First, do no Harm; The Inmate Takes the Asylum

What goes on in the human brain when its pushed to the breaking point? Could today's massacre at Fort Hood possibly be the result of aterra-ist plot? The country is shocked, shocked, once again, to experience the war right here at home. I believe they call this a frag, but I don't know if it could possibly ever be as simple as that. Bush's wars have created a new kind of crazy, and I'm afraid that we are only just beginning to see the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the particular form of pain coming our way in the fallout from these long, pointless wars and our shoestring budget for military after-care.

Major Nidal Malik Hassan was career military soldier, specializing in getting an education. He had not been at Fort Hood long; it was his first deployment and he was reportedly treating soldiers with PTSD. Hassan otherwise was just one of the close to 50,000 military members and almost 8,000 family members living at Fort Hood, America's largest Military base. Of course, in a population like that, the reasons for enlisting vary, and its safe to say that probably its the minority who actually look forward to overseas wartime deployment.

Before going for his M.D, Hassan got a masters in public health, so he owed years of service to the military, having attended their schools, and had recently found out that he was to be deployed himself. This was an idea that he was reportedly opposed to. In a country where higher learning is often so expensive as to be out of the reach of most people, the time had finally come for the perpetual student to pay the piper.
Hassan, 39 and on his first assignment, had become a military psychiatrist specializing in the most difficult cases of traumatic stress. It makes some sort of perfect sense in a senseless world that treating the victims of this war with their percussion injuries and paranoia about every little thing, was more than he had bargained for.

This incident is being covered wall to wall as if something like this could never possibly happen on American soil, and not just that, on the beloved soil of a military base. But really, it seems like a regular day full of all the possibilities of a trip to the Mall of America. Bush's America is armed and as surely as Hassan shot up the soldier preparation area of Fort Hood with 2 semi-automatic handguns, every 3rd person at the mall likely has one of those tucked somewhere waiting for the inevitable. This is not a case of a soldier with AK-47's shooting up the place; its actually less fire power than the average gang member off the street has; But it was enough to kill 13 people and injure 31.

Of course also, the name Hassan sounds a little too Arabic for comfort, which has caused some punditry to mention the possibility of him becoming a part of a terraist network or some such. According to the punditry, a shooting of this type was recently called for by Al Qaeda leader, ex-American wunderkind, Adam Gadahn, and heaven knows, anything is possible at this point. It gives Tweety something to go on about; could Hassan have contacted Al Qaeda on the Internet tubes and been converted in his spare time? The possibilities are endless and we will likely be treated to every scenario along the way.

The inevitability of this thing is what is so glaring. Yeah, it's unusual and shocking that the guy either acted to make a statement or succumbed to this level of insanity, directly before he was to be deployed and that no one noticed that something was wrong. And yeah, it makes little sense that he would kill the very people that he was trained to help. There is surely more to this story, but the rub here is that whether or not he meant for this to be a political statement, it is one. The injuries and PTSD suffered by the soldiers he treated may well have been horrific enough, and his empathy or fear deep enough, that he couldn't take it. So, for whatever reason, he cracked, for whatever reason he crossed over into a place where he could do this much harm. His actions speak volumes on the damage of these wars and how overused our soldiers, in every capacity, are.

Hassan killed 13 people who had lives and families, fears and beliefs of their own. He locked his own fate in those actions, as he must have intended to die today. There is just no knowing what causes someone to snap, but we have to know, very clearly, that we are going to be seeing more of this. Its not going to be something predictable or something that you can prevent. The injuries suffered because of the Bush Administration's lies are vast and deep. We were going after Bin Laden, not nation building, but all of these years later, now we're responsible for the whole area.

So expect the unexpected and keep your eyes peeled for odd behavior or normal behavior or packages left untended on the subway platform. Bring a biscuit for the bomb dogs in Grand Central and realize that this is how much of the rest of the world lives their lives largely because of our meddling. Get used to the new landscape; Obama cant make things OK again...too much has happened.

The unsure nature of things is really not so different than the rest of life, except that we know that we can stop the setting that causes this particular problem, and really, as much as our representatives don't listen to us, we may have to try to make a louder statement that we have to stop the wars...both of them...

Stop.The.War.s.

That's all.

****

Breaking 10:45 PM via CNN: Hassan, who had been believed dead in the massacre, is alive and in FBI custody. So, maybe we are gonna get some answers after all. So much for going out in a blaze of glory!

c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

McCain is out of His MInd...Sarah Palin and the Future of this Country.

