AMERICAN MELTDOWN: A New Look at Logic

It occurred to me that logic is not like the laws of physics; it is not a steadfast conclusion that can generally be proven by simple observation. I always thought that when all the solutions to a problem were considered, logic would automatically drive the query to an assigned parking spot. No matter what the question, with logic behind the wheel, the destination was inevitable. I mean logic is logic, right? Wrong! Logic is as subjective as your choice of bedroom slippers.

For me, logic has always been the solution that accomplished the task in the shortest possible time, doing the least amount of harm, providing the most good while costing the least amount of money. My conservative friends claim I am being misled by paltry emotionalism that leads me down the wrong path. What I perceived as truth was really just an illusion. I had failed to realize that logic changes in direct ratio to the need for a specific outcome.

The conservative take on logic is more malleable and self-serving. Logic for them is simply a word; a means to an end. The word itself is not sacrosanct, like the laws of physics, which I believe they would also argue were far less stalwart than Moses talking to God in a burning bush. After all, they lauded Reagan's demented take on supply-side economics, also known as the "trickle down theory", as the panacea for the country's ills. (Little did they know that the poor guy was actually proffering that the rich simply piss on the poor. Hey, the guy had dementia so don't rush to judgment.)

I mean why bother with logic when you can simply deny empirical data provided by scientists from around the globe proving that the earth is 4.54 billion years old. Who needs good old common sense when you can dismiss carbon dating as the work of the devil, write off fossiliferous evidence of dinosaur life as funny shapes in rocks and declare that an embryo is ready to take the SAT a couple of days after conception.

For the Republican Party, logic is eviscerated by the wheels of greed. It is not cumbersome to them since they have conveniently misplaced their morality. Logical thinking to Tea Party Patriots excludes the plight of the long-term unemployed, the struggle of the minimum wage worker, the heartbreak of the mother whose son has just been gunned down in the streets on his way home from school, the family farmer being decimated by the huge, corporate farming machines, the severely ill man without medical benefits who decides to die from his disease rather than bankrupt his children, and the list goes on and on.

For me, logical thinking about what America is all about asks: if we are not all citizens of America, then what are we? If we are not all entitled to the same opportunities then what are we? If our efforts to better our status are stifled by prejudice and bigotry, then what are we? If a small group of soulless, power-hungry elitists aspire to control the disadvantaged to fulfill their needs, then what have we become?

A small, powerful, elitist group, operating above the law and exploiting the disadvantaged has always been at the core of any fascist movement, from Caesar to Mussolini to Reagan, the agenda has always been the same: make the underprivileged so miserable that simply working becomes a privilege. Just make them forget that their impoverished status is predetermined and any hope of transcending their state in life is fueled by nothing more than well-crafted lies.

The right wingers love to fan the flames of paranoia by tossing around the term "socialism" like some half-inflated football dunked in the Ebola virus. They stress the extinction of a person's civil rights, the creation of a "New World Order" (Brought into existence by one of their own, George Bush Sr.), the loss of the right to bear arms, the escalation of the number of illegal immigrants spewing over our ill-protected borders like ants after a sugar cookie and any other lie they can sell to try and increase the paranoia of their well-heeled, but imbecilic followers. And what is there ultimate selling tool: logic with a twist of fear.

Watch Glen Beck diagram his implausible hypothesis on his blackboards. Man, talk about deconstructing and reconstructing the facts. I like to call it "fringe facts". He is really working that propaganda machine overtime. And since his audience is already immobilized by the fear of illegal aliens or unemployed drug addicts breaking into their impeccably landscaped McMansion that they earned with the sweat off their brow and the flex of their muscles, and of course that 500K they inherited from Grandpa Joe. And even though they are safely tucked away behind a virtually impregnable gate guarded by some guy that makes Barney Fife look like The Rock, still they worry and look to Herr Beck for answers. And of course, in the end, he provides them with irrefutable logic, skewed through the Glenn Beck filter.

So logic is not a constant. It is just a word used by different groups to try and prove their points. Some of the points are reflected only with the use of carefully placed mirrors; the ones that really let the fear shine through. So logic is a tool of propagandists. If they can skew the evidence enough, then the logic is easily digested by their anxious and myopic listeners.

To the person who has not yet buried their compassion under that new 36-jet built-in spa, logic is the only path to the truth. A truth that includes the fate of everyone involved in the decision.

The citizen who still recalls our forefather's definition of America (and still possesses a soul) knows that the road of life is filled with switchbacks, potholes deep enough to snap an axle, pedestrians unexpectedly stepping in front of your car; a plethora of problems just waiting for their number to be called. And so it is with logic: all people affected by the decision must be considered and the outcome cannot outweigh the facts that come to bear; the damage caused by a selfish decision will roar across the populace like a tsunami, upsetting everything in its path.

So I reiterate my approach to making a logical decision: logic should be the solution that accomplishes the task in the shortest possible time, doing the least amount of harm, providing the most good while costing the least amount of money. If you see it presented as anything else, you will know it is propaganda in logic's clothing.

THE LOST & LONELY: Homelessness & Mental Illness

Psychiatric News February 5, 2010
Volume 45 Number 3 Page 7
© American Psychiatric Association

* Community News

How Many Americans Have a Mental Illness, but No Home?

How many Americans are both mentally ill and homeless?

There appears to be no clear answer to this question. But some statistics, as well as estimates from experts on the subject, provide some perspective on it.

For example, the U.S. Conference of Mayors Hunger and Homelessness Survey, published in December 2008, included information on homelessness and mental illness in 23 cities between October 2007 and September 2008. On an average night during this time span, and in the 23 cities combined, some 28,000 people were sleeping in emergency shelters or on the streets, and about a quarter of them had a serious mental illness.

