The Lost and The Lonely


According to recent reports, as many as 1 in 4 Americans struggles with some form of mental illness with that number increasing daily. As if the suffering caused by their malady wasn’t enough, the mentally ill must endure the fact that they are grossly misunderstood, if not ignored, by the “normal” members of society. I know because I have struggled with clinical depression and PTSD most of my life. And now that the Republicans have emptied America’s coffers and denigrated the need to help the sick, millions of Americans are left to fight their illnesses alone, armed with only a handful of mysterious medications whose side effects are often worse than the actual illness. And with health insurance still inaccessible to most people, many of the mentally ill are forced to try and tame this demon disease without the aid of psychotropic intervention.

As America tries to comprehend double digit unemployment for the next decade and with further extensions of unemployment insurance about as likely as Sharron Angle making a coherent statement, the double-edged sword of depression and anxiety are slaying hordes of new people every week. Sales of anti-depressants are at an all time high as people fall out of the workforce like intestines from a slaughtered cow.

And so it seems we have a “perfect storm” brewing off the coast of mainstream America: when the suddenly disempowered come nose to nose with their own extinction and realize that the Mr. Happy medicine truck no longer cruises their streets because their benefits have expired, you’re going to have a lot of crazy folks, filled with angst and loathing, wandering the streets of our fair cities, hopping the fences of tony gated communities and urinating on neatly coiffed lawns. And this isn’t the first storm to rock our shores and our neatly trimmed landscaping.

Back in the 1980’s, Governor Reagan deemed funding mental health facilities was an unnecessary drain on the state’s bank account. (Better to give the corporations a bigger tax break; sound familiar?) So he closed them all! Just like that, with a mighty sweep of his hand, tens of thousands of people suffering from everything from delusions to catatonia were released to wander the streets and alleys of most major cities in California.

Ronald Reagan, with this unimaginably inhumane and irresponsible act, pushed open the fire doors and overnight increased the number of “street people” in California exponentially. And now the Republican Party aspires to follow in the footsteps of their mythical czar, arguing that it is not the government’s responsibility to provide for the ill, the lost, and the disenfranchised.

Homelessness and mental illness are like branches on the same diseased tree; one feeding off the other in a vicious, malignant cycle. Too many of these diseased trees starts to degrade the landscape and threaten the luxury the privileged worship. Surely the police can do something with these awful homeless people.

And so it goes: by languishing in their own personal desires, these myopic, elitist swine, safely ensconced in their mighty stucco monuments to their own self-worth, can easily disregard their responsibilities of membership to a much larger group: the human race.

They bend the Bible to lure God’s backing for their separatist desires, when in truth they defy the very essence of Jesus’ teachings. This rapture with their own misguided values is starting to teeter on the lunatic fringe and the ones with the biggest egos and bottomless wallets are lining up to lead these deluded lemmings through the pearly gates and into the oval office, all the while forgetting the true meaning of God’s word: how can you sleep if one of your brethren goes sleepless; how can you eat if one of your brethren goes hungry; how can you smile if one of your brethren is unhappy; how can you drink if one of your brethren is thirsty…

The neo-fascist Tea Party Conservatives are lost in their own delusions, much like the mentally ill they hope to castigate. And arguably, they are the ones who pose the greatest threat to the future of the American dream envisioned by our forefathers.