State Capitol
(a guest post by jason)
Out here on the streets, it’s disconcerting how casually everyone throws around psychological lingo to explain people’s erratic behavior. And I mean, everyone, social workers, other street people, the general public, the courts, pop & not-so-pop culture, etc. The depressives, anxious, manic, various addictions, OCD, ADD, ADHD, oppositional-defiant, schizophrenic, etc. are in the socio-economic state they are in because of their “illness.” Rarely is even the simple question of a causal relationship asked: which comes first: mental health issues or homelessness? Rarely also is the ubiquity of “mental illness” used as a gauge of society as a whole.
This is weaponized discourse whose purpose is solely to preclude sympathy with those exhibiting deviant behavior. The language of mental illness is designed & intended to foreclose on understanding of or sympathy with the social relations & personal, often highly traumatic, histories of transgressive individuals. There is no analytical insight to be gained by waving the magic wand of mental health discourse over deviance; it is sheerest, simplistic dismissal of people’s actual, concrete experience in exchange for the clinical, controllable, prescribable language of brain chemistry. This language also allows people of a certain class to assume, based on their high taxes, the silly notion of the availability of social services to the indigent. The rampant abuse & outright cruelty of social agencies, the bureaucratic nightmares of delay, constant repetition of actions like filling out paperwork, the unending wait for mostly inadequate services, esp. on the medical side, harassment by police & other authorities, the absurdly arbitrary nature of rules to be kept in order to receive services, etc., etc. are, like other aspects of social reality & personal history, flippantly dismissed. That there is no lack of housing, food, medical care or money in this society is also irrelevant.
That deviant behavior may be an expression of an authentic & legitimate desire to REBEL is likewise not worthy of consideration. This, to me, is surprising given the vision on offer for a person trying to transition out of homelessness, addiction, etc. is usually uninspiring, to say the least. Shall we learn how to balance checkbooks & treat our emotional lives like a spreadsheet so we can…get a job at Target? yes, that’s the goal, usually so that one is not dependent on others, the greatest crime one can commit: the slave not fully committing his back to row the good ship Capitalism.
and what about the autistic, the mentally retarded, and others w/varying physical disabilities? the elderly? children & their mothers? veterans? It’s perhaps a bit easier to see with veterans that their limited usefulness to capital has now rendered them disposable, except as PR props, which, to a degree, the Veteran Admin itself is, a marketing gimmick (the VA, like other medical social services, is the way the gov’t controls the health care market, ensuring profitability for insurers and medical equipment providers while maintaining a fig leaf of care for its “war fighters.” of course, medical experimentation is also rampant in the VA.) the “highest service” to one’s country makes one fit for the trash heap. The example of the vet & his treatment at the hands of the state should be taken as exemplary of the entire system.
and so the desire to rebel must be encouraged. the most dispiriting part of my experience being on the streets here is the belief of “normal” people that what street people need is “normal, healthy, functional” reintegration into “mainstream” (middle class) society, or at least to embrace middle class values (like shopping vs. 5 finger discounts, filling out the timesheet correctly, being a general do goody Wally Cleaver punctual, cheerful, presentable boy scout or campfire girl.) the vision is so dull, uninspiring, and pointless that perhaps people’s “mentally ill” fantasies are rightfully more appealing. what does flipping burgers at the jackass in the box have to compare w/a really solid heroin addiction or having a “drunk to astonish the druidy Druids” (Buck Mulligan)? or belief that one is Walt Disney’s heir? Assuming there were better social services available, why would (or should) one access them just so they can get a job at Wal Mart? And the churches…mostly they are there to offer a shot of Jesus Red Bull, and/or often enough the threat of hellfire, to give that boost to the struggling, the sloganeering that says people really can make it after all if they just try hard enough & believe enough in their own belief.
And so in reality, the language of mental illness both adopts the mantle of & somewhat replaces the more moralistic language found in the past about the plight of the poor. (e.g., see today’s lazy, shiftless schizophrenics.) the moralizing of the past is now put on a “scientific” basis. But you still have to want Big Brother to help you, to return to his loving breast, you have to want to get better, have the will for mental wholeness. Morality & psychiatry here are kissing siblings. Not surprising, since they are both deployed in the service of state capitalism.
