30 May 24
 
“You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that!”
 
Samuel Beckett
 
Mental Illness:
 
We’re experiencing today a national disaster that has taken decades to unfold!
 
Starting in the 1960’s with then Governor Reagan in CA, and subsequently perpetuated by then President Carter in the 1970s, state-run “psychiatric hospitals” were all gradually closed.
 
The “criminally insane,” “non-rehabilitateable,” etc had always been involuntarily “warehoused” in these large institutions. These hospitals were considered more humane than prisons, and they simultaneously kept dangerous people out of general circulation (where they had a demonstrated history of hurting themselves and others).
 
The supposed idea behind this “shift” was that large state asylums were “impersonally detached,” this fantasy promulgated by the 1975 feature film, “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” staring Jack Nicholson. In the film, mentally-ill residents are depicted as routinely abused by cynical/sadistic doctors and nurses.
 
“Local” hospitals and other facilities were imagined to be more able to properly care-for these legions of mentally ill. Most, it was naively imagined by half- witted politicians, could even be “main-streamed!”
 
It all sounded like a good, money-saving idea, but reality fell far short of naive expectation (as it always does)
 
The brutal fact is that no one wants these people, and for sure no one wants to pay for their upkeep!
 
Hospitals don’t want them. Hospitals kick them out as soon as they can.
 
Their own families don’t want them. In fact, their families know (first-hand) just how dangerous they are and want nothing to do with them.
 
So, what has happened is that the dangerously insane (much “insanity” being drug-induced) have mostly ended-up out on the street, where they cannot take-care of themselves, and where they continue to endanger everyone around them and only rarely receive any kind of treatment!
 
Often using deadly weapons, they routinely attack responding police, sometimes innocent citizens, and are often shot and killed in the process.
 
They represent a significant role is our nation’s current violent-crime crisis.
 
Thus, as is the usual result when politicians get involved, the “cure” has demonstrated itself to be far worse than the “disease!”
 
“Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it.”
 
Stephen Vizinczey
 
/John