Every Action Has a Reaction

Every action has a reaction. Or so they say. For example.....an eighteen year old goes to a war. He's a combat infantryman. He witnesses brutality and death beyond anything he could ever imagine. He takes part because there would be hell to pay if he refused. After a while the brutality becomes common place. The eighteen year old turns nineteen and compartmentalizes his feelings while violating most of his moral beliefs. He believes he's only responsible for having the back of the Marines in his platoon and company. By any means necessary. By the time he goes home he's numb and lacks the empathy he once had before enlisting.

Upon return to stateside Marine life the grunt determines he won't take part in training others to do as he did and he won't play the Marine game anymore. For over a year he fights the Corps. He's sent to brigs and jails and upon return to his unit continues to fight against the Corps. After 13 months in a combat zone he's discovered the war against the Marines is just as tough. They threaten him, jail him and try to bully him. He doesn't care. One time they had him see a mental health professional. He spends 15 minutes with him. They say he's not crazy. They finally discharge him with a less than honorable discharge.

Going forward the grunt becomes an activist with other veterans. He meets his wife. He has two sons. His second son cries a lot during the night. It wakes the grunt from his nightmare. He runs into the room to quiet the son. He's flashing back to a baby killed in a bunker that had cried right before a frag was thrown into the confined area. He holds his hand over the baby son to quiet him.

The grunt continues to stay with his family. He's often times a gentle and loving husband and father. It's the times of rage that makes his family afraid of him. His two sons never know which father will show up. The father that reads to them or the father that pins them up against the wall with hand around their throats and screaming. His rage is terrifying.

Twelve years after the grunt leaves combat he discovers there's a new diagnosis for grunts like him. PTSD. He's amazed how many grunts have similar stories. How many become enraged without apparent reason. How many have nightmares. It's good there's treatment for the grunts. It's too bad there isn't treatment for the families they terrorized. The families become the hidden casualties.

The grunt's sons begin using pot when they're twelve. By twenty they're trying cocaine, LSD, meth and ecstasy. By thirty the second son is addicted to crack. Two days ago he told his parents he felt suicidal. He's said it before. It's usually after a binge on crack and the following depression. For years the grunt and his wife have tried to get him to go to groups. He doesn't like groups. They make him want to use. But he continues to use without groups.

Every action has a reaction. Sometimes it takes years of repetitive actions for the full reaction to occur. Sometimes the actions result in tragic reactions.

If you're a grunt and think you're in it by yourself, think again. Look around to see how many people surround you with care and loving. Don't wait until your kid's reaction becomes crack or booze or meth. Or suicide. Act with love. The same love you had for your shooting buds in the bush or sandbox.

