So this afternoon we were talking about positive cultural trends. But all is not sweetness and light in America—there are crazed mass killers on the loose, for example. Who or what is behind this? Tucker offers some food for thought: And here’s a transcript I lifted
The problem is not the SSRIs. Just like the problem isn’t guns. It’s the fact that our society is fragmenting and people ( perhaps men more than women) feel they no longer have a place in it. So they become depressed. They act out. Leave a mark. With notoriety comes recognition and perhaps emotional relief for these outsiders.
There would seem to be no refuting that there is an awful lot of mental illness in the US today, regardless of whether it is exacerbated by anti-depressants and other prescription meds.
Proof of the prevalence of mental illness would seem to be clearly established by the numbers of prescriptions for anti-depressants written in the US. According to one study (written in 2020) I found, 37 million Americans are on anti-depressants. Who knows whether this figure includes all of the other medications for various types of mental illness.
Am I surprised that some of the shooters have been on prescription meds? Not in the slightest. If 37 million Americans feel mentally ill enough every day to take a pill, I'm not surprised that some proportion of those 37 million are very sick. Nor am I surprised that the pill doesn't work for some of them. Whether the pill makes some of them more prone to violence or other irrational acts is an interesting question, but, to me, somewhat beside the point. They were sick in the first place.
The interesting question (to me at least) is: why are so many Americans anxious, depressed, stressed out and otherwise mentally unwell?
Maybe the answer is simply that the circumstances of life can often make us feel unwell. I can accept this explanation. To me, this explains to some extent why humans have used alcohol basically forever to feel better.
But I'm inclined to believe that the circumstances of modern American life can exacerbate the problem. From my own decades-long work experience (which in fact was largely privileged) I came to see the American workplace as a pretty unhealthy, pretty scary, actually, place. In many jobs today there are varying combinations of ridiculous hours (including evenings, nights and weekends), minimal promotion potential, zero job security, and all sorts of subtle and not so subtle abuse. Pay can be barely enough to get by, and in many tech companies, the compensation is overwhelmingly weighted towards incentive-based, on-the-come payouts. As in, 'you'll own nothing, and you'll be happy!'. Not.
Its no stretch for me to believe that a lot of the stress that starts in the American workplace gets exported at the end of the day into the American nuclear family, which we all know is under enormous stress itself and for numerous reasons hardly ideal these days.
One of the reasons I came to support Trump as I did, is that he seemed to grasp the issues faced by normals/deplorables in America and in his own inimical way began to work on them. I think the problems we face as a country and a culture are far worse and far deeper than the recent shootings (as bad as they are) and won't be remotely addressed by 'gun control' or 'trans rights' or 'green energy' or any of the liberal/progressive/socialist nostrums.
I often wonder what conditions motivated our 'forefathers' (all of them) to leave wherever when they did and come to America. Usually without extended family or friends or money. Things had to have been pretty bad to leave Place A and come to Place B (USA). I think we are in one of those times, although the world may have run out of Place Bs. Maybe we just have to stay and try to fix it.
I try very hard whenever a mass killing happens to not conflate insanity with evil. The perpetrators are evildoers, if they happen to be clinically mentally ill is almost always beside the point. When one is capable of planning and doing such evils one is therefore culpable and when found guilty should be executed after one appeal. The El Paso Wal Mart shooter has still not been tried, by now he should have been tried, convicted, executed.
So now its the drugs. If not, blame the guns. Don't you ever dare blame the poor darlings who are doing this! Personal responsibility? That was in the old days when we had a criminal justice system intent on preventing crimes or at least keeping them to a minimum. As an English jurist put it: "We do not hang horse thieves because that is the proper punishment, but that there be no horse thieves." If you want mass killings to proliferate, give the perps the publicity and understanding they crave. They become a somebody. If you can in America get solitary and no habeas corpus for questioning the results of an election (yes, a Judge did state that as the reason for keeping people in the Washington gulag) then maybe for killing more than half a dozen people at random we might impose the same as a deterrent to future massacres.
