the same mistakes, the same issues over and over again, and each time the process starts, you become even less of a person. It takes everything that is YOU and eats away at it like acid. You start to feel hollow, aimless, with no ambition, no apparent purpose. Some people fall in deep enough to kill themselves, some -- like the guy who crashed his pane into the IRS building this past week --decide to take others with them.
For me, it was matter of getting the right information,and figuring out what was happening to me. The physical symptoms, understanding the mechanisms and symptomology, learning what the disease was, what it did, and why it happens. I'm better now, much better, but the depression always comes back. It makes me angry, it makes me bitter, it makes me snarky and sarcastic.
And you get to read it. It's like another form of Tourette's Syndrome. Go back and look at some older posts, and you'll see the effects of mental illness, drinking, SSRI's and plain old CRAZY have had over the years.
Anyways, the battle against any of these things is never truly "won". You may be able to control your symptoms for a while, maybe even many years, but at some point in your life these things will return to haunt you again. They never go away. You will need to learn to live by different rules so that your issues don't consume you. Often, this means changes that are difficult and painful, and result in you losing some of the things, activities and people that meant something to you.
You just have to be able to throw things away. You have to be able to say "No, I don't want to keep this, it's not worth having", because if you don't, you're dead. There is only one destination at the end of Depression and so you have to go out and do what must be done to see that doesn't happen -- confront the problem, solve the problem -- do whatever you need to do.
Recently, I have been extremely nasty on the subject of religion. It has upset some readers, who have found my comments extremely rude and demeaning. Those comments cannot be taken back, and they won't be; I still believe religion is a crock and has created more problems than it has ever solved, but I could have been a lot more careful and respectful in how I expressed my feelings on the subject (it's funny, however, how those who complained the most apparently had no problem when I was having a go at Islam -- it's only when I start talking about Other Invisible Man from the Desert that they all get their noses out of joint, but that's a post for another day).
So, I apologize to you Bible Thumpers, but NOT for what was said -- only for it's condescending and insulting tone. I will now confront my issues with religion, and hopefully I will overcome them, probably by ignoring them. I can promise you that it won't, as some have suggested, involve me getting washed in the blood of the lamb or me doing any praying. It'll be more in the vein of figuring out just why it is that I'm hostile to the very idea of faith. When I get the answer, I'll post it here, and another of my great internal battles -- the Question of "Does God exist, and if so, why is She such a Cast-Iron Bitch?" might finally be answered, and I will be one step closer to the goal of complete sanity.
Wait a minute, I think I have it! Maybe it was because faith is what motivated nineteen morons to do something so savage that it has ruined my life that has given me the idea that not only is faith dangerous, when placed in the hands of mouth-breathing morons, it's downright deadly.
You can keep your extremely-twisted explanations about "mysterious plans"and how even a "Loving God" can allow 3,000 murders (Hell, She allowed the Holocaust, didn't She? September 11th must have been Bush League to Her, right?), or how such a thoughtful and caring deity could even invent, and then inflict, things like PTSD and Clinical Depression on those It loves; that's pretty fucking sadistic. Maybe it could explain how my being deprived of my sanity, nine years of my life, my career, my fortune, my property, a lot of good women and good friends, is supposed to make me a better person or bringing some benefit to the world?
Perhaps having my brain chemistry possibly altered by ever-increasing dosages of drugs who's ultimate effects are complete mysteries to the doctors who prescribe them was all part of that Merciful God routine, too?
Your God doesn't exist -- there is no all-powerful, merciful, loving being. If there were this world would be quite a different place (spare me the Free Will routine!). If God exists, She is a capricious, vengeful, spiteful, disinterested, petty little beast. I could find far more proof for the existence of that sort of God than you can for the one you believe in. Either you're terribly mistaken about who and what God is or isn't, or you choose to ignore the evidence before your eyes.
I'll tone down the assault on your so-called faith when you finally have the courage to admit that faith doesn't necessarily save -- it far too often destroys.