There's A Storm A'Coming

The first Earth Day took place in the 1970s. The issues then are pretty much the same today. Only we've allowed the potential of environmental disaster to become the reality. There's no prevention of what's to come. Not anymore. When Hurricane Katrina hit the shores of the Gulf we watched the citizens of New Orleans struggle to survive and waited to respond. Even though it was an American city, it was a mostly "black" city.
It seemed New Orleans was more like a Haiti or Bangladesh than part of the US. Cops and the military were more apt to kill perceived looters than help hungry, thirsty humans. Once help arrived the horrors of the Super Dome had already been allowed. Seven years later the city is still waiting for true relief. A large portion of the homes owned by the poor and middle class have been condemned and scraped off so gentrifiers and rich developers could make one of the largest land grabs since the Europeans arrived in North America to steal the lands of the indigenous people.
This past week the bill came due for the neglect of our ecosystems. Our failure to acknowledge the harm done by greenhouse gases, polluted water, pesticides, plastics and other environmental wounds to the planet has resulted in the melting of ice caps and rising oceans. Which has led to bigger, more deadly weather occurrences.
Tornadoes have become more frequent and larger in size and areas of deadly destruction. Droughts and wildfires have become commonplace. Infestations of insects and destructive weeds have changed the landscape of our mountain forests. Fracking and other industrial polluters have put major potable water supply in jeopardy for generations to come. Hurricanes have increased in number, size and locations they strike.
New Orleans has been a frequent target of hurricanes. So, the neglect toward the city seemed palatable to some. Some even said New Orleans should be allowed to die because of the frequency of hurricane destruction. But this past week Americans woke up to the new reality of environmental payback. The Big Apple, Hoboken, Coney Island and all the iconic areas of the greatest megalopolis of the US were inundated by a "perfect storm" called Sandy. A huge tropical hurricane joined with a "Nor'easter" and a western storm front to strike at the heart of America like no terrorist had ever done.
The NYC subway was flooded. Staten Island was cut off for days with streets flooded and homes ripped apart by water and wind. Relief was slow to come as crews raced to restore power in Manhattan and the center of American commerce. Ordinary people would have to wait for their communities to be taken care of. Even with dramatic response by FEMA and the Red Cross, the damage was so great there was no possible way to alleviate the suffering of all the survivors.
What's unfolded in the days after the "super storm" has been an apocalyptic scene of things to come. New Yorkers were observed going through garbage for food, gas lines for cars were many miles long, drinking water was scarce and electricity was missing.
Some communities joined together to help one another but others seemed helpless to do much except complain about their plight. Images of beach homes worth millions became a common sight on the evening news. The once well off middle class neighborhoods were destroyed and the survivors became angry because their needs weren't instantaneously met by the government many wanted to do away with. The demand for instant gratification by this nation's people has been epitomized by men and women making unreasonable complaints following the greatest storm in the history of the nation.
The scenes of demanding Americans shows an ugly side of this nation many in the world have come to expect. Entitlement and American exceptionalism have become the norm.
When natural disasters occur in other parts of the world Americans often come to the aid with money and boots on the ground. We often make huge promises of aid only to renege when it becomes time to pay up. The political climate has created polarization so great we can't come together for other humans.
But when the disasters occur in American cities and towns, with the exception of New Orleans, the syndrome of the great American victim comes onto the scene. Like our losses in wars we create, our losses of life and property in natural disasters are much more egregious and significant than all the other nations that have suffered every bit as much. At least in our own minds. We don't remember the earthquake in Haiti that still awaits the aid we promised. New Orleans is no longer a city of black residents. And the black neighborhoods have been ignored for years.
The most important issue about the "perfect storm" hasn't been discussed by most people waiting in line to get gas for their internal combustion engine driven cars. The survivors who bemoan the total destruction of homes built too close to shore lines or in flood plains, don't accept their wasteful habits helped contribute to their plight. For two plus centuries the American people have believed they could rape the land of this nation and nations around the world without having to pay a price. They refuse to acknowledge the warnings of environmentalists about the continued use of fossil fuels creating global warming that would cause super storms. They refuse to acknowledge there is drought so wide-spread the food supply is in jeopardy. They refuse to admit allowing greedy corporate entities a free pass to pollute in every imaginable way has led to an environmental crisis of epic proportions. A crisis that may well lead to the eradication of human life on the planet.
The American people want to believe they are a nation of people with ideas and ideals. They believe they can do anything but haven't done anything to change since the end of World War II. The great myth we have created an "information age" transforming the world has played out to be an age of misinformation and polarity.
Change for this nation is a foolish notion reflected by the actions of the American government gridlocked in perpetual war and failure to maintain and rebuild the nation. Change is impossible when our Supreme Court gives corporations person hood and the ability to literally buy elections, judgeships and local rule. Change is impossible as long as corporate interests are allowed to dictate science for their own profits instead of the good of humans living on the planet, Earth. It's impossible if we continue to deny the obvious exemplified by Hurricane/Super Storm Sandy.
Environmental armageddon is quickly approaching and we won't connect the climate changes with the destruction of Katrina or Sandy. The irony of the relief efforts going on today is the bottled water being handed out by the Red Cross and other relief workers. The environmental damage caused in the name of relief only ensures there are much darker clouds waiting out in the oceans headed our way.

The Nature of Life

Sometimes I hear and see things I don’t want to hear and see.  That’s the nature of working in the field of psychiatry. The other day I sat down with someone who said little but I could see the terrible pain and tortured thinking on the face of the individual. They had lived in oppressive conditions for a number of years. They’d witnessed horrible deeds done by other humans. They’d heard terrible stories of atrocities. They struggled to tell about these things but I didn’t need to hear. I could see the stories in their face. In their eyes. In the way their body slumped. The way their hands moved.

Sometimes atrocity and horror can’t be explained or described. I’m well aware of that. I have my own demons from jungles and paddies of Vietnam. They haunt me almost daily but I’ve never been able to fully describe or explain what I witnessed. What I smelled. What I touched. Even watching old film footage fails to capture that atmosphere of terror and evil.

This is the nature of life in our world today. Evil persists. Sometimes it triumphs. We can lose ourselves in the darkness of it. We can turn to evil as our own way of living. We can allow it to crush us.

There is another part of life, however. Only days before I met with the individual so much in pain we reunited with my wife’s niece, Richele, and her husband, Dan.

