Letter on the Epidemic of Shootings in the US

Dear Representative Dingell:

Please consider the possibility that psychiatric drugs, specifically antidepressants are CAUSING the epidemic of mass shootings in our nation.

HIPAA laws prevent the gathering and therefore study of this possibility, so that if it were so we would not know. Factors similar to the Oxy-heroin scam may be occurring. A known side effect on some persons is listed on the bottles- “suicidal ideation.” Might these not also make certain bad persons randomly murderous? The instances where the victims are not known to the shooter are especially interesting. What if 90% “involved” antidepressants? Most are under the care of our “Mental health” systems, which have obviously failed in these instances.

Mass psychiatric drugging is what we are doing that is different from all other armed nations and times, in which these shootings did not occur. While I also strongly advocate any gun control measures possible- if 18% of our people need psychiatric drugs, we may want to rethink that second Amendment!- it becomes gradually clearer that our psychiatry simply does not have the knowledge that would be required to treat the soul with drugs. An example is the recent deposing of the assumption that depression is a chemical imbalance. As a lifelong student of psychology, we submit the opinion that our psychiatry is in a word profitable, but unscientific ineffective and often decisively harmful- though necessary. Nor has it been answerable to any higher judge or authority, allowing great opportunity for pharmacy companies to harvest tax dollars while doing more harm than good.

Thank You,

Your new constituent,

Mark A. McDonald, PhD (Politics)

Leo Strauss on Solitude

…the philosopher cannot possibly desire to rule. His only demand on the political men is that they leave him alone…(p.207)

   That’s why I yell at my cats- even the “gentleman,” Mr. Black, my “best animal,” “Leave me alone!” If I were a true and full philosopher, I would likely never yell (and they would never listen (Republic, opening), though they do not anyway). And that’s why Justice Black (or Frankfurter?) said, “the right to be left alone is the right most prized by civilized man,” and why the U.S. Declaration, setting rights above duties, is so excellent.* It allows for the Holy Spirit: it is the house without a roof, open to the sky. All men (universal sense, which of course includes women, not of course, qua women, but qua men) have the faculty developed in the philosopher: The philosopher embodies and shows the excellence of man, hence, “all men are created equal-” equally endowed with rights, as Lincoln explains in his speech on Dred Scott. So here, Strauss continues,

   …The philosopher cannot lead an absolutely solitary life because legitimate “subjective certainty” and the “subjective certainty” of the lunatic are indistinguishable. Genuine certainty must be “inter-subjective.” The classics were fully aware of the essential weakness of the mind of the individual. Hence, their teaching about friendship: the philosopher is a philosopher in need of friends.

                                                                                      On Tyranny, p. 208

Tyrants, of course, cannot have friends.

  It is irony itself that the tyrant is surrounded by flatterers and bigger and smaller fish. Some he depends upon to mirror his prestige, while others he depends upon for safety. Meanwhile, the philosopher must hide away in the woods like Merlin to keep mankind from tearing themselves to shreds if they encounter him, who is by nature a gadfly.

   The philosopher too is one of the many, a citizen like any other, with the peculiar advantage that he is one of the few who can speak. There are very few substantial letters to congresspersons, amplifying the voice of those among the people that are able to speak of things that mater. Most, of course, cannot.

   Athens killed Socrates the Philosopher, and Plato and Xenophon wrote Apologies of Socrates, arguing of course that this should not have occurred. Xenophon wrote that far from being punished for not believing in the gods of the city and for corrupting the youth, Socrates was deserving of honor. Socrates, required to tell the truth because he is in court, said he deserved free meals in the Prytanium like an Olympic victor.

   Honor, which the philosopher does not seek for its own sake, in the sense of recognition, is needed for his own protection. It is also good for men to look to and esteem things truly honorable (Leo Paul S. de Alvarez).

   Had Athens honored rather than judicially murdered Socrates the philosopher, Greece might have become an autocthonous nation, more than a match for Persia, and avoided the Imperialism of Alexander that destroyed Greek liberty .