Unqualified, wingnut, crazy, scary....these are just some of the words that come to mind when looking at the life and time of Sarah Palin.

Ah, Sarah Palin, runner up to the Ms. Alaska crown, outspoken opponent of a woman's right to choose, enemy of the Polar Bear, and great leveler of the field in the area of youth, gender, experience and the naming of children, will be side by side with pinky mouse McCain on the republican stump starting immediately.

Is this a joke? Trailing her cadre of children, including the infant dangling oddly from the arms of an older daughter, this oddball is being paraded around the bubble where the Bushies live, while the rest of America is shaking their heads at the similarities to the Harriet Miers debacle. Isn't anyone advising the McCain campaign?...what an embarrassment!

Sarah Palin is advertising herself as a mother, but if the naming of children is any indication of one's ability to reason and govern, then the republicans are in trouble. How she chose her kid's names is anyone's guess (and it has been mentioned that on those occasions that she admits that she tried pot , which I should add is legal in Alaska, she may have thought up those names!)

So, we've got Track and Willow, Piper, and Trig(Paxson Van Palin,) but worst of all is poor Bristol, who is known as Brillo....Track will be called up to duty in Iraq soon, Trig may be the love child of Brillo...who can keep them straight? Trig, with Downs Syndrome is more likely the 44 year old wanna-be Commander-in-Chief's, child, though she remained pretty scary thin throughout the pregnancy; shes strongly anti-choice yet kept this a secret from even her closest co-workers for 7 months, knowing that the child would have Downs Syndrome. US Conservatives at About.com had this:

The Palin family released this statement the morning after Trig Paxson's birth:

“Trig is beautiful and already adored by us. We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed.”

Three days later, Gov. Palin was back at work.

She went back to work 3 days after having this child!? And who is going to be caring for these children when she is VP? McCain is pretty damned old, not to mention the cancer; he could very well die. Is this who we want for president? Haven't we been through the not very bright and very crazy wing-nut thing for 8 long years already? Palin has no experience; less than no experience in that she is in such a remote area...her level of experience is in no way comparable to Obama's supposed lack of experience; she really, really has no experience except in the way of governing a state with very, very few people. She has had the ability to wield a strong outspoken wingnuttian stance on just about every issue that the rest of the country is too busy trying to pay the rent and juggle some semblance of a life, to take seriously, and the fact that McCain and his team view any part of her bio as a viable political option is just plain scary.

Onward: She has a husband who is part commercial fisherman and part oil field worker, and a history herself as a "maverick" of sorts, who hunts and fishes and is a lifetime NRA member; her bubbly yet carefully crafted delivery of support for the war, guns, and the conservative line, make her an interesting choice for McCain in a field where the PUMAS might actually be crazy enough to vote for a woman, any woman....my god, is it not apparent that Alaska and the life there is not representative of most of the country and that just as McCain is removed from the lives of most Americans to the point that he can't even state what "middle class" means or how many houses he has,what car he drives, this nut is also so far from the main stream as to be...a joke....this is a joke, right?

Sarah Palin is a surprise, and she is surely an all or nothing roll of the dice for a desperate Republican party that is looking towards a convention shown in split screen with hurricane Gustav bearing down on NOLA, in a stark remembrance of the failures of this administration. Even now, the White House is trying to pull Bush from having to appear on that split screen. Clearly this is not what Bush needs for his legacy of failure...Forget the beauty of karma and how the timing of Gustav cries out to the Bushies paybacks-a-bitch boys! Is the gulf prepared for this thing?...its horrifying that all of this time later, the infrastructure questions have not been clearly addressed and flooding has become a huge problem across the country.

I fell pretty strongly that most Americans are disgusted enough on both sides to just vote the knee jerk opposite of what we've had. I cant see this Palin woman going up against Biden in any meaningful way and I look forward to McCain trying to hold his own in a direct debate with Obama. But in reality, most Americans lack the interest, attention span, and mostly time to go much past their morning paper in this. They will vote their pocketbooks and the gas pumps...the war...food prices...and disasters on television. I'm not so sure that polls mean much in this strangest of strange times, but they sure are embraced by the media as a foundation for creating a reality show that could somehow produce ratings. This particular episode is like the Big Brother house when the old guy makes a pact with the sorority sister.

So, with Brillo and Trig, Twig, Twat, and Pipe....Tracks and Willy and the little green sprout....as the shiny-shiny that Mom, (with her obligatory still-working-apparently vagina,) is holding up to distract us from the magnificent speech of Obama, we have to know that it wont last long when its clear that the meat is not there. Mom is viewed as an intellectual lightweight, as is McCain, and up against the democratic ticket they will fail. Remember, most of America views Alaska as a scene from the Cicely Alaska of Northern Exposure. What happens when the scruffy John Corbett character ends up being the scary hairless mouse McCain?