But beside its utility to the State, beyond mooing along w/the rest of the herd, why do individuals gulp down & spew out this language so thoughtlessly? For the managerial class of our society and its functionaries & aspiring members, the language of mental illness does two things: 1) masks the deep well of resentment middle class people feel at the enormous & usually arbitrary & meaningless hurdles they underwent & undergo to procure & maintain that flimsy buffer against the world that comes from being middle class; 2) masks the reality that like cancer, like Tom Jones’ falling in love, it’s not unusual, it can happen to anyone, it happens all the time. There is plenty of correlational evidence about what causes “mental illness,” esp. psychological trauma, but causal evidence is harder to pin down. This is itself irksome & angst-inducing, this mysterious & perhaps inexplicable menace to each & all’s psyche. The bane of every psychiatrist is Polonius’s “what is to define madness but to be mad?” We all take some comfort in clinical language about other people’s illnesses, the more scientifically obfuscatory the more authoritative sounding. The words of experts are soothing. But the same language often fails when applied to our own illnesses as we realize the boundary between “health” & “illness” is vague & easily penetrated and these expert words by themselves mean almost nothing. “We know what we are, we know not what we may be,” as Ophelia said. Clinical language cannot give one the motivation & desire to live, no matter how full of positivity & possibility it may be, for we can never know what we may be.
‘Puberty’ by Edvard Munch
“Without a vision the people perish” -Proverbs 28:19 (in god’s own King James English)
Ending on a question: what is a positive vision that’s an alternative to the capitalist mental health industry? On a macro scale, people around this here internet briar patch have great ideas & know a lot. but what about on a more micro scale? The neo-Freudian Jacques Lacan used the image of the Möbius strip to analogize the mental operations of certain mentally ill persons. I hope to discuss this more with some suggestions for how to break the strip or at least disrupt its ceaselessly circling, yet very limited flow.
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
Fine unmasking of both bank capital’s production of a subculture that’s at once plausibly worthy of annoying programmatic sympathies and tough love types of tagging and incarceration. About a decade ago I was faced with answering the equivalent of your final question as it related to the best use of the territory on the bank’s of the river here where the wall used to run unbroken. Capital had long since bought it all up, a referendum was cobbled together to limit the allowable parameters of construction (it was non-binding, of course, in that the state had inked the deal and capital could sue and was threatening to). Anyway, the contest was to create an video presentation of the ultimate alternative for the area. I collaborated with a stop-motion artist. I wrote the poem. I didn’t answer the question and don’t know if I could have. I only presented the image of the carefully planned dystopia.
i liked your term ‘unmasking’ a lot, herr davidly. i don’t suppose you happen to have your poem handy, do you?
jason was sick this a.m., but he said go ahead and post it. i said i’d send the link so he could ask for edits, if any. i tho’t he’d meant ‘not that sick’. hope whatever he’s sick w/ is quickly shakeable; good healing vibes comin’ your way (((tom joad on the road))). i have some good news on some of this front comin’ next!/s
Yeah. I’ll post the video for next Reuni Day in over a week.
More importantly, may j be well.
i’m looking forward to it, then. j emailed last night that he’s ‘still kicking’, and i hope that indicated…well, hell; i have no idea what it meant. ;-)
Around the opposite corner is an boulevard, formerly Stalin Allee until they fell out of love with Stalin. It had been a project to rival in appearance the opulence of the western counterpart, Unter den Linden, with the distinct idea that those building the block houses would occupy them once they were done. Some who haven’t gotten too ill or died or been gentrified out still live all along the stretch. I’m led to think about this project when I try to think of things that work. Making things is a great way to occupy one’s time. Making things that can sustain one’s life or the lives of others more so. Like anything else, a way of life is best established in one’s youth. Capitalist indoctrination will not go gentle. Its victims are untold, in more ways than pun.
I plan to get around to commenting on your comments in my next guest post. “making things”: one ex-army guy was all like, “I’m gonna build a $^$^@# FORGE out here!” in the woods. (a forge??? my mind immediately ran to Orcs forging weapons in the LOTR movies. are forges used for anything else?) I grew up on TV & the 1st wave of home video games & cable and it’s just easier to get lost in the limitless media BS on tap than, you know, bake some bread or learn to sew or garden. hell, I know it is for me. I think *working together* is probably a big key to finding some deeper satisfaction than Candy Crush Saga, Katy Perry, or Mike & Molly (lol. obese people got their own sitcom now! yes, TV reflects the great diversity of our society, various & ever-expanding plus measurements in the waistband area & innovations in man-boob brassieres. j/k aside, it’s astounding to me how “intelligent” people can’t see a *social condition*, w/many factors, in how you could fill the grand canyon & more w/all the excess blubber in this country. pardon me while I face palm myself.)