   But you see that since the madman and the philosopher are indistinguishable to the folks in the neighborhood, many things follow. The Constitution supersedes the “Michigan Mental Health Code,” which is unconstitutional when it seizes a man for mere speech because others are deluded and self-interested or imagine him a danger, and act upon this delusion rather than allow him to explain. And the case is important enough to pursue to the ends of the earth. They live like slaves because they fear death, and like the Miller in Grimm’s goat story, will do things so base as to destroy the value of their having lived at all. It is no grave dishonor to be considered mad, nor to lose all one’s friends as Odysseus did while having done or said not a single thing wrong. They could not restrain themselves from the cattle of Helios, or, their ignoble self interest proves them incapable of philosophy. But then Odysseus sees, and gets to see Nausikka.

   This leaves open the possibility that there was no outside influence in what caused my family- people I have known for fifty years- to hurt me so badly I will likely never be reconciled. “…But a sin against the Holy Spirit…” And what do you think the context indicates He is talking about?

Note* So long as one does not violate the rights of another, “society” is required by our fundamental law to at least leave him alone.

NPR: Cynthia Canty Reports On Psychology and Tyranny: Drug ‘Em All for Profit on Tax Dollars

The emerging tyranny of psycho-dope is fed by tax dollars: Our ignorance of the soul permits drug and “service” profits, while a great deal of harm, if some necessary care, is done by these companies and the kickbacks for medication taken by these shrinks based on pseudoscience. We do not have anything like a scientific knowledge of neurology or psychology, which is why the shrinks, for six figure salaries, jerk those suffering around on four or five different concoctions before they get one that makes them appear “normal.” About the “side effects,” they do not know or care, any more than Trump cares about “collateral damage.” There is very little study about how the many drugs interact, with one another and with the chemicals in our poisoned food and world, and zero study of how these drugs effect the soul ethically- how could there be? Justice is rare and difficult, and the just man far from “normal.” But justice is, or is an essential part of, happiness or the health of the soul– prove me wrong! See Psychology in the Menu above for a theoretical discussion of modern psychology: Our trust is quite misplaced. This excellent report, copied and pasted from the NPR website and Stateside, details the campaign contributions effecting the decisions of our legislators to allow insurance companies to control the care of the soul in our state- MM

Health plans, big campaign donors press lawmakers for more control of mental health services

By JOE LINSTROTH & CRAIG MAUGER • MAY 1, 2017

Stateside

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  Lobbyists, staffers and others at Senate committee meeting room on April 18 collect paperwork showing the details of the Senate’s initial budget proposal for next year for DHHS.

  CRAIG MAUGER

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10:59

Stateside’s conversation with Craig Mauger, executive director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, and Joe Linstroth, executive producer of Stateside on Michigan Radio.

This story was produced as a collaboration between Michigan Radio and the Michigan Campaign Finance Network. Graphics by Kaye LaFond. 

Michigan lawmakers who will decide whether to hand health insurance plans a major victory this spring have received about $1 million in contributions from committees and executives connected to the plans.

At stake is who will provide the services for people with mental illnesses, developmental disabilities, and substance use disorders, and who will receive the $2.6 billion in annual Medicaid dollars that are paid as fees for those services.

Of that $1 million in contributions, $292,100 has come since the start of 2016 when the fight for control of the state’s behavioral health system began, according to a review of public disclosures by the Michigan Campaign Finance Network and Michigan Radio. The examination focused on eight years of campaign contributions in order to get a clearer picture of the financial relationships cultivated with lawmakers over time.

Michigan lawmakers have received about $1 million from committees and executives connected to health insurance plans. Click image to enlarge.

CREDIT KAYE LAFOND/MICHIGAN RADIO

Currently in Michigan, a publicly managed system provides behavioral care for Medicaid enrollees, while the health plans are responsible for physical care. Virtually everyone involved – the health plan leaders, the advocates, and the providers – agree that integrating mental health care with physical health care will both improve outcomes and cut costs for the estimated 250,000 people using the system. The disagreement lies in who would control the billions in annual Medicaid dollars that would be used to make the changes.

