Too Much Clout for Iowa (and New Hampshire)! Too much Power for Evengelicals!
Am I mad. You bet I am. Every four years, two people get nominated to run for President of our fair country–all fifty states. Do I have any say in who gets nominated? Hell No! Do you have any say in who gets nominated? Not unless you live in Iowa or New Hampshire or possibly South Carolina. That’s right. The caucuses and primaries in two, sometimes three, rarely four under populated, relatively insignificant states, for better or worse (usually worse) always choose our candidates for president. The other ninety-seven percent of the population can go to hell.
Now, if you happen to live in one of the three or four deciding states, please don’t take what I say personal, you lucky dogs. I personally think the time for a national primary has arrived, but assuming things aren’t going to change, you people have an obligation to choose the best candidate for the rest of the country and frankly you haven’t. In hindsight one could argue that in 2000 and 2004 you gave us the worst candidate and Iowa, in 2008 you may have done it again. Mike (Huckster) Huckabee?
Ahhh. The Evangelicals. I’m about to ruffle some feathers here. It never ceases to amaze me how selfish this group can be. To the detriment of everything else their main concern always seems to be social issues. They got their man in 2000/2004 and look what it got us, two wars (one unprovoked and unwarranted), two trillion in additional debt, three, soon to be four dollar a gallon gas, disdain around the world, tax relief for the rich and an epidemic of corporate greed and fraud to name a few.
To the Evangelicals, think about it. Do social issues have anything to do with prosecuting a war, dealing with national emergencies, dealing with our former friends and enemies overseas, dealing with the energy crisis, curbing our national debt, providing affordable health care, or dealing with terrorists?
Mike (Huckster) Huckabee? The only candidate that has stated he believes in creation. Forget billions of years of sedimentary and fossil evidence. Forget Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. For this man, the earth and life upon it began seven thousand years ago. (sometime after the first pyramid was built.)
Yes, Mike Huckabee is likable and charismatic, but I think we’ve learned that charisma doesn’t run a smooth government. The man was an apprentice to Jerry Falwell. He was a preacher for chrissake. Evangelicals, if you want to be taken seriously, go do some good in the world and stop trying to shove your religion down my throat.
The Incredible Shrinking Presidency of George W. Bush
We seem to be witnessing the incredible shrinking presidency of George W. Bush. By we, I mean the entire country. I always thought his hubris and arrogance would get him in trouble but it seems to be his policies instead.
As a person, he still seems to be popular, but his poll numbers are sinking like a guy with a cement overcoat. Why? Because he keeps on pushing for or against things the public doesn’t agree with. Bush wanted to restructure Social Security. In the polls only thirty-three percent were in his corner, even after his big four month push. Then he cast the only veto to kill a bill that would expand federal funding for stem cell research. Almost everybody has a family member or knows somebody that this research could help. Over sixty percent are in favor of expanding stem cell research and cannot understand why he would rather see surplus embryos flushed down a toilet than used to help living breathing people.
Remember the Terry Schaivo fiasco? Only eighty percent thought the President and Congress were out of line for trying to interfere in that family matter. Then there’s Irag, as big a boondoggle as there ever was. As the war in Iraq drags on with no resolution in sight, it’s popularity (if one can say a war can be popular) has hit new lows, with only thirty percent now saying the war is worth the price we’re paying. For the first time ever, less than forty percent believe it is making us safer here at home. And this with a majority of the population unaware of the Downing Street Memo and other controversial matters that have come to light. Bush’s handling of the economy and the direction he’s taking the country are also drawing new lows with forty-one and thirty percent respectively.
It seems that Bush is pleasing no one, except the hyper rich and the ultra right Christian loonies, as he appeases the dark side of his base, while his other constituents scratch their collective heads and wonder when the President is going to stop his slide into irrelevancy and do or propose something they can agree with.