When we were young we saw Richele once a year in Erie, Pa. during our annual trip with the kids to visit their grandparents. After she and Dan married, it became the periodic funerals of my wife’s family members.

We met at funerals and always told one another we needed to quit meeting like this. But we’d leave shortly after the funerals and wouldn’t meet again until the next funeral. The last meeting was at the funeral of Richele’s father. My wife’s brother.

I think we might have thought we'd seen each other the last time. Even with some talk about them coming to Denver in the fall. Those are things we'd always say at funerals.

 Sometimes life brings us surprises that are positive and very welcome. Sometimes life brings us unexpected times of genuine love. Richele and Dan came to Denver for business conferences. They wanted to meet for an afternoon they had free.

For one glorious autumn day we shared a ride into our beloved mountains with them. The sky was the pristine blue of a Colorado day. The sun was warm and bright. And the company was fun and comforting. We walked the tundra with mountain winds chilling our faces. We peed behind bushes. Drank lattes and coffee in Frisco. Beer in Breckinridge. Walked the streets of the mountain town. Ate dinner near the 16^th Street Mall in Denver. We talked about our lives and politics. And kids. We enjoyed one day of life together.

For one special day, life wasn’t about the rigors of work or doing household chores. Or pursuing our interests in making things better. It was just life. And family. We toasted one another. Hugged each other and parted ways in downtown Denver. And told one another we loved each other. That we should meet again before ten years passed.

It’s the nature of life. And sometimes life is good.

The Lies of the Empire

The truth about Mitt Romney and taxes is his alleged charitable contributions are given in stocks to Romney owned charities which allow the stocks to be free of taxes. And the money given to charity not claimed on the tax return was not an act of largesse on his part. No, it was a cynical act to ensure his tax paid exceeded the 13% he earlier claimed he had paid. So his tax paid was 14%, still much less a percentage paid by most average American workers. And once the election is over the Romneys can file an amended claim and recoup every cent of the money not previously claimed and more.

What Mitt Romney is really good at doing is cheating. He’s a consummate liar. He willingly lies to further himself and the agenda of his puppet-masters, multinational corporations. Romney is the epitome of the corporate world. They cry about prohibitive tax rates in the U.S. making it impossible to create new jobs and harming small businesses. That 35% tax rate is a myth. The largest corporations not only don’t pay taxes, they get tax rebates once they use all the available tax loopholes provided for them by the corrupt Congress.

These are antisocial personalities that have no problem pushing for profitable wars killing millions, including American sons and daughters from the middle class and the poor. They have no problem polluting the planet for profit. They will deny the effects of their pollution even as millions die and suffer from the filthy air and water. Even as lead pits kill children in Peru. Even as oil spills pollute the oceans and kill the creatures of the sea.

These are people who will kill their own grandchildren in their rush to greed. They don’t care about the future they will leave the younger generations. They only care about profit now. They manipulate and game the system at every turn to gain power and wealth. Power translates into more wealth for them. That is the significance of the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court. It allows wealth to buy government and the power which will lead to ever more wealth.

The hate and wedge issues proliferate the media because the corporate masters intend it. They know creation of divisiveness will keep the middle class and poor at each other’s throats while the rich will continue to accumulate more wealth, more power. Even a black President doing the bidding of the rich is made out to be a Marxist liberal. His color and race are included in the dialogue of hate promoted by the masters of the corporate world. His term as President was allowed to scapegoat him for the depression created by the neo-cons and right wingers.

These are people who will get the citizens of this nation to wave patriotic flags of nationalism and demand war against nations for absurd and morally corrupt reasons. They will support the troops right up until they return home from their wars for the last time. Then they will turn their backs on the wounded and emotionally scarred young they got to do their bidding. Their flunkies in Congress will refuse to vote for legislation to assist the troops. They will allow them to struggle in the desperation of unemployment, homelessness and substandard treatment. They don’t care about the daily suicide rates of troops.

These are people who have clearly shown they will bully and bankrupt small business if they get in the way of multinational corporations. Wal-Mart and others have no problem destroying local business to provide greater profits for themselves. These are people who cry crocodile tears for small business while constantly conspiring to steal their ideas and creative innovations. They will crush small business or small farmers like annoying insects to gain profit for themselves.

These are people who have mastered the art of striking fear in the hearts of the elderly about the benefits due them. They’ll make the elderly feel the benefits are entitlements when in fact they’re benefits paid for by taxes deducted from the paychecks of every working person. These are people who would gladly pull the plug on granny if she no longer represents a profit for the rich. They don’t blink in taking food from the mouths of children supported by food stamps.  They claim to be people of good faith. They cynically use faith to cover up their greed. They want others to believe faith will be rewarded in wealth. The poor and struggling must surely lack in their faith.