This reminded me of the book, “Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America” which I read years ago but still think of occasionally. There was a memorable story of a woman who struggled to get off of prescription anti-depressant drugs. She felt they were addictive and dulled her senses and ability to cope with life. It was difficult but she succeeded and felt she was better off.
The idea that pharmaceutical companies would promote addictive drugs that don’t really help—or which make things worse—doesn’t seem so shocking today. I am going to read this book again.
Definitely not, many people take these things for years and it doesn't turn them into killers. The brain does what it can to maintain a state of equilibrium, and if you stop taking this stuff then your brain will naturally go back to how it was before you were on the drug eventually (obviously not with all drugs and how long this takes may vary, just saying with SSRIs in particular. The fact is that these people were mentally ill before they started taking these drugs (and had a history of things like behavioral and violent issues), you can't just blame this on 'misunderstood young men' when the columbine killers were into shit like neo nazism. What we have are people who are already unstable further agitated by shit like this article to believe the entire world is out to get them (which I promise you, it's really not)... like I'm all for healthy skepticism but this is just feeding into the same shit with fear mongering, further radicalizing people who already have mental health issues or personality disorders. I say this as an alienated white man who easily could have turned out the same way but didn't.
The dangers of prescribed psychotropics particularly for children and adolescents have been documented for some time now. But as with COVID mythology, anything that contradicts the narrative is quickly discounted and those raising reasonable questions are simply ignored or discredited. There is mounting evidence that habitual use of extremely potent marijuana products in adolescents can result in psychosis, (not always reversible) and violent irrational behavior in the genetically susceptible. (See Alex Berensen’s excellent book documenting this) I’m so glad that Carlson had the courage to bring this to light but I do wonder how much longer he will have the liberty to speak as he does. Pharma controls just about everything these days.
The problem is not the SSRIs. Just like the problem isn’t guns. It’s the fact that our society is fragmenting and people ( perhaps men more than women) feel they no longer have a place in it. So they become depressed. They act out. Leave a mark. With notoriety comes recognition and perhaps emotional relief for these outsiders.
Allow me, please, to ramble a bit.
There would seem to be no refuting that there is an awful lot of mental illness in the US today, regardless of whether it is exacerbated by anti-depressants and other prescription meds.
Proof of the prevalence of mental illness would seem to be clearly established by the numbers of prescriptions for anti-depressants written in the US. According to one study (written in 2020) I found, 37 million Americans are on anti-depressants. Who knows whether this figure includes all of the other medications for various types of mental illness.
Am I surprised that some of the shooters have been on prescription meds? Not in the slightest. If 37 million Americans feel mentally ill enough every day to take a pill, I'm not surprised that some proportion of those 37 million are very sick. Nor am I surprised that the pill doesn't work for some of them. Whether the pill makes some of them more prone to violence or other irrational acts is an interesting question, but, to me, somewhat beside the point. They were sick in the first place.
The interesting question (to me at least) is: why are so many Americans anxious, depressed, stressed out and otherwise mentally unwell?
Maybe the answer is simply that the circumstances of life can often make us feel unwell. I can accept this explanation. To me, this explains to some extent why humans have used alcohol basically forever to feel better.
But I'm inclined to believe that the circumstances of modern American life can exacerbate the problem. From my own decades-long work experience (which in fact was largely privileged) I came to see the American workplace as a pretty unhealthy, pretty scary, actually, place. In many jobs today there are varying combinations of ridiculous hours (including evenings, nights and weekends), minimal promotion potential, zero job security, and all sorts of subtle and not so subtle abuse. Pay can be barely enough to get by, and in many tech companies, the compensation is overwhelmingly weighted towards incentive-based, on-the-come payouts. As in, 'you'll own nothing, and you'll be happy!'. Not.