They say that, as the temperature descends, matter shrinks a certain percentage until it hits what is termed Absolute Zero. (which if I remember right is 457 degree below zero) Theoretically at that temperature matter ceases to exist. Do you think its possible that, if Bush’s poll numbers hit zero, his incredible shrinking Presidency will disappear?
The Legal Drug Kingpins
In the nineteenth century entrepreneurs, generically known as Traveling Medicine Shows, used to crisscross our country in their horse drawn wagons, making a living by providing a minimal show for bored citizens and ultimately selling medicinal tonics, commonly known as Snake Oil. Whether they bought their product from a manufacturer or made the product themselves, buyers could usually count on a pleasantly flavored innocuous product that would probably give the recipient a little buzz due mostly to a small (10-15%) content of alcohol.. Though these merchants seemed harmless enough and provided a much needed break in monotony, the public never warmed to these men, sometimes calling them charlatans and flimflam artists.
Whether any of these medicine men had names like Pfizer or Merck or Lily or even Bayer I don’t know. What I do know and what America needs to realize, is that the Pharmaceutical industry is one of the largest businesses in the county and making billions of dollars a year selling legalized drugs, which in some cases are just as addictive, mind numbing and dangerous as their illegal counterparts. In effect they are today’s charlatans and flimflam artists. They are twenty-first century Snake Oil salesmen! Folks, this is one huge lobby.
Billions and billions of dollars are at stake here and right in the drug companies corner, is their pushers, the psychiatric industry and to a lesser degree the medical industry. Can’t sleep? Here’s a pill. Can’t wake up? Here’s a pill. In a bad mood? Here’s a pill. Can’t have sex? Here’s a pill. There is not a malady, medical or mental that the medical community doesn’t have a so called legal drug for and every drug out there has side effects (many serious) and or can be addictive. If I get a tooth filled, the dentist gives me a prescription for pain pills. For what? For four or five hours of diminishing marginal pain, I’m going to go to the pharmacy to fill a prescription for the dangerous addictive painkiller, codeine, or worse, which is an actual narcotic, derived from morphine, a derivative of opium. Have you or anyone you know, ever been to a Psychiatrist for treatment and not walked out with a prescription. It’s endemic. Psychiatrists no longer try to cure their patients neurosis’, they now, merely, try to exert control over them with drugs. They are the pimps of the legal drug cartel.
It is not only becoming apparent, to reasonable people, that legal drugs are dangerous to the people to whom they are prescribed, but more and more to the people around these people. The term ‘Postal’ was born from numerous instances of school and workplace slaughter, being tied to the perpetrator’s ingestion of psychotropic drugs, such as Prozac and Ritalin.
So why are legal drugs so expensive. I don’t know. You have to ask the drug companies. I do know this, many drugs that cost over a dollar a pill to buy, cost less than one cent to make. Yes I’ve heard the drug company arguments that new drug prices are high because they need to recover the enormous research costs that go in to new successful and unsuccessful products and yet the prices come down only when lower priced alternatives come on the market or the patent runs out, allowing other manufacturers to make the same drug. I also know that the same drugs sell in other countries for as low as ten percent of the price in the U.S. Why, you ask, if the drug cartel can make money at ten percent of the price there, they can’t here?
Selling medicine is no longer a way to make a living. It’s now a way to make a fortune, a world class fortune at that. Wake up America, we have become a culture of drugs. Drugs pervade our society. Last year drug sales in the U.S. topped $14 billion for antidepressants alone, $1.3 billion of which were for children. Many of these drugs are categorized in the same class as morphine, opium and cocaine. Bad enough we take these drugs ourselves but we give these drugs to our children, who trust us and have no say in the matter. More than 8 million American children are prescribed powerful stimulants, antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs for questionable if not dubious reasons.