Advocacy groups demand that control of the funding remain in public hands. The health plans want to lead the integration themselves, a change that would be certain to grow their business in the state by sending more Medicaid dollars their way.

In the past two weeks, that growth came closer to reality in legislative committee meetings. On April 18, a state Senate subcommittee approved a budget amendment from Sen. Mike Shirkey, a Republican from Clarklake. Shirkey’s amendment stated that the Legislature’s goal would be to fully integrate the behavioral and physical systems under the health plans by Sept. 30, 2020.

Senator Shirkey received more contributions from health plan donors than any individual lawmaker at $76,250. Shirkey’s total includes a $25,000 contribution to his leadership PAC, Compete Michigan, a day after the April 18 subcommittee meeting in which he introduced his amendment favoring the health plans.

According to Compete Michigan’s disclosure filed this week, the PAC received $25,000 from Jon Cotton, president of Meridian Health Plan, on April 19.

In an interview, Shirkey dismissed the idea that the contribution or other contributions were tied to his support for the health plans on the integration. Instead, Shirkey said he’s been out making his case to be in Senate leadership next session. Cotton wants to support him, Shirkey said, and the contribution came just before the April 20 deadline for the first fundraising period of 2017.

Shirkey said Michigan is currently under-invested in mental health services, and integration led by the health plans could free up dollars to better manage the behavioral side of care. Plus, he said, Michigan’s managed care system is high performing and should be deployed to provide behavioral care.

Shirkey said he wasn’t concerned about the optics of the donations. And on the subject of drawing connections between health plan donations and legislative action, Shirkey said, “You always find what you’re looking for.”

On the House side of the Legislature, Rep. Laura Cox, a Republican from Livonia, has also received contributions from the Cotton family. Her leadership PAC, Shamrock PAC, reported receiving $25,000 from Jon Cotton on Oct. 14, 2016. In her second term, Cox has received more contributions from health plan-connected donors than any other individual House member at $34,360.

Cox is the chair of the House Appropriations Committee and proposed an amendment last week to the House budget proposal that would support the health plans’ bid by requiring up to three integration pilots through contracts with the health plans. Cox didn’t provide comment after a request was put in through a spokesperson.

Cotton, Meridian’s president, has spoken out in favor of integrating the health systems and for pilot programs so the state can test out the health plans’ performance in behavioral care.

“We just want a chance to prove ourselves,” Cotton told Crain’s Detroit Business in March.

Over the last eight years, Cotton’s family has given about $356,250 to current lawmakers, their parties and their fundraising committees. Among the largest individual contributions have been $25,000 to Shirkey’s PAC and $25,000 to Rep. Cox’s PAC.  (See interactive graphic below for breakdown of top recipients.)

He and Meridian Health didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story.

Showdown: A year in the making

Gov. Rick Snyder’s budget presentation in February 2016 jump-started the debate over who should manage Michigan’s behavioral health system. At the time, Snyder proposed putting the system under the health plans, which set off protest from groups who wanted the system to remain public.

At the legislature’s direction, a workgroup was convened to devise a way forward and recommend pilot projects that would better integrate behavioral and physical health care. It included representatives from the health plans, advocacy groups, and providers and payers such as officials from Community Mental Health and Department of Health and Human Services. That workgroup says it engaged more than 1,113 people over more than 45 meetings, including more than 700 consumers and family members.

As CEO of the Mental Health Association of Michigan, Marc Reinstein was a member of the workgroup. He said that while the consumers and families who showed up said they were not happy with the current system, they overwhelmingly objected to letting the health plans take it over.

Kevin Fischer, CEO of National Alliance on Mental Illness-Michigan and also a member of the workgroup, said the fears include a loss of public oversight, diminished services, and any savings passed on to shareholders and executive bonuses instead of being reinvested in care.

Fischer said an improved system should be bottom-up, not top-down. The decisions about integrating someone’s physical and behavioral care belongs at the client-level, he said, where consumers, their families and providers can decide on the best plan of action, and not at the funding level, which the health plans propose.