In the next two months the attack ads will increase and foolish people will buy in to the insanity. Either deluded or hateful people will buy into the toxic Kool aid of the rich. Others will hopelessly give up and do nothing. Not enough will reject the circumstances and rebel.

The myth of a Mayan apocalypse is supposed to occur in 2012. In terms of American history the myth may well come to be true depending on the November election. If not in 2012, the apocalypse for humans will not be far away if the sleeping, stultified and narcotized continue to ignore the warning signals of corruption and environmental disaster that are centered in the American Empire.

A Failure of Greatness

I wonder how the men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan feel with the focus off their daily grind and daily threat they face. You'd think from the media reports wars were no longer paid for in billions of dollars and the blood of our young. You'd think drones and bombs weren't killing innocents in both nations and places we aren't even aware attacks take place.
"Joystick patriots" send killer drones out to spy and kill every day and then go home to beers, families and television. And maybe video games to sharpen those skills they have to have to remotely kill. It must be a real rush to finally get to "light up" some damn "terrorist".
Every day, on average, one vet kills themselves. And when I tell people this they don't want to believe it. When I tell them vets are killing wives and kids they refuse to believe. They don't want to believe they are going to prison at high rates. Homeless more than the average population.
We never hear about the families in Basra or Fallujah still grieving their dead family members. Enduring the crippling wounds inflicted by American weapons. Developing strange illnesses resembling radiation poisoning.
We seldom hear about the rapes of young female troops by the other troops in their unit. Seldom hear about the rapes of young Iraqi or Afghan women by angry and arrogant occupiers. These war crimes seldom result in trials or convictions.
Americans don't want to believe we're still at war for all the wrong reasons. They are led to believe the troops are protecting this nation when and if the wars are even mentioned. They fail to understand we are the largest terrorist entity in the world. How else can you describe bombs, drones, rockets, white phosphorous, depleted uranium and toxic weaponry used against other humans? And we're always looking for better ways to kill.
I still try to wrap my head around the outcry by citizens whenever someone goes berserk and kills groups of people without reason. Where would they ever get such thoughts in America? Rampant gun supplies, constant wars, constant violence exposure through media, hate-mongering by racist radio hosts, hate by religious leaders....the moral breakdown of humanity. We say we're a Christian nation but Christ would be appalled at what is done in his name. Any concept of a loving god is belied by the reality of the hate and violence so prevalent in this nation.
The political drama and facade going on has taken center stage with all the lies and hateful rhetoric. Damn the troops. Damn the poor and hungry. Damn the frail. All we hear is the lies and attacks of shallow men and women who don't give a damn about this nation or the plight of the common person.
The wealthy bastards of Wall St., Goldman-Sachs, BOA, CITI, Chase and the DC beltway live in a bubble of insane greed that sucks the humanity from the marrow of their bones. Their God is Mammon, the god of the greedy. They are the money-changers Christ is said to have chased from the temple.
We should not be fooled into believing these crippled humans care about those dying in wars. Their sick minds are oblivious to the weak and needy. The failure of their souls doesn't allow them to care about the husbands and wives struggling to feed their kids and pay their rent or mortgage. Their hatefulness only allows them to use the issues of women's rights, gay rights and the return of Jim Crow as ways to divide those who struggle to make living wages. They vilify teachers and union members fearing they might educate and organize.
We should not be fooled into believing we are free and have rights as described by the Constitution. The individual has given way to the personhood of the corporation courtesy of the Supreme Court's total lack of integrity. Gridlocked Congresses and cowardly Presidents and legislators are tools of the military industrial complex and all the other special interests. The only special interest not being considered are the people of "we the people" so eloquently mentioned in the Preamble of the Constitution.
My mind wonders what the mothers and fathers of the troops must feel each day and night their sons and daughters are in the "kill zone" of our insane wars. What must the children and spouses feel with the empty place at the dinner table? How many struggle to sleep worrying about a phone call in the middle of the night.
I wonder how a mother and father must feel after a drone kills their child. How must the Iraqi family feel following the death of a mother at the hands of foreign troops? How does a new mother cope with a child born with horrible birth defects in the Fallujah region of Iraq?
I wonder about these things and why they fail to be mentioned in our daily conversations. It's clearly apparent we choose to forget and would rather go about considering this a great nation. I think of the words of a President who said a nation is only as great as the lives of the weakest citizens. Today, a nation is only as great as the way it treats all the citizens of the world. In that we have failed the test of greatness.