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless fact sheet published in June 2008, 16 percent of the single adult homeless population has a severe and persistent mental illness.

“Depending on where you read, between a third and two-thirds of homeless people are mentally ill and/or use drugs or alcohol,” Van Yu, M.D., who heads up the Project for Psychiatric Outreach to the Homeless in New York City, told Psychiatric News. “And a significant percentage have both. So a conservative estimate is that 15,000 of the 38,000 homeless people in New York City are mentally ill and/or use drugs or alcohol.”

“Most estimates put the number of homeless people in the United States around 3.5 million a year,” Sam Tsemberis, Ph.D., founder of Pathways to Housing for the homeless mentally ill population, said in an interview. “The question then is, How many of these homeless 3.5 million people are severely mentally ill? Depending on how you define mental illness—the criteria you are using—the estimates range between 20 percent and 40 percent. So between 20 percent and 40 percent of the estimated 3.5 million homeless are mentally ill. In other words, anywhere between 700,000 and 1.4 million Americans are both mentally ill and without a home.” Graphic

THE LEFT BEHIND - The Ignored Unemployed Suicide Rate

A ramp up in audacity seems imperative by the Democratic Party if they intend to win in 2010 and 2012. They are facing some amorphous, menacing creature in the Republican Party that seems to explode with new and evil appendages daily. It’s a creature that feeds on the fear of the weak and the paranoia of the ignorant. And yet the narcoleptic blue team seems content and oblivious to the threat, peaceful in their complacency. So I have to wonder WTF are they doing?

Frustrated by the lack of a voice the major media could hear, I created this petition on change.org. (See link on the right column) And while the impact has been minimal, I think the message is beyond sobering. Tragic is really the word that comes to mind.

These self-absorbed lunatics (The Republicans) seem to believe they are not responsible for the results of their heartless and gutless actions. Their insistence on ignoring the plight of the long-term unemployed has directly resulted in a steadily growing suicide rate amongst those who have finally lost all hope. I expect this number to grow exponentially over the coming months as millions of more members of the "once working class" realize they are ultimately those people who are "in the wrong country at the wrong time".

This whole deal is totally unacceptable. I believe it represents an attempt by the Republicans to eradicate an entire section of the American population. Hey, got to get those numbers to jive somehow, so why not "lean the herd" of all the stragglers, gimps and runts. And so families are brought to ruin, former hard-working Americans are broken and left to bleed out, while the "new elite" continue on as if it is business as usual.

Maybe the news of another unemployment-related suicide makes page 13
of some local rag and the death of another American, directly tied to the Republican’s choice to put politics above people, goes unnoticed, barely as bothersome as a pebble in their Gucci loafer.

And still the Democrats sleep. Shame on them all!

AMERICAN MELTDOWN: Palin & Beck Leading the Lemmings

Two unabashed self-promoters polishing their rhetoric for the big event: leading their pack of lemmings to the edge of the abyss. What an aberration spewing this vitriolic diatribe to honor a man so full of compassion and love; a true minister who believed that God would give his oppressed followers the strength to carry on against violence and hatred. A peaceful visionary who believed that all should be equal in America and that by facing this injustice, without hate or violence in their hearts, they could defeat it.

Now does this sound anything like the hate-filled bile that spews out of Beck's mouth every week on television? Does this sound like the agenda of the elitist, exclusionary Tea Party Conservatives? This whole gathering is an insult of the highest order to MLK and "his dream" of America providing hope and opportunity for EVERYONE, regardless of race, color or creed.

Beck, Palin, Limbaugh and all the rest of the rabid lemmings who follow these self-proclaimed "visionaries" believe in a policy that excludes the very people Martin Luther King embraced: the homeless, the long-termed unemployed, the poor, the sick, the elderly and the oppressed.

These are the same groups Jesus would have embraced. Perhaps the ultimate blasphemy is continually invoking the sacred names of God and Jesus in his evil, exclusionary clap-trap. (It seems likely that if Jesus showed up at the rally, he would take the microphone, chastise these people for accepting this hate-filled man as a messenger from God and tell them to all go home and break open their Bibles.)

It is likely, and sadly ironic, that the only person involved in the triumph and tragedy of Martin Luther King's legacy who would have been a Beck/Palin supporter is the man who assassinated him.

God grant us the strength to discern the good from the bad, the lies from the truth and self-proclaimed demigods from God Himself. Amen.

AMERICAN MELTDOWN: Beck Goes to Washington

At the 1927 Nuremberg party rally, Adolph Hitler outlined the Nazi claim that it provided not a political platform, but a political faith. Hitler claimed that Germany "wants a leadership in which it can believe, nothing more.”

It seems Beck's rally would have been more appropriately held to commemorate this historic speech. Any connection Beck seeks with MLK is flat on the floor contemptuous. To compare the integrity of King's message with the vitriolic, pseudo-intellectual clap-trap that this huckster belches out is preposterous. He is proving nothing other than he may well be the lead lemming, moving ahead of the other bile-spewing rodents like Limbaugh, Palin, et al.....

He is indeed the king of clowns, creating policy out of absurdity. I guess the real question is, how ignorant (and potentially violent) are his followers? Looking at them always brings the word "cretin" to mind. But as the Buffalo Springfield said, "Paranoia tracks deep" and there in lies the rub.

I just saw an ad on the Internet for someone selling "Palin-Beck" bumper stickers. Perhaps it’s just a 99er trying to make a buck or maybe it’s actually someone body-surfing this wave of noxious nonsense who actually believes in replacing a political platform with a political faith. Hmmm, sounds familiar.

Hey, it worked for the ultimate opportunist: Adolph Hitler. Just takes one megalomaniac with a way to reach the disenfranchised. (If he grows a little mustache, I say we shoot him.)