Update: If there are readers out there who may be suffering from any of the disorders I've talked about here, and you need someone to help, or just listen to you, or maybe give you a little bit of hope and advice...I'm here for you. We're all-too-often dismissed as dangerous, or treated like lepers, and so if we don't help each other out, we're probably doomed, right? You can contact me at Excelsior502@gmail.com.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
What Did The Austin Kamikaze Really Want?
By now, unless you've been living in a cave in Ethiopia, you have heard the news about someone allegedly, with deliberation, crashing a small airplane into what looks like an IRS office in Austin, Texas.
Joseph Andrew Stack, alleged to have been the pilot at this point in time, also appears to have burned his own house down and left a suicide note; a long manifesto, as it's being called, about what his pet peeves were before he took such drastic action. Speculation is that his beef was with the IRS, but the 'manifesto' makes it clear that he thought he had a lot more to gripe about.
You can read some of it here (via Ann Althouse).
As someone who has had experience with both suicide pilots (having been directly under the first plane to hit One World Trade Center on September, 11), and mental health issues, his ranting on the Fed'ral Gubmint, and his choice to use an aircraft to get it's attention, is telling.
I have never been more frightened of anything in my life than the sight of an airliner heading in my direction. I think I would rather be slathered in gravy and dropped into a shark tank than to ever be in that position again. That's a feeling of utter helplessness on a scale that is just too enormous for words to convey. It's the very fear that something that big and that powerful is headed your way, and that you can't stop it. You are about to become a spectator in your own demise, unless something miraculous happens. In my case, there were several buildings and a bit of distance between myself and the impact, and that's why I'm here to talk about it.
But it is exactly that fear that I think Mr. Stack was was trying to instill in those who would witness (or suffer the consequences of) his suicide. Fear is a weapon more powerful than any gun or any bomb. That was Joseph Stack's weapon of choice against those who were tormenting him. I say "those who were", even if that hasn't been definitively proven at this point, because of his other bizarre action; he burned his house down. That's the sign of a man who's going to make certain that if the IRS is out to get him, that he's going to make certain it doesn't get it's pound of flesh. If we are to believe that Mr. Stack had troubles with the taxman, then his actions begin to make sense -- they start to become almost-rational actions; he was going to deny the government the ability to collect by destroying his biggest assets -- his home and his plane, and take a few Reve-nooers with him.
That Mr. Stack chose to attack a building with the IRS in it is also telling. He had obviously come to the conclusion that the government doesn't do anything unless the government itself, rather than it's individual citizens, is under attack. His suicide screed is full of references to a dysfunctional government stuffed to the rafters with greedy, self-interested little tools who only seem to care about anything when it's their own rice bowl on the block.
Taken in this light, what Joseph Andrew Stack allegedly has done, makes perfect sense (although it can't be condoned). He has a beef with the government, he feels they don't care about his rights or his welfare, and so he attacks the source of his torment, and does it in a way that is designed to instill fear in Them (the government) while denying Them what "they" wants most: his money.
In time, we'll find out more about Mr. Stack and his ultimate motivations, but in the meantime, the aftermath is somewhat easier to predict.
You know what'll happen now, when questions begin to get answered, and new ones begin to get asked, don't you? There will be hundreds of hours of ridiculous Senate Hearings which are nothing but long-winded attempts by individuals inside competing and often-contradictory bureaucracies to point fingers at each other, and give Congresscritters an opportunity to get their ugly mugs on television, and more excuses to engage in graft when the 'overhauled' system they re-re-re-design has to be even more lavishly-funded -- to be even less effective than the one's currently in place. And the rights of we citizens get squeezed just a little bit more.
This is the government response to every problem, after all. The difference this time around is that the people are aware of how the game gets played. They'll actually watch the Senate Hearings, they'll actually read the whitewashed reports, they'll actually be asking Congressman So-and-so "What will yo DO about this sort of thing?" and finally put the asshole on the spot, revealing him to be an even bigger douchebag that he appeared to be at first blush.
Joseph Andrew Stack has become Osama bin Laden; using fear and aircraft in such a way as to cause the American people to question their government, and as a result, having the government expose it's silliness, ineffectiveness, sloth, and stupidity. Each call for government to "do something" will result in a further loss of liberty, higher taxes, and a general deterioration of the American quality of life.