Lies of Traitors

There is a myth in America that the economy depends on the stock market and the big banks like Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Goldman-Sachs and on and on.

The truth is Americans and all the rest of the world are getting robbed by them.  They caused the economic crash with their twisted methods of banking and brokering. They deliberately went about selling fraudulent stocks and derivatives to individuals, pension funds, stable companies, municipalities and other nations outside the borders of NYC and the USA.

The liars of both political parties want us to believe austerity is necessary because of the working class. Unions, teachers, police, firemen, nurses and grave-diggers are all the cause of our economic problems. They used too much credit eagerly offered by the banks. They over- spent on homes and high end cars despite constant offers to finance by the banks. They demanded too much in wages even though their yearly wages lost ground compared to the 300% improvement of wealth by the richest 1% of the world.

And when the crash came it was the working class losing jobs, watching pensions lose most of their value, watching gas prices escalate beyond all expectations and in turn seeing all necessary goods like food become so expensive some had to skip meals.

Don’t think for one minute the bankers, brokerage firms or fat cat politicians are suffering or ever have during these bleak times. They’re living high on the hog from the wealth stolen from the workers. They raided pensions, destroyed unions and blamed public employees for their disasters. They watch as children starve and homelessness increases dramatically with people never experiencing homelessness.  Their responses have been to outlaw the homeless by keeping them from using public lands to camp in, sleep in or sit in after hours.

Don’t think for one minute the politicians spending billions on attack ads via super-PACs have the workers or poor in mind when they get elected. No, they are concerned with pandering to the ultra-rich with tax cuts, special police protection, assistance moving good jobs out of the country and making sure the oligarchy is so powerful the workers can never overcome the oppression.

Don’t think for one minute the war machines, the prison industry, the drug war or all the other over-funded government programs will go away or be reduced. The needs of real humans take a back seat to the needs of the wealthy.  Never mind old people suffer, children die, education becomes only for the rich.  In the misery of lost jobs, lost homes and hunger the will to fight back diminishes.  The effects of the thieves calling themselves job producers and the back bone of the economy saps the energy of even the strongest who object.

Don’t think for one minute the Ryan Plan or any other austerity program will get America back on track. What the politicians and Wall Streeters plan to do is totally devastate and derail the American worker. They are shooting for a working class similar to the worker in China, Bangladesh or Vietnam. They want the destruction of a middle class that might oversee their traitorous crimes. Yes, these people are sociopaths who have no country or allegiance. Their loyalty lies only in the stolen wealth they have.  They also managed to steal the Bill of Rights and the government of “we the people” in the process. They control the Congress, the Executive branch and the Supreme Court.  The blustering fools in thousand dollar suits are merely tools of the sociopaths or insiders in the anti-social network that quite some time ago executed a coup d’état without the American people even recognizing it.

Good people will resist but at risk of pepper spray and imprisonment. Good people will attempt to exercise their rights but at risk of thugs in blue riot gear beating them down. People will look at Egypt and deplore the military dictatorship beating and threatening those who resist them.  But will Americans deplore the same thing happening in their own nation under the guise of “law and order” and keeping the peace?

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Running Out of Canaries

Another canary in the dark hole of democracy died yesterday in the state of Wisconsin. How many more will have to die before Americans wake up to the deadly scent of the poisonous billionaires who have bought the government of “we the people”?

Too many Americans have failed in being responsible citizens of a nation once thought to be a beacon of hope and freedom. Too many citizens have allowed the propaganda machines of both the left and right to make decisions for them. Too many are too lazy, too apathetic or too discouraged to make informed decisions based on their own study of issues. Studies that go beyond the 30 second to minute sound bites of the ads paid for by shadow groups unwilling to even identify themselves.

Why should we accept the information of groups unwilling to reveal who they are and who their members are? Is this the government a free people should accept? A government bought by shadowy individuals and groups with the desire to control all segments of government for their own greedy needs?

Too many Americans are willing to let others decide their fate and the fate of their children. They’re unwilling to be responsible enough to be informed, to seek the real truth and to stand up to the bastards attempting to shackle them in debt and oppressive laws meant to protect only the rich.

Too many are willing to bitch about conditions that adversely affect them but won’t do something other than cast a ballot for politicians already sold out to the millionaires and billionaires. Too many buy into the idea they can become a millionaire or billionaire if only the government is dismantled and everything turned over to the private sector. This is called an oligarchy or fascist state in other parts of the globe.