“We do not want to have a system where a health plan says you get six doctor’s visits and your pills and that’s it,” Fischer said.

The workgroup submitted its final 143-page report to the Legislature in March 2017, which rejected the Governor’s proposal to transfer control of services to the health plans. The report called for numerous other changes, however, including publicly led pilot programs and partnerships with health plans to test new ways to deliver care.

After signing off on a number of the workgroup’s proposals, the Michigan Association of Health Plans, a nonprofit organization that advocates for health plans, submitted its own alternative report, calling for full integration by Sept. 30, 2020.

In a March 17 interview on Michigan Radio’s “Stateside,” the association’s executive director, Dominick Pallone, said the health plans didn’t feel their views were represented in the workgroup’s report. He added that there will still be public oversight of the Medicaid contracts and the health plans will continue to work with the Community Mental Health agencies, preserving the existing structure.

The competing reports have focused attention on the Legislature, which is now in the process of setting the budget for Fiscal Year 2018.

While all sides have been lobbying actively, the health plans have been a much larger player in campaign giving over the years. They were among the top advocates for expanding Medicaid coverage in Michigan in 2013.

An examination by MCFN and Michigan Radio shows Michigan Association of Health Plans’ political action committees (PACs) have given $572,635 to lawmakers currently serving in the Legislature, their parties and their fundraising organizations over the last eight years. The total doesn’t include giving to former lawmakers.

Since the start of 2016, the association’s PACs have given about $153,900. The association also disclosed spending $253,278 on lobbying in 2016.

Dave Waymire, spokesperson for the Michigan Association of Health Plans, said the organization has been involved in numerous legislative and administrative efforts that have benefited the people of Michigan, particularly children and those with disabilities over the years, including Medicaid expansion and the protection of Medicaid funding.

“We believe it is important to participate fully in the legislative process, and contributions are one way to do that,” Waymire said. “But we believe our ideas and track record of success are our most powerful levers in this discussion.”

The association also believes that its plan for integration pilots “is worth moving forward on to determine if we can improve a system that all agree is failing to meet the needs of some of our most vulnerable citizens,” Waymire said.

In addition to the association, groups connected to it also do their own political giving. A lawmaker who declined to be named said he’s been visited recently by representatives from both Molina Healthcare and United Health Group, two plans involved in the association.

Over the last eight years, Molina’s PAC has given $87,230 to current lawmakers, and United Health’s PAC has given about $57,250. Since January 2016, they’ve given $40,700 and $20,000 respectively.

The Cotton family of Meridian Health Plan has given $356,250 to current lawmakers over the last eight years with $77,500 of that total contributed since the start of 2016.

Fischer said he wasn’t surprised by the contribution numbers. Tom Watkins, CEO of the Detroit Wayne Mental Health Authority, said the discussion shouldn’t be “about who’s making the best and the biggest political contributions” but about the people and family members whose lives depend on this care.

“That is not something that should be up to the highest political bid, I think that would be travesty,” said Watkins.

Watkins said the language advancing in the Senate seemed to ignore the workgroup’s recommendations, which he said came after a year of preparation and more than 100 people working on them.

“The Senate bill took that, tossed it in the trash heap and said, ‘No, we’re going to give the money to the insurance companies by 2020,’” Watkins said. “I think that’s bad politics, bad policy, and a bad process for our democracy.”

Watkins’ side of the debate has also made contributions and does lobbying.

For instance, the Michigan Association of Community Mental Health Boards PAC has given $40,600 to current lawmakers over the last eight years. The association reported spending $31,673 on lobbying last year.

What’s Ahead?

The integration language advancing in the Senate and the House has yet to receive a vote from either full chamber. Eventually, lawmakers from the House and the Senate will have to agree on what pilot projects to offer, who leads them, and what language to include in the budget.

Setting a goal of integration under the health plans down the road would also require action by future lawmakers to enforce the goal.

Last week, Shirkey won another amendment to the Senate budget bill that says health plans have to reinvest any savings they realize in new pilot projects that integrate behavioral and physical health services, meaning the money can’t be kept as profit or used for something else. Shirkey said it’s time to prove whether fears about the health plans are “real or perceived.”

