“Mental Health” as an explanation for mass shootings is in fact a dodge. It’s an excuse. CNN commentator Van Jones laid it out in detail.
Cooper: We all say, ‘oh, these children lost their lives. They didn’t lose their lives, their lives were were ripped out of their bodies, their brains were splattered on the floor, their intestines were hanging out. It was sickening. We’re talking about this in an ant antiseptic way, and we’re shocked that this kids are angry but these kids were hiding in the closets while their friends were dead,
Jones: And that’s why the law enforcement people are standing by the young people saying, ‘we do need to do something different, Republicans are saying, ‘These Democrats, they’re emotional, they’re irrational, they’re exploiting kids because they want to grab all of our guns.’ They’re actually the ones who are rational and sane. They have a thousand excuses. And, I have to say, whenever this thing happens, if it’s a Muslim, they want to politicize it within seconds. If it’s a Mexican — build the wall. If it’s a black person — more cops and prisons. If it’s a white person, it’s mental health.
Jones makes a totally valid point here. When we have a mass murder perpetrated by a Muslim — the immediate argument is that Islam itself is the problem. When it’s a Mexican immediately we’re talking about MS-13 and the drug cartels being to blame. “They’re Rapists, and the Bring Crime” and all that. When it’s a black kid it’s a problem in the deficiencies of black culture, and racial grievance and gangs and drugs. When it’s a white kid or white man what do they say?
It’s “Mental Health.”
So it’s not a problem with their religion, it’s not a problem with their culture, it’s not a problem of who what they are — it’s mental health. It’s an individual issue. It’s a problem child. It doesn’t have anything to do with anyone else in the world, it certainly has nothing to do with any other white person.
“That’s just one crazy dude. “
Yeah, that’s some fracking bullcrap there.
Remember that time when Homeland Security came out with a detailed report about the rising danger of Right-Wing White Lone Wolf Terrorists?
Key Findings
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(U//LES) Threats from white supremacist and violent antigovernment groups during 2009 have been largely rhetorical and have not indicated plans to carryout violent acts. Nevertheless, the consequences of a prolonged economic down turn—including real estate foreclosures, unemployment, and an inability to obtain credit—could create a fertile recruiting environment for rightwing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities similar to those in the past.
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— (U//LES) Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the firstAfrican American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit newmembers, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appealthrough propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning.
(U//LES) Threats from white supremacist and violent antigovernment groups during 2009 have been largely rhetorical and have not indicated plans to carryout violent acts. Nevertheless, the consequences of a prolonged economic downturn—including real estate foreclosures, unemployment, and an inability to obtain credit—could create a fertile recruiting environment for rightwing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities similar to those in the past.
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— (U//LES) Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the firstAfrican American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning
In repose to this report the Right-Wing lost their ever loving minds as we can see from reaction by Michelle Malkin.
The “report” (PDF file here) was one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I’d ever read out of DHS. I couldn’t believe it was real.
I spent the day chasing down DHS spokespeople, who have been tied up preparing for a very important homeland security event later today: The First Lady is coming to visit their Washington office. Priorities, you know.
Well, the press office got back to me and verified that the document is indeed for real.
They were very defensive — preemptively so — in asserting that it was not a politicized document and that DHS had done reports on “leftwing extremism” in the past. I have covered DHS for many years and am quite familiar with past assessments they and the FBI have done on animal rights terrorists and environmental terrorists. But those past reports have always been very specific in identifying the exact groups, causes, and targets of domestic terrorism, i.e., the ALF, ELF, and Stop Huntingdon wackos who have engaged in physical harassment, arson, vandalism, and worse against pharmaceutical companies, farms, labs, and university researchers.
By contrast, the piece of crap report issued on April 7 is a sweeping indictment of conservatives. And the intent is clear. As the two spokespeople I talked with on the phone today made clear: They both pinpointed the recent “economic downturn” and the “general state of the economy” for stoking “rightwing extremism.” One of the spokespeople said he was told that the report has been in the works for a year. My b.s. detector went off the chart, and yours will, too, if you read through the entire report — which asserts with no evidence that an unquantified “resurgence in rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalizations activity” is due to home foreclosures, job losses, and…the historical presidential election.
Ok so we’ve had some time since that report was issued to gain some perspective on whether it was an accurate assessment or not. And the answer is “Hell yes” they were right on point.
Just for discussion you have these examples going back to the date of that report in 2008.