I believe if the Govermint a’ Countin’ Office were to do real analysis, US GDP would be exclusively weapons & obesity.
BTW: I mispoke above: Unter den Linden was also in the east.
I think a fair amount of the US weight issue might be attributed to the Mental Health Industry increasingly pushing Treatment for everyone, from birth to death. I knew someone who was prescribed Lithium years ago, and rapidly ballooned into what people would consider obese. After stopping it (but not before it did horrid and irreparable kidney damage) that weight disappeared as if by magic.
Love this Jason, THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Ever since the Dean Scream™ (not that I was a huge fan of his, but it’s a great example, to my mind), it seemed quite evident to me that the US was hell bent on labeling anyone expressing their gut, despite their absolute logical functioning and no threats of violence (i.e. their volume is turned up a few notches) as being in need of pharmaceutical treatment and/or incarceration, certainly they should be put on a national database!
Of course those already ‘deemed worthy’™ and already Holding Office™ WAR MONGER SOCIOPATHS AND NARCISSISTS are always EXEMPTED and EMPOWERED: to get LOUD, Emotional!™, and even further: utterly bloodthirsty and murderous.
Of course, this pharmaceutical treatment and/or incarceration and data basing always pertained to the lower and dusky classes™, but in my mind, the Dean Scream™ ‘moment’ … along with the elites vastly transplacing human jobs with Soft Ware™ marked everyone but the elite as targetable as a Mentally ill Terrorist™.
There’s a Rand Report pdf which came out around 9 years ago (+-), which spoke to, in Emergencies™, being able to quickly identify the Mentally Ill™ and ‘segregating’ them, which truly horrified me (after all, decades of Murderous US Presidents and their Overlords have never been proclaimed as the small population of DANGEROUSLY Mentally ill, which they clearly are).
If I’m recollecting correctly (and I think I am) I discovered it accidently, at the CDC ([US] Center For Disease Control]™ website. I kept a copy of it, but after all those years, and my cancer med brain fogging, I’m hard put to find it, as I’ve been copying tons of data for nearing two decades now.
great comment, diane, and welcome to the café. as to our imperialists and overlords being pathological crazy, we were just discussing that the other day on my visual agnosia diary. sorry to hear you need brain cancer meds, or did.
Thank you, for the welcome! And as to:
No, thankfully, I don’t have brain cancer, to my knowledge at least. My comment:
was referring to my hormone blocking cancer med, which has effects on cognitive abilities.
Those cognitive effects have mostly seemed: short term memory issues and a loss for words which used to be on the tip of my tongue.
(then again the trauma at being at the mercy of the Medical Industry and associated State and other Non Profit™ Organs (it’s been an utterly horrifying experience) may have also contributed to that loss for words.)
lastly there’s been thought that cancers (even outside of brain cancer) can result in cognitive fog issues.
thanks for the explanation; i hadn’t known cancer meds could be used to block hormones, but i do have an e-friend whose doc has given him some to stop rheumatoid arthritis. and having had some pretty severe brain damage in the past, i hear you on…forgetting and fogginess. my b.d. was a direct result of the medical community, and as long as it’s in my power, i will never go to a doc or horsepital again.
but what you’ve described as horrifying is still a heavy burden to carry, bless your ♥, diane. friends who’ve gone thru cancer ‘treatment’ always describe their experiences as cold, inhumane, and barbaric, although cancer protocols can far more targeted on a sub-molecular level than they used to be. related, i just received news that a long-time blogging ally (from way back at TPM days) is due to die in a matter of days from an aggressive brain cancer. sad, sad, but the hideous irony is that she’d recently nursed her partner of 20 years thru heart-lung replacement for a couple years at least; she seems to have recovered almost completely. goddam, life is hard.
Very, very sorry to hear about your friends fate, it must be devastating for her partner; and very sorry to hear that Jason is sick.