Not to even mention that scandal has rocked her office lately in the form of an aide trying to kick her sister's ex out of his job. That bit of pulpy gossip has legs only in that its personal dirt of the kind that sells rags on the checkout line. Further, her popularity among the sparse voters up there could have something to do with $1200 oil rebates to cover the price of fuel....is she popular? Maybe, if you could even begin to tease all of this out.

So, if this is for us a Dan Quayle moment, minus the sharp intellect of the Q, then I hope to be heading north for the duration...If its just another installation of that wacky DC show, Wingnuttia, then I hope that Ms Palin and all the little Palinettes enjoy their 15 minutes of fame.
Some of us are serious about trying to fix this country; John McCain is certainly not. This nomination proves it beyond a doubt.

c/p RIPCoco

The Nature of Humanity, Empathy, and Love as Seen Through the Looking Glass of Va. Tech..Maybe I Really Am a, Socialist...?

I finally watched Babel tonight, trying to avoid the late fees from Blockbuster; no such luck....Tragedy and gun violence...and how intertwined the whole world is...and, yes, its a little self-aware as a movie, but I liked it. It was a good match for my mood. I didn't bother with Borat at all.

So whats going on? Lets see:

Pathological Narcissism...Asocial Personality Disorder....Psychosis....Selfishness...Anger Management...;
Is that Gonzo or Cho...or maybe Georgie himself? (...and lets not forget Alec Baldwin, for anyone who wants a little taste of...um...my childhood...?)










Yeah...about the tragic shooting: Its more than a little scary to hear some of the dissection (10% of the time only, they say) on every media outlet, non-stop, in the days since the shooting, and to realize that our own president shows signs of the same disorders, or at the very least some sort of extreme denial in the face of logical evidence. I suppose that if we called that particular manifestation a mental illness, we would have whole church buses full of people being treated (or not, as the case may be,)with anti-psychotic drugs...

For a moment yesterday I got an AAR signal in the car, just long enough to hear Randi Rhodes read a heartbreaking letter from a woman who has raised a kid with one of these extreme diagnosis', and it only confirms so much of what I've been saying, and what I'm now hearing all over, that this Virginia Tech tragedy is a failure of an overtaxed system that has its hands tied, but also that is controlled by insurance and drug companies, and then the burned out doctors, buried in paperwork, many of whom will throw meds at a patient and not follow up properly.

It is probably true that people with disorders this severe cannot be treated...they never get better....but if they are at least identified, maybe something like these sorts of mass killings can be prevented. Who knows?
I'm actually surprised that this doesn't happen more often, considering how much pain people seem to be in all around.

I know from my own experiences, that mental health problems all fall on some continuum, and that a stone cold diagnosis without a deeper understanding, or at least awareness, of this fact does little for society or safety, much less the sick person.
This kid apparently stopped his rampage long enough to go back to his room, finish a videotaped suicide bomber message, and then go and mail a package to NBC.

NBC, upon receiving this package had to decide, along with the FBI, how much to show in that fine line between encouraging copycats, and informing or upsetting the public. Of course there are ratings to be had there too.
The airing of the video is, I guess, a sticky situation, but I can't see that not knowing what this thing is about helps society. Hiding this from our kids isn't going to give them the tools that they need in order to question and reason about the world around them.

The hard truth is that we are actually evolving animals with layers of history contained within a brain mass that is hardly understood by medicine or philosophers. There are, of course, barbaric tendencies deep inside (or sometimes less deep, I guess,) and on that evolutionary continuum lies some sort of self control and awareness of right and wrong....maybe.
In a tribal world, this kid would have been taken out just because his basic behavior is not a desirable trait to pass on, (...or he might be worshiped as a god I suppose...anything is possible.)


We have this storied ability to reason and feel empathy which sets us apart from the other animals in the kingdom, but delusional thought is delusional thought, and that higer level reasoning depends so much on not only chemicals but the stark fear of death, that is also probably instinctual....and who decides if its crazy that Allah is telling you to strap on a bomb and go shopping, or if Jesus is coming to rapture you up to heaven? Where is the delusional line beyond the DSM-V.v6 and whats considered socially acceptable, from handling snakes to eating a wafer that is magically the flesh of God?



