Newtown. You Town. Screwed Town.
Was there any doubt? Of course the Connecticut school shooter had "a history of mental illness."
My first thought wasn't where did he get the guns and what kind were they. My first thought was psychotropic medications, either taken as prescribed or not taken at all Either way, some pharmaceutical time bombs are set to go off, sooner or later, personally or publicly. Antidepressants haven't exactly enjoyed a shining reputation recently, maybe a few years of those did the trick. I'm betting on drugs as I type this Friday evening, the night of the day.
I remember working in the wards of Air Force hospitals, and in the psychiatric wards where Thorazine was a medication of choice to convert the agitated or violent into wandering zombies without purpose, without intent. Maybe we should all be on Thorazine.
Kids in the Sandy Hook School. No place to hide. No place to run. We should have more compassion now for animals condemned by humans -- just doing their jobs -- with a one-way ticket to the slaughterhouse, where the animals realize in sheer terror what's coming at our hand, but we won't. It's always about us, only us. Until the mainstream media rushes off to another story.
From time to time within the text of my blog entries over the years, I've made a basic assertion without further explanation, and the words are: I know what we are. Well, what can I say? I know what we are.
Adding to the murders, there's a phenomenon sweeping the country where killers with guns take themselves out after finishing their grotesque tasks, thus inflicting even more outrage upon angry mobs whose screams, calls for justice, torches and pitchforks suddenly have no target. Dangerous, because the mobs start looking for a straw man upon whom to place the blame.
President Obama held back tears as he spoke, an appropriate reaction. One wishes he would shed a few tears for his death star policies. He isn't crying over the prospect of inheritance taxes on other members of the dead rising from 35 to 55 percent, putting family farms in jeopardy as the mega-mega-wealthy rush in like vultures to claim the prize. Does he cry over Benghazi? Does he tear up over more U.S. troops now being sent to Iraq -- and Turkey? And to. . .? These words probably shouldn't be said here, but one should never let a crisis go to waste, according to his Administration. Mrs. Obama told us from the start that her hubby was going to fundamentally transform this country, and wow what a bang-bang up result we're getting.. Forget the funda, we're off and running quite sufficiently now on the mentally part. A few more Executive Orders and we'll be fine. New potential campaign slogan? "Share the wealth for mental health."
The bodies of dead children in Connecticut were probably still warm when NY City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others of a controlling and/or liberal bent began calling for tighter gun control, whatever that means to representatives of the body politic. Of course, they always recite that chorus during instances of this nature because, to repeat what an Obama rep once said, one should never let a crisis go to waste.
Trouble is, if killing isn't accomplished with firearms, it's done with blades or explosives or poison or baseball bats or glass bottles or the noose or, I suppose, jars of salad dressing. Almost anything can be a weapon. Even a paisley tie, revealed this week as the killing instrument of choice in the Justin Bieber murder plot.
Legislators wishful of re-election will blather and stomp their feet, and in the end they'll take the easy way out with gun legislation that should instead be mental disturbance legislation with a definite attack on pharmaceuticals and maybe the head shrinkers whose professional lives are consumed with writing prescriptions for brain poison. Why? Because it's easier to crack down on innocent firearm owners than mental illness in hiding and profitable drugs in plain sight, and everybody knows it's always best to at least appear as though officials are doing something to solve problems among what may well be the tragically insurmountable.
And there is that other problem -- the shooter got his guns from his mom, whom he killed, and she had obtained them legally. The dilemma becomes not just mentally ill attackers, it extends to people they know who have guns ripe for the taking.. Now what's the solution? Until the world stops spinning at a bonkers rate and until we stop drugging kids damned near from infancy with medications to control them, please them, calm them, fill them with joy or suppression -- as the nuclear family disappears simultaneously -- this kind of thing will continue. We get out what we put in. I don't think we need to go to the expense of a presidential task force or commission to figure that out, but just sit back and watch the worthless, fancy, financially lucrative studies start rolling out, all administered by the usual political, psych and pharma-affiliated suspects.