Re staying as far away as possible from Doctors and Hospitals, agree wholeheartedly. Despite my cancer, I still don’t have a GP (I do like my Oncologist and Surgeon, but despise the Hospital Management which they’re forced to abide with), and have managed to just have one med prescribed, the cancer med. I would add the vast majority of Hospital Social Workers to that list also. I’m sure I’m on a Bad Teaching Hospital Patient list for utterly refusing to entertain their horrid spiel, while they have never offered the assistance I actually needed and requested, let alone blowing off appointments with no follow-up or apology. One of them, the one who blew off an appointment I made with her, actually was sadistic enough to suggest I move out of the area – while utterly broke and near homelessness, with a quite visible tumor – since she hadn’t bothered to educate herself on available financial assistance which I ended up attaining myself after over two wasted weeks of desperately contacting various, and worthless, Do Gooder Organs. I’ve met only one good Hospital Social Worker, she was absolutely wonderful, but when I recently tried to contact her, it appears she may have left the profession, or moved far away from horrid Silicon Valley.
Of course that God Awful DSM 5 manual added to the abuse via Social Worker in encompassing those with cancer as in need of Psychiatric Treatment [Further Medication].™ (How anyone could support Capitalism and the mind numbing misery, slavery, death and destruction it has resulted in is utterly beyond me; particularly those who claim themselves to be Christian (I guess The Gospels are missing from their particular Bibles)).
A piece of advice, if you ever have to seek medical treatment and are forced to take a generic medication (i.e. Medicare), all generics are not at all the same, let alone the allowed 40% absorption rate window (the FDA allows a 20% plus or minus difference from Brand name), and utterly opaque FDA Reports. With cancer, for one illness, you can’t be sure the meds are doing what they are supposed to be doing because many earlier stages of cancer are painless, therefore the medication does not result in verifiable pain reduction. Oh, and speaking of the mental health industry, I totally avoid Teva Generics, though it seems one of the most commonly offered at pharmacies (i.e. Huge Prescriber of Risky Antipsychotic Drug to Plead Guilty to Taking Kickbacks [Re Teva’s Clozapine]; A Drug Recall That Should Frighten Us All About The FDA ; and Vials of injectable cancer drug recalled. These comments, of course, are not a defense of the Brand Name Manufacturers, and don’t get me started on the FDA who have allowed the corruption to happen.
The generic cancer med I chose (in my case, the Brand Name I was taking verifiably worked, and I was petrified when I was forced to take a generic), after at least two solid weeks of studying up, was recently pulled from manufacture and replaced with a version I will not take, after the lab which produced it was acquired. I’d provide more details, but I’m always in well deserved fear of the Hospital and/or State which I’ve become a Ward of (due to their own malfeasance), further abusing me and threatening to pull the plug on desperately needed treatment and funds. Prior to the cancer diagnosis, I lost my utterly corrupted profession on account of my age (though well under retirement age at the time – as Zuckerfuck has opined, and Silicon Valley has inhumanly embraced – those over 35 are over the hill) and refusal to go along with the program of corruption. That’s how I ended up uninsured and near homelessness prior to my cancer diagnosis. Thank God for the only good Landlord I’ve ever had (he inherited the place), I would have been utterly sunk without him.
Lastly, turmeric is a very good spice to assist in warding some of the hundreds (or thousands?) of cancer diagnosis.’ It’s said to be best in combination with black pepper. I use both the black and white peppers with it, I find the scent of white pepper intoxicating. Even the American Cancer Society ended up admitting this.
it will be very hard on her partner, indeed; thank you for your concern.i sent them mary oliver’s ‘white owl’ poem in hopes it might help her transition, and her partner’s as well…on the website on which she’d announced the grievous news. at the end of the thread, i noted that jason says he’s feeling somewhat better, and hopes to be able to answer comments tomorrow.
but good gawd all-friday, you’ve put thru the meat grinder of the inhumane medical machine! hard for me to imagine fighting it, srsly. but yes, i knew of turmeric as anti-cancer, but not in combination w/ the peppers. it’s also showing great promise in preventing alz. i put together this ‘spices as medicines‘ list in 2012, updated it here and there. you may or may not find it of use.
keep on truckin’, diane, is about all i can say.
Thanks for the well wishes and very glad Jason is feeling better, if I ever win big on one of the few lottery tickets I buy, I’ll put him on my list of those I’d love to share some proceeds with.