This kid had all sorts of very obvious problems and had actually checked himself into a mental hospital as a danger to himself and others at one point...but the system failed him in that there is no way ever to do anything unless and until someone gets hurt. The system is able to dispense meds and encourage therapy, if one can get it, wants it, and has health coverage... If not, then theres another soul added to the masses wandering round with a prescription bottle in one hand muttering to the sound of wheels turning somewhere.

If care and love and empathy are really caused by the release of certain chemicals; for example a breastfeeding mother hears her baby crying and the milk actually rushes down within her breasts; (...and it is the strangest feeling I can ever describe, let me tell you!).... or, my bird, Ben, is feeding his mate, Rosie, in the nest box while she sits on her egg(s?) Is that what we have been led to believe is "True Love?...Or, as Marc Maron said one morning a couple of years ago on the radio, "love is (just) need, all dolled up,"...Is this feeling of love and empathy just a thing that is necessary for survival, or is it more?....and so then are the most empathetic and well oiled in the hormonal and brain chemical department the fittest? If things get to a point where there are just too damned many of us, do we start to go crazy and cut the herd ourselves? Is that OK? I don't know, to tell the truth, but it seems like its worthwhile to think about it, because our system has been going through a long cycle of breaking down (as it seems to every time the republicans are in power,) and we are actually cutting the herd.
This is a close up view of Darwinism...and surely its a failure of society in that we are raising our kids not to question the cultures and personal proclivities of others, to the point where its OK to act like a maniac and no one will get involved lest they appear un-PC. There is a difference between personal space and privacy, and questioning insane behavior; even if it just makes YOU more safe and you don't give a shit about anyone else... . But what is missing when the individual only cares about itself, and doesn't see that the person who they are trying to move into the next subway car to get away from is a cog in the societal chaos that makes the self be able to survive, (or at least the gene line and history of the self.) In other words, if you feel guilty about running the other way, maybe you shouldn't because being selfish is the Darwinian way...right? Maybe that's politically incorrect, but where is the safety net and how can we draw a reasonable line?
We are raised to spend every waking moment going against what our animalistic urges are, and with the help of the constructs of society, laws and religion, we do a pretty good job of keeping things sort of orderly...but, every once in a while, it seems like its an awfully hard thing to maintain what the rules are if you haven't found your own ethical grounding...who are you and who do you want to be...and is it even possible?

The material released by NBC is an important piece in this story...I would never choose to hold this information back in order to stop any sort of copycat, as opposed to letting society know what certain behavior looks like, and that its not OK to just ignore it; just like the sweating guy praying furiously before getting on an airplane or the box left in the middle of Grand Central Station. Isn't it time we started taking some responsibility for whats going on around us? Not in a negative police state sorta way, but in some encouraging of awareness of our neighbors and the fact that we are all overstressed by life, war, and a government which has decided that the best way to hold power is to keep the masses in fear, ignorance, and poverty. How did it become OK to look at the Jerry Springer Show with interest and yet not OK to make sure that your neighbor is alright?

The Republican agenda, which kicked into high gear when Reagan was in office, has cut as much funding as possible from social programs, from health to education to welfare to...you name it. My question is, hows that been working out for us?
Is society getting healthier and better as we outsource everything to private entities? Who ends up with the ultimate responsibility after a few heads roll? Americans have an insatiable appetite for who to blame, and then we go back to the couch and turn on Oprah and eat some more chips.
Will we ever look at this for what it is? Its a failure of our entire society and government to take care of each other...and yes, that includes so-called liberal programs and safety nets that take care of our weakest members. We are only as strong as the weakest member of our society, and we are only as good, moral, and ethical as we act towards those people. So for any religious people out there trying to fulfill that impossible perfection of a God's requirements, there will be no rapture or heaven for you ...no flying either...no clouds...unless you straighten this out.
Would a social system with a good safety net in place catch everyone who might fall? No. Would it maybe prevent some of the horrible things that come out when the human mind scrapes bottom with nowhere to turn? Maybe...and its worth a shot. Its at least worth it to actively engage people, like we do in the first year of a baby's life with so many doctor's visits and checkups....Why do we not have health insurance that includes preventative health care?

Anyone at any time can lose certain capacities through brain injury, onset of mental illness, or just be born without certain juices that make one "normal". We are an evolving animal but it remains to be seen which direction we're evolving in. So, isn't it worth it to work towards solving problems and actively providing outlets to people?...maybe try to evolve in some sort of positive direction....
So, blame the kid. Storm off the Today show because they aired the video. The kid is a monster and he killed your kid; never forgive him. But as sure as you or I are gonna go on, I can say that there are others like him out there right now. Is it more important to try to show what this one looked like or more important to show some sort of grief driven respect to the dead?