July 27, 2008, Knoxville, Tennessee: Jim David Adkisson, the author of a manifesto urging violent war against liberals, opens fire inside a Unitarian church during the youth performance of a musical, killing two and wounding seven.
Feb. 26, 2009, Miramar Beach, Florida: Dannie Baker, a former Republican Party volunteer who believed that “Washington D.C. Dictators” wanted to “overthrow us with foreign illegals,” opens fire on a roomful of Chilean foreign-exchange students, killing two and injuring three.
May 20, 2010, West Memphis, Arkansas: Sovereign citizen adherents Jerry and Joe Kane, a father-and-son duo, kill two officers when pulled over by police, then die in a shootout.
Jan. 18, 2011, Spokane, Washington: Neo-Nazi Kevin William Harpham plants a backpack bomb along the route of a Martin Luther King Day Jr. Day parade; no one is injured because it is spotted and defused.
Aug. 5, 2012, Oak Creek, Wisconsin: Wade Michael Page, a member of the neo-Nazi group Hammerskin Nation, kills six and wounds four during a shooting rampage in a Sikh temple before killing himself.
April 13, 2014, Overland Park, Kansas: Frazier Glenn Miller, a former grand dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, embarks on a shooting rampage at two Jewish community institutions, killing three.
June 17, 2015, Charleston, South Carolina: Dylann Roof, a white supremacist radicalized online, joins a Bible study session at the Emanuel AME Church, then opens fire, killing nine black worshippers and wounding another.
Nov. 27, 2015, Colorado Springs, Colorado: Robert Lewis Dear opens fire on patients arriving at a Planned Parenthood clinic, then engages in a gunbattle with police, killing three people, including a police officer, and injuring nine. He says, “No more baby parts,” as he is arrested.
Oct. 14, 2016, Garden City, Kansas: Three Kansas militia members, Curtis Allen, Gavin Wright and Patrick Stein, are arrested for allegedly plotting to bomb an apartment complex, home to Somali immigrants. According to the FBI, which infiltrated the group, they called Muslims “cockroaches” and hoped to inspire other militia members
Out of this group of mass killers only Robert Lewis Dear has been found too “mentally incompentent” to stand trial. All the rest of these guys are not “crazy” — they’re just murderous [and sometimes racist] assholes.
And then you have these samples of clear bias by Trump himself when it comes to Muslim versus Right Wing terrorism which I wrote back in August.
We’re certain to hear plenty about the tragic van attack in Barcelona last week—and in fact, Trump tweeted about it within hours. But we heard nothing from Trump about the car driven into a crowd of mosque worshippers in London, or the Minnesota mosque bombing (other than his advisor Gorka baselessly saying it could have been a “false attack by Liberals”), or the machete-wielding terrorist who attacked Democrats in Kentucky, hardly anything about the knife-wielding racist who killed two good samaritans protecting Muslim girls on a Portland train, or the triple shooting of immigrants in Kansas. Fox News at first falsely claimed that the Trump-supporting white terrorist who attacked a mosque in Quebec was Muslim, until finally correcting themselves.
So are all these guys just “mentally insane” too?
If you listen the NRA and Dana Loesch or even Marco Rubio we don’t have a problem with right-wing terrorist in America — it’s just the “crazy” people.
And then there’s this:
Neither Trump nor the guests at CNN’s town hall event on Wednesday night mentioned extensive research showing that those who have mental health conditions are more likely to become victims of violent crime than to carry out acts of violence themselves. According to the Department of Health & Human Services, only 3-5 percent of violent acts can be to individuals living with “a serious mental illness.” By contrast, those with mental health issues are 10 times more likely to become victims of violent crimes than the general population.
So the argument is that our background check system failed, the Broward County Sheriffs failed and the FBI failed to detect this “crazy” person — although none of the people saying that are clinicians or doctors qualified to diagnose anyone of anything. These are some of the same people who would scream to the high heavens if someone who isn’t a mental health expert would say that Trump is a narcissist sociopath. In fact they’d complain even when that person actually is a psychiatrist.
Harvard professor and psychoanalyst Lance Dodes on the “antiquated” Goldwater rule and our president’s “serious mental illness”
Why are so many psychiatrists and other clinicians afraid to comment about Donald Trump's mental health? What is the role of the "Goldwater rule" -- which holds that mental health professionals should not attempt to diagnose public figures they have not personally treated -- in their relative silence? Is Donald Trump suffering from symptoms of mental illness? If so, what type of disorder does he exhibit, and what are the consequences for America and the world?