Thanks much for the herbs and spices link. I’ll add it to the long list of cancer food (mostly various mushrooms, garlic, cruciferae, dark red grapes, and many of the berries, I’m sure I’m missing a few) and herbs and spices links I’ve saved; which, upon cancer diagnosis, I painstakingly weeded out from the well intended but insane and/or utterly unaffordable (actually mushrooms, grapes and berries are extremely high here and I don’t usually buy them …once the elite get the news, so much for affordability, kind of like the insane price explosion in greens and tomatoes over the last decade), and the horrid and thriving Cancer Quack Advice such as this California Quack: ‘Chemist’ Allegedly Scams [Stage Four] Cancer Patient Out of Thousands [For baggies of Dirt, etcetera] ; and that fucker, I’ve forgotten his name, who suggested daily (like 2 or 3 times daily) coffee enemas (I’m not kidding). By the by, it’s been recently noted that all cinnamons labeled cinnamon are not at all the same, the Cassius, what one usually finds on supermarket shelves, is said to be potentially harmful due to the amount of coumarin and potential liver damage, and far inferior to the Ceylon Cinnamon. I’m so grateful there’s a Penzey’s fairly close by, I was amazed at the reasonable prices (much lower than the area supermarkets if you save your glass bottles (I LOVE GLASS BOTTLES) and buy the packets), the knowledge of some of the employees. and being able to actually vividly smell the aroma of the spices.
Hi Diane. haven’t seen you since Tarzie days w/that whole vegan thing. there’s a “new” community center opened up recently here in Oly, really a replacement for one that closed down, about which a rumor was circulated that this center is really a kind of intake for the FEMA camps. I doubt that that is the case at the moment, but the suspicion has some merit and, barring some serious social upheavals, it *will be true* sooner or later.
It’s been a while; I stopped commenting and frequenting there in January, surrounding the Facebook suggestion he made for those organizing.
Yeah, FEMA Camps where the hell will they put everyone they’ve sucked the last breath out of. I’m sure California will be loaded with them shortly after Apple opens it’s new monstrosity 2, Google gentrifies San Jose like Facebook and Google have already gentrified the gut of Silicon Valley from Menlo Park and East Palo Alto to Sunnyvale and Santa Clara (where the Apple gentrification has been taking place). Then, if Beelzebub Amazon takes those fuckers in San Jose up on their bid, the gentrification will be completed. Now Sacramento and other inland areas are fucking those who were able to escape Silicon Valley. this from Fresno 2 days ago (emphasis mine):
And Lord knows, Los Angeles is a nightmare of misery. People need to read California History, including that fucker Brown’s, before spouting off about how fucking wonderful it is. Cali has always been a brutal, racist, classist, record incarcerator underneath it all (e.g. http://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/CA/CA.html ).
as city councils like in Olympia make moves to further development for tourism & richer folks, things like Fresno will be viewed as models. they see Puerto Rico destroyed (or do they?) and think, how can we get more luxury hotels, restaurants and condos on limited waterfront space? that’s part of USG’s goal in this “wonderful opportunity” (to quote some Bushista on Katrina) that has blessed PR. cf. the Clintons in Haiti. no doubt similar things, though perhaps less extreme, are happening in Houston & the like.
it’s for diane, but yes: in haiti, the mammoth mariott, as in: tourism courtesy of the clinton/rodhams ad bono-style, and sweatshops, ba-beee! free enterprise zones, ♪the rich get rich and the poor…die slowly ♫….
i was just speaking about your sloooow return to health on the (hint, hint, clue, clue) puerto rico thread. no comments after a day and a half, but i’ll just keep on talkin’ and swearin’ to myself, lol. glad you’re well enuff to comment a wee bit, anyway.
Horridly enough, it appears the answer is slow motion genocide and mass displacement. I expect, we’ll soon see increasing euthanization legislation versus providing shelter and healthcare. Further, it’s highly disturbing to see that many of the more popular bloggers seem to ultimately support such nihilism and contempt of other human beings.
The Cheney/Bush reign conveniently allowed Liberal™ and Progressive™ Thought Leaders™ (Daily Kos immediately comes to mind) to ban words such as Evil, and Malevolence as being used by crass, ‘illiterate’ and illogical Fundies & Wingers™. But Malevolence is exactly what is increasingly transpiring.