Without regulation of the health insurance industry, a national health plan, a strong set of programs to allow parents to actually parent their children, and an adjustment of what is expected in the way of a work week as opposed to time to live...and education...and encouragement of reasoning, learning ethics, decision making, and philosophy...How can we expect that every member of society is going to at least be caught in a safety net somehow, somewhere?

We are surely evolving, but the question that we have to ask ourselves is are we falling backwards into to tribal barbarism and warring behaviors of earlier versions of ourselves...and should we expect more of ourselves as a society? I say that we should...much more. Forget your tax break and spending it at Wal-mart. We should demand a society with programs for everyone. Health, parenting, nutrition, education (even college!) We should also expect that kids growing up in this society do some work for the country in the military or in social services programs. Everyone should be invested, and everyone should expect something back.


For any of us who might feel like they are empathetic and caring and who also realize (sometimes to our own dismay and embarrassment) that its all really about the big "me", I say, good!...because you at least realize that you are interacting with another human being, and at the moment of realization that you are probably acting as just a selfish animal trying to put on a jacket and tie in the jungle, you have shown more self awareness than most people ever have.
Most of us are so afraid to even peek in the mirror, and some of us ONLY look in the mirror. The difference is in how we reason about the clear information that is presented to us there.

So, look in this kid's eyes. Hate him all you want....maybe he had no empathy for anyone at all, ever....maybe he was born a stone cold murderer....Some people know this of their kids and beg the system for help, as the woman who wrote to Randi Rhodes has done for years. In the end, she is begging for help because the kid will leave home soon and she is sure that he will be hurting people in the best case scenario; become a killer in the worst. But also realize that the kid is all of our failures. We need to own this as a society...its not just a crazy kid...its not just solid evil...Its not the devil; Its a mix of things including gun control, health care, mental illness, dissociation in society.....

If real love and connection with another person is some sort of looking into another and feeling as one, or seeing yourself in someone else, and in fact a chemical reaction, then why does it stop there? Isn't the point of the capacity to care and love one other person that it also has the capacity to extrapolate outwards to all of society? The truth is, that we are less human if we cant see ourselves in the drunk on the street or the crazy guy with a gun.
I cant say if the shooter in this case was in pain, depending on how removed he was from himself...but, I can say that most forms of mental illness, be they just some mild obsessive compulsive disorder or depression, up to the worst illness you could imagine, hurts like hell...and there is no escape. The horrible thing is that this guy had to take so many people out with himself....but maybe because of this huge systemic failure we can look at the system from the government on down and try to remember every person's right to have proper medical care and attention no matter what...maybe that will prevent the next tragedy.

The victims....The New York Times has a nice graphic of who got killed...but in the same week, a couple hundred people were killed in Iraq, and countless others as collateral damage, not to mention the injured and the kinds of injuries that we are seeing in this war (or not seeing, actually...)
As sad and horrible as this thing is, don't ever think that these kids are more valuable than the kids in Iraq, or Oklahoma City so many years ago....Here is a CNN graphic site of soldiers killed in Iraq, if we have to know who each one was individually.( ...and I hope that hell for George Bush is eternity watching the home movies of not only the US and "coalition" forces, but also the civilians killed in this farce of a war.)

I have an inherent fear of those huge universities with hundreds of kids packed into each lecture hall. It feels like there are too many of us sheep out here and like we are warehousing our kids, overworking our teachers, and like, if we are crowding people into the system like cattle and not spending the money and time that is necessary in order to address their needs, we cant expect that something like this isn't going to happen once in a while. Probably more than we know, depending on what is newsworthy and what to actual body count is.
The thing is that most of the kids around here who have been in precious private schools for their entire lives yearn to be at the huge high schools or colleges. You cant really tell kids anything, but you can raise them to be empathetic and to know that the world depends on them being able to reason and make ethical and moral decisions ...and that its not such a bad thing to run the other way once in a while....trust your gut...tell someone.










And one more word to Alec Baldwin: Its you, Alec, who is a "worthless pig"...she is an 11 year old child who has been put through hell because you are an aggressive asshole. Hows that yelling and screaming thing working out for YOU?... There is NO excuse for ever speaking to a child that way.

And Personal to Joementum Lieberman: Shut the fuck up, butt boy! ...or Ill fly out there, pull you out of Bush's butt, you worthless little pig, and straighten you out!! The Ill fly away!! Oh and, Joe, no one cares what you think...only Bush, Laura, and Barney...like I said, nobody!