And then there will be another Joseph Andrew Stack, only with a cement truck, a taxi cab, a city bus, a train, a bulldozer. A Domino Theory if ever there was one, and as each falls, more discontent with government makes itself known, and the more the government wraps itself up in red tape. Reaching a critical mass, perhaps there's even revolution.
Because each attack, whether it's a guy with explosive boxer shorts or a fed-up taxpayer with a Cessna, has the same effect; life in America becomes increasingly harder with every government response. I don't mean to imply that Mr. Stack is a revolutionary, on par with Thomas Paine or Nathan Hale, or that he might have even seen himself that way, only that there are some who could make that argument -- and make it convincingly. J.A. Stack would strike the first blow and others would follow until Leviathan was pinned to the ground, and it's carcase picked clean by the ants. Who knows?
Now, as to mental illness. Mr. Stack was obviously mentally ill. Sane people don't wake up one day and decide that setting out to commit mass-murder is a solution to their problems. He takes a whack at the insurance companies in his 'manifesto' that echo many of the same thoughts I've had myself. There's a hint in there that the man KNEW he was mentally ill, but he may have been treated shabbily by his insurance company. This is not unknown; I have been treated this way, as well. To an insurance company, a mental illness is not really an illness, not like breast cancer or heart disease. Mental illnesses are not handled in the same way as those are, typically because they believe that mental illnesses are not 'catastrophic' and can be expected to just "go away" with cheaper and less-effective "treatment".
I can tell you that it doesn't work that way. You get breast cancer, you can fix it with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. If you have diabetes, you can control it with medication, diet and exercise. Mental illnesses involve the most important organ, and the one that science knows the very least about; the human brain. Despite what "Mental Health Experts" say, they really know very little about how the human brain and mind work, and often the more traditional methods of dealing with mental patients --drugs and talk -- don't work. As far as most insurance companies go, those treatments are supposed to work, and according to a predictable timetable, as well. If your mental problems aren't solved within the timetable, then you're screwed, and then you find yourself buried even deeper in mental anguish -- only now you have deal with the other issues that no one talks about; being addicted to the drugs you were prescribed and the changes to your brain and physical chemistry they provoked.
Some people will disagree with me, especially the "mental health and insurance professionals", but I'm here to tell you that you're all full of shit. You regard the mentally ill in the same way you regard an enema; something slightly disgusting and best gotten rid of as soon as possible. Illegal Aliens and Crack Whores get more consideration and real help in this country than the Mentally Ill.
So, to speculate (because I have very little in the way of hard-and-fast facts on my side); you have a obviously mentally-ill man, perhaps one who has been driven there by the IRS and their often-overzealous and relentless methods. He might not be in treatment because his insurance company decided he didn't heal on a schedule devised by people with very little actual knowledge. Now devoid of psychiatric care, feeling as if his calls for help and understanding -- to be given a break because he needs one -- fall upon deaf ears, increasingly-frustrated, in agony, misunderstood, avoided by many, he does the unthinkable and attempts a murder-suicide by aircraft, hoping to draw attention to his plight.
Why else do you think people do this sort of thing? In his (assumed) state-of-mind, it's the only way he could get anyone to take him seriously. I know: I've been there and thought about doing something similar myself! The difference is that I know it will ultimately solve nothing, and besides, I've never owned anything bigger than a sub-compact. Mr. Stack might not have been able to come to the same conclusion.
Joseph Andrew Stack, alleged to have been the pilot at this point in time, also appears to have burned his own house down and left a suicide note; a long manifesto, as it's being called, about what his pet peeves were before he took such drastic action. Speculation is that his beef was with the IRS, but the 'manifesto' makes it clear that he thought he had a lot more to gripe about.
You can read some of it here (via Ann Althouse).
As someone who has had experience with both suicide pilots (having been directly under the first plane to hit One World Trade Center on September, 11), and mental health issues, his ranting on the Fed'ral Gubmint, and his choice to use an aircraft to get it's attention, is telling.