I pray you’re feeling at least a little bit better Jason, your situation is heart breaking.
Addendum.
I believe the whole bit about equating ultra sensitive ‘emotion’ with lack of logic is such utter and DELIBERATE, UNSPEAKABLY MURDEROUS OBFUSCATION.
I’ve alway’s been highly emotional, as if I have antenna’s picking up on other’s fears and misery; nonetheless, with no prior instruction, I beat a three years older High School Chess Club VIP – who “moved on”™ (no doubt, much to his private nightmares) to MIT [MA™], and a 90 plus floor office in Manhattan – twice.
I also received straight A’s in the Russian Language, took Arabic and some Spanish. Yeah, never, ever, felt safe (I am not Chomsky™) putting those first two languages on my resume.
I took the first two languages because, from childhood I have always felt the murderous impulse of Capitalism, I never have – did not need to –read Marx, or Nischte (fuck it, I know I can’t spell it) to know that things were so horrifyingly and needlessly fucked up, all I had to do was to think about the fate of Native American’s and Africans on slave ships.
i love you, jason,
love, yet another word held in high ridicule since – at least, and then some – ‘the year 2000’ (I forget the calendar, Gregorian, Julian???? ….etcetera).
Addendum 2 (for further clarity and malevolent lurkers).
Never voted Republican, or Libertarian™ (bircher, et al), in my lifetime. I feel utterly no remorse about that. I do feel utter shame at having voted mostly for their incestuous : passive aggresive, and therefore utterly lethal – fraternal in all that is life threatening – twins, the Demorodents.
Hi jason. Hi diane.
Hey davidly! Hope you’re doing okay.
Addendum 3
We never played Chess after that … he made me feel so good … it was not about beating someone to a pulp …it was about …surviving in such a cruel atmosphere.
He was from Pakistan, lived down the COLD WAR engineer family street, and always made me feel good about myself, I am so sorry he got entangled in this US racist nightmare (let alone his own birthplace nightmares) , but his dad was imported here and on and on and on.
thanks. luv you too.
say honeybee, you just made my day worth living in that you are alive, energy never dies.
;0)
our new sec. of education and her BFFs might just have the fix comin’ down the line, and it’s *drug free*, all da way to da bank! ‘Secretary DeVos, Neurocore, and Competency-Based Workforce Training’; A Continuation of Outcomes-Based Behaviorism through Medicalized Education by John Klyczek, dissident voice
“Although DeVos announced her resignation from Neurocore’s board of directors upon her confirmation to the office of US Secretary of Education, she has refused to sell her shares in the company. By refusing to divest her financial interests in Neurocore, DeVos has incited concerns that she may use her federal influence to advance Neurocore’s controversial biofeedback therapies as government-approved interventions for students who suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other cognitive-learning disabilities.
…touted as the cutting edge of operant conditioning psychotherapy, Neurocore’s biofeedback treatments could be readily advocated in the halls of academia by behaviorist pedagogues and Skinnerian educational philosophers if given the nudge from a DeVos Department of Education. At the same time, Neurocore’s hi-tech occupational biofeedback therapies may be eagerly promoted by corporatists at the new White House Office of American Innovation (OAI) who are seeking to capitalize on DeVos’s “competency-based” workforce education initiatives under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Finally, as an alternative medical procedure, Neurocore stimulus-response conditioning could potentially be institutionalized as a publicly subsidized treatment for cognitive-learning disabilities classified under ESSA Sections 2103 and 4108, which will be amplified by state-level P-20 fusion of education and healthcare through fascistic public-private partnerships.
other headings include: The School as Psychological Laboratory from Behaviorism to Operant Conditioning; A History of Outcomes-Based Behaviorism for Workforce Education; Competency-Based Workforce Training and the Medicalization of Hegelian Education; ESSA, IDEA, WIOA: Neurocore Therapies for Disabled Workforce Incompetency. now it’s long, but after the first 40 paragraphs or so, ya start to get the gist. (no, i didn’t read it all. lol.) but he concludes:
“Nonetheless, one thing is for certain: competency-based education under Secretary DeVos will perpetuate America’s long history of conditioning the student body with stimulus-response methods of psycho-behavioral programming.” (pretty tame ending, considering.)
on edit: their twit account is srsly for twits, cartoon figures, retweeting stuff about ‘kids need healthy breakfasts, mediterranean meals’, tra la la, as if: affordable. but this took #1 place:
both unbelievable & not surprising. how neatly DeVos slid into her role post-Obama, no? the spontaneity that might erupt from the energy of youth is something to be greatly feared. the children, who are the future ™, will not in the tiniest way be allowed to build their own future. we adults will ensure that. b/c that’s just how fucking great the world is that we have already built. fuck those kids & their silly dreams.