“So far,” as Shirkey said, “all we’ve done is kick the can down the road.”

Reinstein, the head of the Mental Health Association of Michigan, said he and the other advocates are going to keep lobbying for public control of the behavioral health system but wasn’t certain how much difference it would make.

“If House and Senate Appropriations chairs are dead set on giving this to health plans, there’s little advocates can do to stop it.”

https://plot.ly/~kmlafond/17.embed?link=false

Click here to see the full list of money paid in support/contributed for current lawmakers since the start of 2009.

Hey Hillary, Who Is The First Woman To Win The Popular Vote For The Presidency of the United States!

   Congratulations to Hillary Clinton, the first woman to ever receive the popular vote for the presidency of the United States. This is an enormous achievement in World History, though India and others have elected a woman. I am not a feminist, and do think that many things work like carpentry and sports, where even when allowed to compete equally, there may be exceptional women, but the males will simply usually produce the best. Socrates discusses this in Plato’s Republic, in the fifth book, where the same education for male and female guardians is proposed seriously for the first time, at least since Theseus defeated and then married the Amazon- perhaps the daughter of the same one from which he and Hercules stole the girdle. Politics, though, may be less like this than baseball is, especially since one third to one half of humanity is ethically bad, and ought be kept from positions of leadership and power. They, or we, simply desire the wrong things, and hold uncultivated priorities. Hence, ethical character is most important in politics, and while there are almost no woman philosophers, there are more often queens and princesses, or woman of noble and even royal character.

   Best of all, she does not have to bare the burden for which she is the best prepared, but gets to ride along here in the ship of state, as one of the heads of the Democratic Party. This might be a quite peaceful few years, if she did not have to watch one not prepared and not able try to drive this thing without hitting some reef, or titanic iceberg. But perhaps the two parties will even be able to work together, for example to keep a minimal health care while restoring individual responsibility, and paying for it by restraining the oxy drug companies and insurance fraud. Such a thing is not impossible, though I for one am not optimistic. As Hillary said, and of course, “we have to give him a chance.” And, Hillary, you ought to see the cabbages in my garden!

A Centrist Solution: The CLC on Health Care

   The Democrats are indeed in trouble on health care. The decision was to save lives now and worry about paying for it in the next administration. Had it been left to the Republicans, though, we would have no health care at all, as the decision was to avoid “socialized medicine,” at the expense of literally watching our citizens, many of whom represent a million dollar investment of the past generation, die in the streets. People would go to the emergency room, and the hospitals would get stuck with the bill, adding confusion and expense.

   If one considers health care in America, it will quickly become apparent that Insurance fraud, prescription drug abuse and the profit motive will make national health care impossible. Doctors and prescription drug companies have used Obamacare and cashed in on the American Taxpayer. The insurance companies and medical testing companies similarly exaggerate costs and expand profitable procedures, according to profit or “shareholder value,” rather than the Hippocratic oath. Pseudo-psychiatry bills more than half the American homes now for drugs that do more harm than good. Congress has been paid by these companies, whose lobbyists have made their campaign contributions.

   Add to this the valetudinarian Americans and their inability to distinguish the medically necessary from the possible and profitable, and our attempt at a national health care will indeed fail. Here again, the solution is not to cancel health care for the poor nor to raise taxed, but, as Bernie Sanders had begun to say, “stand up.” We need to stand upright and get serious about fraud. As regarding food stamps, there is no reason that we cannot secure the minimal conditions, but this cannot be done with fifty percent fraud in the program. Speak to the people, Barack, and Hillary. Ask us to stand up together and make these programs possible, because otherwise they are not possible.

   So the centrist solution is not to raise taxes, but to call on America, that is, everyone, to eliminate fraud so that we can have public programs that take care of the poor and of certain needs in common (as does the fire department), perhaps the minimal conditions regarding medicine.