I have never been more frightened of anything in my life than the sight of an airliner heading in my direction. I think I would rather be slathered in gravy and dropped into a shark tank than to ever be in that position again. That's a feeling of utter helplessness on a scale that is just too enormous for words to convey. It's the very fear that something that big and that powerful is headed your way, and that you can't stop it. You are about to become a spectator in your own demise, unless something miraculous happens. In my case, there were several buildings and a bit of distance between myself and the impact, and that's why I'm here to talk about it.
But it is exactly that fear that I think Mr. Stack was was trying to instill in those who would witness (or suffer the consequences of) his suicide. Fear is a weapon more powerful than any gun or any bomb. That was Joseph Stack's weapon of choice against those who were tormenting him. I say "those who were", even if that hasn't been definitively proven at this point, because of his other bizarre action; he burned his house down. That's the sign of a man who's going to make certain that if the IRS is out to get him, that he's going to make certain it doesn't get it's pound of flesh. If we are to believe that Mr. Stack had troubles with the taxman, then his actions begin to make sense -- they start to become almost-rational actions; he was going to deny the government the ability to collect by destroying his biggest assets -- his home and his plane, and take a few Reve-nooers with him.
That Mr. Stack chose to attack a building with the IRS in it is also telling. He had obviously come to the conclusion that the government doesn't do anything unless the government itself, rather than it's individual citizens, is under attack. His suicide screed is full of references to a dysfunctional government stuffed to the rafters with greedy, self-interested little tools who only seem to care about anything when it's their own rice bowl on the block.
Taken in this light, what Joseph Andrew Stack allegedly has done, makes perfect sense (although it can't be condoned). He has a beef with the government, he feels they don't care about his rights or his welfare, and so he attacks the source of his torment, and does it in a way that is designed to instill fear in Them (the government) while denying Them what "they" wants most: his money.
In time, we'll find out more about Mr. Stack and his ultimate motivations, but in the meantime, the aftermath is somewhat easier to predict.
You know what'll happen now, when questions begin to get answered, and new ones begin to get asked, don't you? There will be hundreds of hours of ridiculous Senate Hearings which are nothing but long-winded attempts by individuals inside competing and often-contradictory bureaucracies to point fingers at each other, and give Congresscritters an opportunity to get their ugly mugs on television, and more excuses to engage in graft when the 'overhauled' system they re-re-re-design has to be even more lavishly-funded -- to be even less effective than the one's currently in place. And the rights of we citizens get squeezed just a little bit more.
This is the government response to every problem, after all. The difference this time around is that the people are aware of how the game gets played. They'll actually watch the Senate Hearings, they'll actually read the whitewashed reports, they'll actually be asking Congressman So-and-so "What will yo DO about this sort of thing?" and finally put the asshole on the spot, revealing him to be an even bigger douchebag that he appeared to be at first blush.
Joseph Andrew Stack has become Osama bin Laden; using fear and aircraft in such a way as to cause the American people to question their government, and as a result, having the government expose it's silliness, ineffectiveness, sloth, and stupidity. Each call for government to "do something" will result in a further loss of liberty, higher taxes, and a general deterioration of the American quality of life.
And then there will be another Joseph Andrew Stack, only with a cement truck, a taxi cab, a city bus, a train, a bulldozer. A Domino Theory if ever there was one, and as each falls, more discontent with government makes itself known, and the more the government wraps itself up in red tape. Reaching a critical mass, perhaps there's even revolution.
Because each attack, whether it's a guy with explosive boxer shorts or a fed-up taxpayer with a Cessna, has the same effect; life in America becomes increasingly harder with every government response. I don't mean to imply that Mr. Stack is a revolutionary, on par with Thomas Paine or Nathan Hale, or that he might have even seen himself that way, only that there are some who could make that argument -- and make it convincingly. J.A. Stack would strike the first blow and others would follow until Leviathan was pinned to the ground, and it's carcase picked clean by the ants. Who knows?