More and more psychiatrist are tending to come to this conclusion.
But here’s a thing — never mind Trump himself — what about Rob Porter? is a man who would beat his wife sane? And not just one wife, two wives and his most recent girlfriend? Is a guy like that, who would commit violence like that “mentally insane?” And what about David Sorensen? And Steve Bannon? All three of these guys have a history of violence and domestic abuse — just as we’ve heard about Nikolus Cruz after police were called to his home 30+ times — but who in the White House did anything about it?
Shouldn’t somebody have done something about all these guys, particularly Porter even after the FBI had fully investigated his abuse and blocked his security clearance?
The signs were all there. Someone should have done something — but somehow they didn’t, which is a story that has been repeated over and over and over.
The number of American troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2012 was 6,488. The number of American women who were murdered by current or ex male partners during that time was 11,766. That’s nearly double the amount of casualties lost during war.
Women are much more likely to be victims of intimate partner violence with 85 percent of domestic abuse victims being women and 15 percent men. Too many women have been held captive by domestic violence — whether through physical abuse, financial abuse, emotional abuse or a combination of all three.
We are inundated with news stories about domestic violence , from athletes beating their significant others in public elevators or in their own homes to celebrities publicly abusing their girlfriends. This problem is not one that will go away quickly or quietly.
Remember again that Cruz was expelled because he got into a fight with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend — and the fact is that they had split up because he had been abusive to her.
Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said the 19-year-old suspect, Nikolas Cruz, had been expelled from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for “disciplinary reasons.”
“I don’t know the specifics,” the sheriff said.
However, Victoria Olvera, a 17-year-old junior, said Cruz was expelled last school year after a fight with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. She said Cruz had been abusive to his girlfriend.
This is the kind of thing that should be looked at more closely in and of itself, but it’s not and going around falsely labelling abusive and violent men as “crazy” isn’t helping. Being crazy isn’t the problem, being a violent asshole is the problem.
The fact is that all the guys criticizing the police for their response to someone like Cruz were exactly the same type of people who would ignore the police and FBI reports about someone like Porter. They’re just trying to deflect, they just trying to shove the blame and responsibility elsewhere — especially when it’s sitting right in their own lap. Especially when the evidence is right in front of their eyes, and they choose to look away instead.
We do have issues of violence in the country, and those issues grow exponentially more dangerous when guns are involved. Blaming all this on “mental illness” is a bigoted insult to those who actually are suffering with an actual clinical disorder such as schizophrenia or psychosis.
Within the DSM 5 you might find that some of these people may generally fit within a diagnosis of Conduct Disorder.
Conduct disorder is characterized by behavior that violates either the rights of others or major societal norms. These symptoms must be present for at least three months with one symptom having been present in the past six months. To be diagnosed with conduct disorder, the symptoms must cause significant impairment in social, academic or occupational functioning. The disorder is typically diagnosed prior to adulthood.
But that would be a fairly extreme case, and a pretty much guarantee you that someone like Dana Loesch or Marco Rubio couldn’t make a competent diagnosis of this condition or identify it in contrast to Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or someone with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
People with ASD tend to have communicationon deficits, such as responding inappropriately in conversations, misreading nonverbal interactions, or having dificulty building friendships appropriate to their age. In addition, people with ASD may be overly dependent on routines, highly sensitive to changes in their environment, or intensely focused on inappropriate items. Again, the symptoms of people with ASD will fall on a continuum, with some individuals showing mild symptoms and others having much more severe symptoms. This spectrum will allow clinicians to account for the variations in symptoms and behaviors from person to person.
Again there were some media reports that Cruz may have had some form of ASD, but exactly which form or what part of the spectrum he might have fell within isn’t something we know, nor would that alone necessarily make him violent in any case. In fact that’s exactly what the Miami Herald said about it.
Cruz had been diagnosed with the neurological disorder autism. Michael Alessandri, a clinical professor of psychology at the University of Miami, cautioned that Cruz’s diagnosis of autism should not be viewed as a cause of his attack at Stoneman Douglas High.
It does us no good to stereotype individuals with ASD as inherently dangerous and/or murderous, while those who actually are dangerous and murderous are likely standing and walking right besides us — unnoticed.
We don’t need to build public policy or gun violence strategies based on the prattlings of armchair psychiatrists remote diagnosing people based on media reports. That way leads literally to madness.