   These practices, fraud and abuse, and not the true principles of the free market, make health care impossible for the Americans. Donney Trumpet would probably fail to distinguish between cosmetic and necessary surgery, then take kickbacks through the party to allow the drug companies to prescribe oxy and a thousand cat scans, and the insurance companies to bill the taxpayer, all fine with him so long as his chicks get the surgery for him and his bank account benefits! Nor does it seem, though, that we should pay for many sex change operations on the basis of the principle of equality.

Was the Mall or Elementary School Shooter on Antidepressants?

   Again, we suggest that the incidence of correlation is nearly one hundred percent, and there is every reason, politically and scientifically, to consider whether the antidepressants do not effect certain souls, even one percent, this way. Everyone knows that it is more than one percent who report side effects consistent with this tendency. And everyone knows that if this were simply true, we cannot count on the drug companies to have discovered it with their lobbyist research. Perhaps we could get them to pay for research like that the government has funded on Marijuana, to support their political position of prohibition, after only those who agreed with this position, for the most part, are allowed to participate in government.

   Pardon my Libertarian cynicism, but we should loudly sue these companies for what they have done in the fields of psychology and pain relief. They have these huge piles of gain ill-gotten at the expense of our nation.

   And, oh, dear Pfizer, do not be so put out. When public opinion shift toward making an honest living off the genuine value of you product, you can foresee, shift or get out, and surely will never be prosecuted, after paying off so many. The times wee bound to change, and it is irrelevant to profit o “business whether the change is for the better, though one might lose a great deal to competitors should times change for the worse.

Kevin Matthews Shot to Death by Dearborn Police

This shooting occurred December 23 of 2015, and we are just now hearing of it. The Police Chief assures us that they worked very hard at de-escalation, especially regarding Kevin Matthews. He was pursued for suspected larceny, had apparently escaped custody earlier in the day, and was shot six times. He was unarmed. The press has begun an inquiry into the criminalization of disability. Lewis Wallace, the reporter for NPR’s Marketplace who did the story, notes that people called “autistic” cannot obey the order to freeze, and it is easy to see how many people might misunderstand an officer chasing them. We never even heard about it when the Dearborn police shot Kevin six times.

NPR, with their pro-psychiatry assumptions, manages to use the story to call for more “treatment” for those categorized in these ways. We must use the story to note that with these sorts of errors made by the trusted authorities, Kevin Matthews would have been better left alone, especially that day. It is precisely police ignorance of and disregard for the Bill of Rights that makes possible the shooting of these relatively innocent people. Police may shoot a fleeing axe-murderer when it is their one big chance to catch him. They may not shoot most other people, and must allow for the possibility that their orders are not understood, and must stop shooting innocent people multiple times.

Why are these people being shot multiple times? Is there not a police policy to be sure to kill anyone they shoot, turning accidental shootings into murders?

Kevin Matthews is dead. John Berry is dead. We assume the police want to work hard at de-escalation. In order to do so, we suggest that they cease shooting innocent people multiple times based on false and unexamined assumptions, from which the Bill of Rights is intended to protect the citizens.

Colloidal Silver as an Antibiotic

This is a great Home remedy recommended around our neighborhood by a famous old Chiropractor, Dr. Dick. It is silver in a special suspension, otherwise a guy will tun green, literally. It is expensive, like 30 bucks a bottle, but many swear by it, and the doctors of course will not prescribe it like they do things like the “Epi-pen.”  I credit it with healing up my jaw bones, and another guy had to heal from inside out, and was not fighting off the infection till he applied some of this. It is applied topically and swallowed from an eyedropper. Ever wonder why silver was used for silverware Does it not just feel right?

Other home remedies, but these I intend to make myself, are Willow aspirin and Walnut wormer. As is well known, we also advocate organic weed and organic tobacco, and homemade beer and wine as well, in moderation. Despite being unable to drink, I will make some wild grape wine out of my wild grape juice, if possible.

Mental Health Care ?