Its no stretch for me to believe that a lot of the stress that starts in the American workplace gets exported at the end of the day into the American nuclear family, which we all know is under enormous stress itself and for numerous reasons hardly ideal these days.
One of the reasons I came to support Trump as I did, is that he seemed to grasp the issues faced by normals/deplorables in America and in his own inimical way began to work on them. I think the problems we face as a country and a culture are far worse and far deeper than the recent shootings (as bad as they are) and won't be remotely addressed by 'gun control' or 'trans rights' or 'green energy' or any of the liberal/progressive/socialist nostrums.
I often wonder what conditions motivated our 'forefathers' (all of them) to leave wherever when they did and come to America. Usually without extended family or friends or money. Things had to have been pretty bad to leave Place A and come to Place B (USA). I think we are in one of those times, although the world may have run out of Place Bs. Maybe we just have to stay and try to fix it.
I honestly don't know.
I try very hard whenever a mass killing happens to not conflate insanity with evil. The perpetrators are evildoers, if they happen to be clinically mentally ill is almost always beside the point. When one is capable of planning and doing such evils one is therefore culpable and when found guilty should be executed after one appeal. The El Paso Wal Mart shooter has still not been tried, by now he should have been tried, convicted, executed.
SOMA is a real thing. Huxley was sent to us from the future.
So now its the drugs. If not, blame the guns. Don't you ever dare blame the poor darlings who are doing this! Personal responsibility? That was in the old days when we had a criminal justice system intent on preventing crimes or at least keeping them to a minimum. As an English jurist put it: "We do not hang horse thieves because that is the proper punishment, but that there be no horse thieves." If you want mass killings to proliferate, give the perps the publicity and understanding they crave. They become a somebody. If you can in America get solitary and no habeas corpus for questioning the results of an election (yes, a Judge did state that as the reason for keeping people in the Washington gulag) then maybe for killing more than half a dozen people at random we might impose the same as a deterrent to future massacres.
This reminded me of the book, “Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America” which I read years ago but still think of occasionally. There was a memorable story of a woman who struggled to get off of prescription anti-depressant drugs. She felt they were addictive and dulled her senses and ability to cope with life. It was difficult but she succeeded and felt she was better off.
The idea that pharmaceutical companies would promote addictive drugs that don’t really help—or which make things worse—doesn’t seem so shocking today. I am going to read this book again.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0036S4EGE/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0
Definitely not, many people take these things for years and it doesn't turn them into killers. The brain does what it can to maintain a state of equilibrium, and if you stop taking this stuff then your brain will naturally go back to how it was before you were on the drug eventually (obviously not with all drugs and how long this takes may vary, just saying with SSRIs in particular. The fact is that these people were mentally ill before they started taking these drugs (and had a history of things like behavioral and violent issues), you can't just blame this on 'misunderstood young men' when the columbine killers were into shit like neo nazism. What we have are people who are already unstable further agitated by shit like this article to believe the entire world is out to get them (which I promise you, it's really not)... like I'm all for healthy skepticism but this is just feeding into the same shit with fear mongering, further radicalizing people who already have mental health issues or personality disorders. I say this as an alienated white man who easily could have turned out the same way but didn't.
This is not the amazing world I was promised would happen when people stopped believing in God and started believing in Science.
The dangers of prescribed psychotropics particularly for children and adolescents have been documented for some time now. But as with COVID mythology, anything that contradicts the narrative is quickly discounted and those raising reasonable questions are simply ignored or discredited. There is mounting evidence that habitual use of extremely potent marijuana products in adolescents can result in psychosis, (not always reversible) and violent irrational behavior in the genetically susceptible. (See Alex Berensen’s excellent book documenting this) I’m so glad that Carlson had the courage to bring this to light but I do wonder how much longer he will have the liberty to speak as he does. Pharma controls just about everything these days.
Wonder if any of these folks in the “news media” have any trouble sleeping at night?
Probably not. With apologies to William F. Buckley Jr., apparently they Don’t have a keen grasp of the obvious.