Now, as to mental illness. Mr. Stack was obviously mentally ill. Sane people don't wake up one day and decide that setting out to commit mass-murder is a solution to their problems. He takes a whack at the insurance companies in his 'manifesto' that echo many of the same thoughts I've had myself. There's a hint in there that the man KNEW he was mentally ill, but he may have been treated shabbily by his insurance company. This is not unknown; I have been treated this way, as well. To an insurance company, a mental illness is not really an illness, not like breast cancer or heart disease. Mental illnesses are not handled in the same way as those are, typically because they believe that mental illnesses are not 'catastrophic' and can be expected to just "go away" with cheaper and less-effective "treatment".
I can tell you that it doesn't work that way. You get breast cancer, you can fix it with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. If you have diabetes, you can control it with medication, diet and exercise. Mental illnesses involve the most important organ, and the one that science knows the very least about; the human brain. Despite what "Mental Health Experts" say, they really know very little about how the human brain and mind work, and often the more traditional methods of dealing with mental patients --drugs and talk -- don't work. As far as most insurance companies go, those treatments are supposed to work, and according to a predictable timetable, as well. If your mental problems aren't solved within the timetable, then you're screwed, and then you find yourself buried even deeper in mental anguish -- only now you have deal with the other issues that no one talks about; being addicted to the drugs you were prescribed and the changes to your brain and physical chemistry they provoked.
Some people will disagree with me, especially the "mental health and insurance professionals", but I'm here to tell you that you're all full of shit. You regard the mentally ill in the same way you regard an enema; something slightly disgusting and best gotten rid of as soon as possible. Illegal Aliens and Crack Whores get more consideration and real help in this country than the Mentally Ill.
So, to speculate (because I have very little in the way of hard-and-fast facts on my side); you have a obviously mentally-ill man, perhaps one who has been driven there by the IRS and their often-overzealous and relentless methods. He might not be in treatment because his insurance company decided he didn't heal on a schedule devised by people with very little actual knowledge. Now devoid of psychiatric care, feeling as if his calls for help and understanding -- to be given a break because he needs one -- fall upon deaf ears, increasingly-frustrated, in agony, misunderstood, avoided by many, he does the unthinkable and attempts a murder-suicide by aircraft, hoping to draw attention to his plight.
Why else do you think people do this sort of thing? In his (assumed) state-of-mind, it's the only way he could get anyone to take him seriously. I know: I've been there and thought about doing something similar myself! The difference is that I know it will ultimately solve nothing, and besides, I've never owned anything bigger than a sub-compact. Mr. Stack might not have been able to come to the same conclusion.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Saving MSgt. Grisham...
JammieWearingFool posts this about an American soldier being bullied by the schoolboard in Huntsville, Alabama.
It seems that Master Sergeant C.J. Grisham (apparently a very popular military blogger, although, honestly, I never heard of him) got into hot water by simply asking a question at a PTA Meeting about some proposed school uniforms for local schoolchildren (his own included).
The question was: "How much will they (the uniforms) cost?"
At which point, it's alleged that the school administrators went completely apeshit, had him tossed from the meeting and then made some trouble with Grisham's commanders, telling them they believed that he has PTSD and may constitute a danger to the school. (I wonder if the Huntsville School System would be so hot to label MSGt Grisham a lunatic if he were a Muslim? Would they make pointed remarks about AIDS if he were gay? I rather doubt it, the pussies wouldn't have the nerve!).
I have suffered horribly from PTSD in my lifetime, and it's not a joke. Real PTSD sufferers deal with ignorance, fear, discrimination and misinformation every day which affects their interactions with society, their relationships, their employment and ultimately, other aspects of their health. We're not crazy, and when you use PTSD as a pejorative, to imply dangerous intent, to slander a man who simply asked you a relevant question that you didn't want to answer, then you have committed an act of the basest prejudice and slander against those of us who actually do have PTSD.
My guess is that the School Board is set to make a killing on the uniforms, money that will then be wasted giving these assholes an undeserved raise, or perhaps sponsoring another series of those courses that teach first graders to use condoms, demonstrate homosexual acts, or show them how to perform fellatio on a tapir. That seems to be what Public Schools do with all the stolen or otherwise extorted taxpayer money that comes their way.