   Now we are going to have a federal government movement to treat diseases of the mind like diseases of the body. This might be a nice idea if it were possible, but is sure to become very difficult very quickly. The first problem is that we do not have a scientific psychology. We simply do not know what we are doing when it comes to psychiatry and psychology Rather, we have a bunch of overpaid pseudo-scientists ready with their DSM to categorize and judge their peers like sophomore psych students do all their personal relations. What was only annoying in the age of “therapy” is positively dangerous in the age of careless and experimental drug treatment, a resurgence of electroshock and, soon, lobotomy. And here we are back at the topic of prescription drug abuse. Many people are sure to be harmed a great deal at great profit for the drug companies. Read Julie the Mad Blogger, if you do not believe me. Her story is about to be repeated 100,000 times.

   I have written on psychology, over there in the permanent pages in the Menu, but no one is able to read the chapter. Americans just are not very interested in learning something new about the soul, but more about making money and the body. The chapter sets out an attempt at a genuine, philosophical psychology. But I can say a thousand times that our psychology does not know what it is doing, and demonstrate this with a few points and questions, but the words go in one ear and out the other. Ask them what the well-functioning soul is, and it turns out they have not ever thought about it, but simply judge “mal-function” according to suburban common sense. A matter of one’s own culture, is it? And “adaptive,” what does that mean? And our entire text-books of “abnormal” psych do not contain the word love.  Our psychology is then incapable of studying the relations the complexity of which often causes the significant crises in our lives. We do not have a knowledge of the soul that corresponds with our scientific biology at the basis of medicine, and we cannot even treat these diseases without continuous and deadly medical error, infection from the hospital, etc, so that more deaths are occurring from medical error than on the highway. Further, what if justice is the health of the soul? Is not the value free science then a bit like a physician who does not believe thee is a health of the body, but know his own profit quite well?

   I have already limited my writing because of the new program. Criticism of the government will become a category in the DSM, as will criticism of psychiatry and the drug industry. Anything extra-ordinary will be endangered, and we are of course gearing up again to trample the Bill of Rights. The powers of government to do whatever they want will be increased, and the Soviet-style branding of every government critic as insane is sure to become commonplace.

   We do indeed have serious “mental health issues” in America, but these are not the sort that can be treated without doing more harm than good. Long ago, we ought have treated the criminal desire that allows people to harm others without caring what they do, and even to profit from harming others. How we will diagnose and treat this problem is a good question, but treating mental illness might come after we treat ethical illness, to assure the ethics of those we “empower” to treat our minds.

Was Charles Whitman on Antidepressants?

What if 100% of these public shooters are on antidepressants? What if it is the same one, say, Prozac, that are involved? The question has been raised, and there is no study of it, because it is contrary to the interests of the multi-billion dollar, shareholder-profit-maximizing prescription drug industry, which has paid bought our Congress. People do not want to question modern psychiatry because they think it is what is making us safer, and no one realizes that modern psychology is not based on scientific knowledge. On the anniversary of the Austin shooting, which may have been the first of these public shootings of anonymous persons, a Texas law allowing people to carry concealed weapons on campuses went into effect. It is not clear that arming everyone is going to solve the problem, since when there is a shooting, no one with guns can respond for fear of being mistaken by the SWAT team for the shooter. It seems we are willing to try many radical measures, with the exception of questioning ourselves and our trust in modern psychiatry and the prescription drug industry.

From my privileged observation post, I know that modern psychiatry literally does not know what it is doing when it prescribes drugs to treat the human soul. There is no scientific foundation, and they know that the side effects are immense. But our ignorance of the causes leaves us trusting the “mental health professionals.” Our trust is mistaken. People who study neurology do not have knowledge of the human soul, but have not improved on common sense and fashionable opinion when they violate the rights of citizens and classify everyone according to their DSM. Just as with Freud, questioning their pet theories and diagnoses is a sign of the truth of their diagnoses. Freud called it “resistance,” a pseudoscientific term they applied to anyone who doubted their psychoanalysis. A sure sign of “schizophrenia” is to deny that one “has” it. In the Medieval days, they did this too to anyone who questioned the spiritual authorities, you know, the “mental health professionals.” Hey Joey, the priests are here to take you to summer camp!