Look UP from the strip :
Thank You, Jason.
Even Back In The Day, which was immediately post 9/11, when we were all crazy, mental health care in institutions was Just Plain Aweful. Then it was better for misdiagnosed young folk to be street persons than be subjected to clinical trials of highly dangerous drugs like Risperdal. And as you say it has only gotten worse, in both environments.
In our experience then, help was to be found in the lowest strata – Jesus hobnobbing with prostitutes and tax collectors wasn’t just to save them; he was comfortable with them.
They are us.
(from your overlord & editor: fixed it.) ;-)
ah Risperdal. one “normal” guy I met out here who’s out here b/c over a course of 6 months some really awful stuff happened to him & his family, so he checked himself into a local mental hospital for depression. He left after 10 days cuz “all they wanted me to do was try their drugs.” vulnerable populations are vulnerable to medical malpractice & outright criminality, e.g., what is de facto experimentation. Bill & Melinda Gates are no doubt proud to see their global efforts already well-advanced in the US, incl. many middlers & others in this country’s rabid endorsement of the need to sterilize the undesirables. (totes serious: just ask random people what they think about sterilizing the poor. I know, somewhat OT, except it reflects a horrific, bloodthirsty paternalism toward the poor, disabled, criminal, etc.)
‘Tennessee Judge Pushes Sterilization on Those Incarcerated for Drugs’, truthout
couldn’t find the hackable, programmable BC chip, but…
@BillGates “@BarackObama knows a thing or two about inspiring young people. We loved talking to him about how to empower others to change the world.”
all i done got time for fer now, garden harvest ahead of predicted brrrr freeze tonight, family obligations, etc.
jason wrote back and said he caught mental illness from his streetbillies, and is signing onto an off-label trial of neurontin.
no srsly, he said he hopes to be better tomorrow, and hopes to answer comments. i’ll try to be back before tomorrow, but i will say that i did finally get some blessed zzzzzleep last night. 4:30 teh clock sayed! wooot!
thanks for the comments, thoughts & well-wishes. I puked up my pancreas & liver, but that’s why god gave us two of each, right?
you’ll be pleased to know i’m feigning my own little obsession & muttering at stuff, just to fit in, be local, go native, when in Rome and all that…the streets in the smallish downtown are poorly labeled and, if that wasn’t horror enough, why certain streets have buttons for walk signals & others don’t is a complete mystery. so I’ve taken to muttering & swearing at the walk/don’t walk buttons.
and being sick is sooooooo boring.
“I almost forgot. When one is going to begin a totally new life, one requires regular & wholesome meals.” (Cecily, Wilde’s E(a)rnest.) lol. I thought withholding food from people was the way to ensure proper behavior? (I know, random thought).
all for now. back to moaning in the solitude of my “tent”.
good to know that you’re among the almost living, sir walk/don’t walk. and ya mean the neurocore twits were echoing oscar? oh, the irony! some of them might be…literate!?!
lol. betsy devos gives a holy shee-ite about feeding the poorz? perhaps the suitably programmable ones. “if you have 3 Pepsis, and Neurocore gives you one more, how much more refreshed are you? And class, an incorrect answer disqualifies you from the school lunch program.” most people hearing that quote from Wilde would think I was nuts. “not the lazy poorz. uh uh.” you’re in fucking foreign territory w/that “society should feed *all* its members, period” BS. even child rapists????? even Jeff Sessions????
i’m feeling better, but we all know the brain is the most energy-intensive zone of the body and…low wattage right now.
nah, she just recommends that chirren ‘have’ a nutritious breakfast before school, not that she and her comrades won’t cut all school breakfast programs, ya see? mebbe she’ll come out for ‘dumpster diving before school classes’. loved ‘even jeff sessions’, though. and shoot, as you’d said you’ gone back to your tent to moan, i stuck up a new diary. oh, well, it won’t matter a whit, i reckon.