Too many Americans cower in fear that an outside enemy will take away their freedom and fail to see it is the government of the rich they should fear most. Too many worry about the phony threat of gay marriages. Too many allow religious hysterics and fanatics to control their lives and fail to actually study and understand the ideology of Christ, Allah and others they claim to believe in.

Too many Americans have abdicated citizenship to liars and traitors only interested it gutting this nation’s resources, enslaving its workforce and moving on to the next conquest. They figure once the American people are under control, the rest of the world will soon follow. Americans like to believe they are the greatest nation on Earth but they gave up that recognition by constantly using wars and coercion to get their way.

Too many Americans blame the fall and decline of this nation on other people or institutions. We all need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves how much we’ve done to ensure our children and grandchildren remain free people.  We need to ask if we challenged those who attempt to steal their freedom or if we sat on our asses watching Dancing With The Stars or some other inane and mind numbing television program.

We have to ask ourselves how many more warnings will there be?  How many canaries in the toxic remains of democracy will die in order to warn us of the impending poison created by billionaires who could care less about “we the people” or freedom?

Another Phony Day of Memories

The drums of war continue to beat in the phony guise of patriotism, peace and justice. Flyovers, flag waving and disingenuous political doublespeak about the “service” and “honor” of “heroes” fighting for peace and protection of the homeland will be in excess today, Memorial Day 2012.

The mainstream media continues to be the megaphone of the masters of war. They portray this as a day to honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for their country. They protect the old fools who continue to sacrifice the youth of the nation for the racketeers Smedley Butler so eloquently spoke about in his repudiation of American wars and the use of the military as the thugs for the rich.

Today’s media will show inspiring stories of the young soldiers with lost legs and arms carrying on. They’ll show poignant reunions of parents returning from war surprising their families. Sports stadiums will be used as platforms to beat our chests in patriotic moments of field sized flags, color guards and the singing of patriotic songs. The military will provide uniformed troops to be present for a free game to recognize their service.

The moment that made the strongest statement about the truth of combat came yesterday for me. I happened upon a television story detailing the return of old WWII Marines returning to Iwo Jima for the first time since their combat on that island. A time when over 6,000 of their fellow Marines were killed.

The elderly Marines all wore caps declaring themselves as survivors of Iwo Jima. It all seemed a surreal exercise in patriotism. But then the faces of the old Marines changed as they got their first glimpse of Iwo. That thousand yard stare appeared on their faces. Many of them had tears streaming down their cheeks. It was clear the memories of carnage and death had come rushing back to these Marines and they were no longer old. They were 18, 19, 20 years old again. And the pain of their war was clearly expressed in their faces.

As I watched the old guys I found myself flashing back to my own memories. Tears began streaming down my own cheeks. There was no pride in my heart. No pride in the memories of my war. Only regret and grief.

But today will be an exercise in denial. The people of this nation will not be expected to reflect on the reasons the youth of every generation has been sacrificed for the rich and their puppet government stooges. The American people will not be expected to understand American exceptionalism is merely another way of saying imperialism. Instead they will get a steady dose of patriotic denial and a message it is necessary to consume excessively. And maybe for a short time remember sons and daughters that were fed into the war machine and never allowed to return.

We want to believe we are a righteous and religious nation. We want to believe we follow the ideals of Christ and other prophets of God. We just don’t want to believe none of them ever advocated the insanity and sin of war.

Memorial Day 2012 is just like all the others I’ve experienced since my return from Vietnam in 1969. A damn lie of phony patriotic zeal that fails to understand we sacrificed our young for nothing more than keeping the racketeers of Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Banks and multinational corporations in power.

Learning The Hard Way

It used to be we wanted all our children college educated. I remember when residents of California got free tuition to state funded colleges. And there were many of them. But that all ended around the time Reagan became President. Trickle down economics resulted in trickle down illiteracy and financial barriers to education. Student loans went from government investments in our nation's future to cynical profiteering by banks leading to our young becoming indebted the rest of their lives. Public schools became the holding cells for the poor and lower middle class while the more affluent created a new tier in a caste system for education. Now the private schools, often having connections with the Christian faith, attempt to skim government education dollars and further destroy public education. Visit major state funded universities today and you will discover a majority of the students seem to come from affluent backgrounds. The government now leaves community colleges to the less affluent as a way of obtaining college education. And still the banks seek to profit on the backs of even the poorest students.