The quickest way to get to the bottom of this is to follow the money. Always.
Shame on the Huntsville, Ala. School Board. If any of those pantywaist, skirt-wearin' scumbags were within range, I'd punch them all in the mouth, both for maligning a parent who simply wanted information he should have been entitled to, and then insulting and maligning a lot of people who happen to have a mental condition they never wanted nor asked for.
So now an American Soldier needs help to defend himself against his own local government. A defense fund/help center for MSGT Grisham can be found here. The man's career may be adversely affected because some petty tyrants in the Huntsville. Ala. School System probably have something to hide.
I'm also going to give the Hunstville, Ala. School Board a piece of my (diseased) mind regarding their callous attitude towards the mentally ill. Add them to the long list of people in this country who have no sense of shame and an inflated sense of importance.
Update: According to the above post, the uniforms cost $400 each. No wonder they didn't want to talk about it! You have to figure there's a spring and winter uniform, and a smart parent buys at least two in case they get torn, dirty, and so forth. $1600 for school uniforms....
Here's the website for the Huntsville City School system. Let them know how you feel.
Extra: Master Sergeant Grisham will be reunited with his children at Fort Hood tomorrow. Please, please, please give whatever you can to the link above so that a good and honorable man may defend his rights, and his reputation.
It seems that Master Sergeant C.J. Grisham (apparently a very popular military blogger, although, honestly, I never heard of him) got into hot water by simply asking a question at a PTA Meeting about some proposed school uniforms for local schoolchildren (his own included).
The question was: "How much will they (the uniforms) cost?"
At which point, it's alleged that the school administrators went completely apeshit, had him tossed from the meeting and then made some trouble with Grisham's commanders, telling them they believed that he has PTSD and may constitute a danger to the school. (I wonder if the Huntsville School System would be so hot to label MSGt Grisham a lunatic if he were a Muslim? Would they make pointed remarks about AIDS if he were gay? I rather doubt it, the pussies wouldn't have the nerve!).
I have suffered horribly from PTSD in my lifetime, and it's not a joke. Real PTSD sufferers deal with ignorance, fear, discrimination and misinformation every day which affects their interactions with society, their relationships, their employment and ultimately, other aspects of their health. We're not crazy, and when you use PTSD as a pejorative, to imply dangerous intent, to slander a man who simply asked you a relevant question that you didn't want to answer, then you have committed an act of the basest prejudice and slander against those of us who actually do have PTSD.
My guess is that the School Board is set to make a killing on the uniforms, money that will then be wasted giving these assholes an undeserved raise, or perhaps sponsoring another series of those courses that teach first graders to use condoms, demonstrate homosexual acts, or show them how to perform fellatio on a tapir. That seems to be what Public Schools do with all the stolen or otherwise extorted taxpayer money that comes their way.
The quickest way to get to the bottom of this is to follow the money. Always.
Shame on the Huntsville, Ala. School Board. If any of those pantywaist, skirt-wearin' scumbags were within range, I'd punch them all in the mouth, both for maligning a parent who simply wanted information he should have been entitled to, and then insulting and maligning a lot of people who happen to have a mental condition they never wanted nor asked for.
So now an American Soldier needs help to defend himself against his own local government. A defense fund/help center for MSGT Grisham can be found here. The man's career may be adversely affected because some petty tyrants in the Huntsville. Ala. School System probably have something to hide.
I'm also going to give the Hunstville, Ala. School Board a piece of my (diseased) mind regarding their callous attitude towards the mentally ill. Add them to the long list of people in this country who have no sense of shame and an inflated sense of importance.
Update: According to the above post, the uniforms cost $400 each. No wonder they didn't want to talk about it! You have to figure there's a spring and winter uniform, and a smart parent buys at least two in case they get torn, dirty, and so forth. $1600 for school uniforms....
Here's the website for the Huntsville City School system. Let them know how you feel.
Extra: Master Sergeant Grisham will be reunited with his children at Fort Hood tomorrow. Please, please, please give whatever you can to the link above so that a good and honorable man may defend his rights, and his reputation.
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