Educators have become the evil empire to the right wingers. Many have the audacity to assert themselves by using collective bargaining. Unions have emerged to speak out for teachers and educators. Unions have dared to ask educators be paid living wages. The private educators in the elite church schools aren't usually able to unionize. Their wages are usually far less. So, the government funded educators must be vilified. Look at the test scores! They must be poor educators because they can't teach the hungry and emotionally stressed children to read at age appropriate levels. They must be lacking because they fail to get children in gang infested neigborhoods to stay in school. Public schools are failing and look at all the money wasted on them by tax payers. Let non-union schools take over. Let the private schools profit and discriminate against the poor performing students. Leave those students for the overworked and understaffed public teachers to deal with. Blame those teachers for failure of the public schools.

Education in the US is a reflection of our society. We no longer seek to educate our children to be free thinkers. We no longer seek to have our children think abstractly. We've made education a game where the best team wins because they have wealth and influence. Education is a paper chase where students are indocrinated in capitalism by most schools. Misinformation and fallacy prevails at many schools. Students have come to understand excellence isn't about the ability to think for themselves. It's about the ability to game the system. To get the answers right on the culturally biased tests created by co-opted stooges of the capitalist system.

I've spoken with professors who are threatened if they don't give grades undeserved. Professors who expect critical thinking from their students are hated or dearly loved. Some of our children actually do want to learn. Despite all the barriers.

American education is like American healthcare, unfortunately. European students learn multiple languages. American students learn how to take politically motivated tests. Educators are overwhelmed by the broken system. Like medical professionals they struggle to do the right thing but bureaucracy and politics constantly impede them from doing so. Greed insidiously infects educating our children. The huge amounts of money granted to education is up for grabs and the less spent on the children learning means the more profit.

It used to be we wanted our children educated in colleges and universities. Now that goal has stalled for the first time in many generations. Not only will my kids and grandkids have poorer edcuation opportunities and higher debts they will also be under-employed or unemployed at higher rates. Their generations will be the first generations in nearly a hundred years not to live in better conditions than the previous generation.

We should truly be ashamed.

The Medication of the Mind

In 1985 I graduated from a nursing school as a Registered Nurse. I was in my mid 30s and my intention was to become a psychiatric RN. I had volunteered for a few years at a local mental health center and found great satisfaction working with the group of mostly paranoid schizophrenia diagnosed patients of the center. My wife had been a psychiatric nurse for ten years at that time.
I almost immediately hired on with Ft. Logan Mental Health Center, a state funded psychiatric hospital. I was hired to be a RN on a high risk assault team. Sounded dangerous but it wasn't. At least for me. Guess since they weren't shooting at me it really wasn't all that dangerous.
I liked being there. I enjoyed working with the men and few women who were patients on the unit. Granted, they could be very volatile but it also felt they needed human contact and a compassionate ear to hear them in the tortured state of mind they often seemed to be in.
At that time RNs were therapists, ran groups and took part in the therapy of our patients as well as the medication part of treatment. We were skilled at listening and picking up cues from our patients when they needed help. Our co-workers, a group of very skilled mental health workers, social workers, recreational therapists and psychiatrists valued us for our therapeutic skills and our medical skills related to the treatment of mental health patients.
As the 20th century ended and the new one began, mental health changed dramatically. It was the medical model in charge of treatment. HMOs, and managed care took over. The bean counters took over. Instead of a combination of therapy and medication to treat our patients, medication treatment became paramount. The pharmaceutical industry had discovered psychiatric care  was a gold mine. Psychiatry was an area of medicine with many unproven and unknown theories that could be exploited by the pharmaceutical companies for huge profits.
New antidepressants, antipsychotics, antianxiety medications were developed and old medications repackaged and sold as "cures" and best treatments. Scientific studies were done to show how drugs targeted certain areas of the brain that were alleged causative factors for schizophrenia, mood disorders and anxiety disorders. Childhood mental health problems suddenly appeared with dramatic frequency. The diagnosis of childhood and adolescent problems exploded onto the the scene at rates unheard of in the history of mental health treatment. And the pharmaceutical companies had medications ready to treat the kids.
Suddenly, the use of medications first and minimal therapy was the treatment of choice. Registered nurses saw their skills of therapist taken away and became pill pushers and vessels of the psychiatrists under the influence of the drug reps from the pharmaceutical companies. Samples became the backbone of many mental health centers' treatment. And when new drugs were put on the market, the samples of the older medications dried up. So either the doctors ordered the newer medications or patients were faced with possible shortages of drugs that seemed to help them. Nurses were left justifying medications not on a certain HMO formulary. Congress allowed Medicaid and Medicare to be taken over by private HMOs to line the pockets of their private contributors.
Along with the pharmaceutical dominance of mental health treatment came a new type of nurse manager. They weren't valued for their skills as a mental health professional. They were valued for being able to manage nurses away from using therapeutic skills to focus only on pushing medications and billing for as many client as they could see.
And where do the clients (changed from patients) fit in this grand scheme? They don't other than to be seen as "billables" and money makers. Public mental health has begun to move away from the local clinics spread throughout a metropolitan area. Now they want to centralize and make it more difficult for some clients to reach the reduced number of clinics.
Mental health clients are seen as the pariah of health care. They enter an ER and they're seen only as a diagnosis, a GOMER, a nut job or loonie. Their physical distress is often ignored or medicated without consultation with the psychiatric provider. More and more the mental health client is prescribed narcotics for pain. They end up on a cocktail of narcotic, benzodiazapines, antidepressants, mood stabilizers and antipsychotic. And then medications for side effects.
Case managers are supposed to care for 20-40 clients on their caseload. The squeaky wheel gets attention and the poor isolated client often slides away into a drug induced oblivion.
Nurses are expected to see one client every fifteen minutes and told not to get into therapy discussions by alleged nurse managers. The first line of advocacy once expected of RNs and other nurses has eroded. Nursing professionals are now the drug procurer, the shot giver, the robotic pill pusher. The conversations asking the client about their lives and their emotional state are to be limited. The important information once obtained by the one time nurse caregivers is lost. Like a client saying they are being beaten by a spouse. Don't have time for that. Move on. Get the next patient going.
Where the client does fit is in the profits gained by the pharmaceutical companies. Today more psychiatric drugs are prescribed in the US than at any other time. Every American is a potential user of a psychiatric medication. We have to diagnose children for being children. School teachers are on watch for a rebellious kid and often suggests parents get them medicated.
Mental health treatment is a joke. Skills and experience are rejected as old fashioned and the managers of clinics and inpatient sites are only interested in getting the patient in and getting them out on medications. In some sites the old drugs causing tardive dyskinesia are prescribed because the drugs are cheaper. It is no coincidence these facilities often times hold the Medicaid contracts for the region. The contracts for managed care are structured so the contractor gets a flat yearly rate to provide care for patients having Medicaid in a designated region. The unspoken motto is " less is more". The less care given and billed to Medicaid, the more left over for the contractor as a profit. There isn't an incentive to provide good treatment as much as there is to provide less treatment.
Case managers and nurses are expected to make progress in the care of patients by reducing the need for care. The more they can get patients receiving less care the better. Often times patients needing a higher level of care are pushed into categories where they will receive fewer visits to doctors and therapists. The less care needed the more successful a contractor is seen to be. This would be a good measure of therapeutic success if it wasn't such a sham in which the therapy team is bullied into saying clients need less care when it isn't true.
Even the doctors have become just another vessel to make profit on the backs of psychotic, depressed, manic and anxious patients. They are often over booked with appointments. Their days are back to back with patient appointments and the opportunities for therapy other than prescribing drugs are much less now. The mental health centers and inpatient units are advertising themselves as recovery centers, wellness centers and places of excellent care. They spend great sums of money to tell the public about their wonderful care and seldom give their workers wage increases that keep up with the cost of living.
Mental health treatment is a joke. We've lost the human touch. We treat the patients like cattle pushing and shoving them into things they don't want to do. The patient has now been trained if in distress surely there is some pill they must take. While we deinstitutionalized the mental health patient from locked state hospitals, we've continued to institutionalize them using medication. The constant refrain is about medications. Emotional distress is treated by ignoring it by using techniques of coping that represses the past. Don't have time to discuss the pain of trauma. For years and years trauma in a psychotic or anxious patient was glossed over. The PTSD diagnosis was completely scorned and ignored. The phrase, "we don't want to open that can of worms" was common when it came to PTSD. Now with wars and returning combat veterans regularly having PTSD and drug companies "discovering" new ways to treat it, the PTSD diagnosis is common. One more pill to add to the bunch.
There is no where else in the world having the extent of mental illness as in the alleged richest and freest nation in the world, the US. No other nation uses medications for mental illness as much as the US per person. Emotional and mental health has become medicated. No therapy required.

Since 1985 this writer has worked in both public and private areas of mental health care. He has worked in emergency care and directed a mental health emergency department for a large private hospital system. He has been a nurse manager in a public mental health hospital and also worked in outpatient mental health. Most importantly.....this writer is a combat veteran that has been in treatment for PTSD and is in recovery using psychotherapy and medication treatment....the type of treatment studies show to be the most successful in the treatment of mental illness.