We have become a nation of hypochondriacs. America is in the midst of a legal and illegal drug frenzy. Feel down? Here’s a pill. Nervous? Here’s a pill. Can’t swim ten laps? Here’s some pills. Want to experience something different? Try this. When will it end? I don’t mean to be an alarmist but your very life and those of your loved ones may be at stake here.
Author’s Note
Hi, I have already written one controversial essay, which may surprise you, advocating legalizing, illegal drugs. How can I promote legalizing illegal drugs on one hand and support moderation for legal drugs on the other hand? I’ll admit the two ideas appear incompatible at first glance but in reality they make a lot of sense. Legalizing illegal drugs would ultimately make them so inexpensive that a whole sub culture of criminals would be put out of work and if the country used legal drugs less, it would force those costs down as well, just like if we used less gas, it would go down.
The Iraq War – A forty Day Party
As a former Reagan Republican, I cannot help but be severely disappointed by the level of incompetence of the present administration. However, it appears there is still a good deal of support among so-called Bush loyalists, a fact that amazes me. Either they are ignoring the mountain of evidence of malfeasance that has been accruing or they pay no attention to the country’s current military and financial situation. Therefore, I will occasionally post a review of one of the many books that chronicle the run-up to and the prosecution of the Iraq War. These are not Left-wing books of anti-Bush propaganda but books written by thoughtful writers, whose only purpose is to present the facts. And to any that bother to read the facts, they are disturbing.
Here is the first review,
COBRA II by Michael Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor
The Bottom Line:
Cobra II provides a good account of the thinking and non-thinking that propelled us into this never-ending war.
While reading Cobra II – when I wasn’t simmering – I got the impression that the strongest military in the world was being controlled and misused by a modern day version of the Keystone Kops. Not that I’m surprised. I and two thirds of the country (God help the other third) knew something was amiss, but many of the things I suspected were laid out in glaring fashion in this interesting text.
It’s like President “What me worry?” was having his arm twisted by Vice President “Darth Vader” undersecretary Darth Maul (Wolfowitz) to throw a forty day party in Baghdad. That’s right the war that has outlasted both World War I and the Korean War and is fast approaching World War II (It has now surpassed it) was expected to be a thirty to fifty day party and then we all go home with smiles on our faces. Perhaps it would have, except for two things.
First, our Defense Secretary, decided he knew more than all his generals combined. He threw out ten years of military planning for the invasion of Iraq, and proceeded to badger his generals to keep reducing planned invasion troop levels to a number he liked. I guess the secretary is into numerology. The number the generals started with was 380,000. The number the S.O.D. accepted was 140,000 – just enough to get us into Baghdad but not enough to get home.
The second thing, which some knowledgeable people foresaw, but not the myopic administration, was that the party might get crashed by some unwanted guests. Who you ask? Why, a bunch of young hot heads driving Toyotas, some wearing towels over the faces, some carrying funny objects on their shoulders or weapons in their arms and all looking for trouble. The first fatality of the war was caused, not by an Iraqi soldier but, a group of these hot heads in a Toyota Pick-up.
Commanders on the ground noticed this effective, unforeseen adversary, utilizing hit and run guerilla tactics and wanted to confront them, but the bigwigs in Cent Com ordered them to bypass these future insurgents and head straight to Baghdad, do not pass Go. Apparently they felt that once Baghdad fell everything. would fall into place. What they got when they took Baghdad was widespread looting. The authors Michael Gordon and General Bernard Trainor go on to speculate that the fediyeen, which the army was ordered to ignore and bypass on the way to Baghdad, became the backbone for the strong insurgency we now face.
Conclusion
Liberal, Conservative, independent – Right wing, Left wing, it doesn’t matter, reading this book will upset you. The book is not a liberal rag. It does not have a political bias, unless you consider a bias toward incompetence political. It just lays out the facts, often in minute detail. That, in fact is one of the books weaknesses. Cobra II reads like a play by play description of the war to date from the rationale though the planning to the prosecution of the war, with it’s attendant mis-steps. The prosecution portion of the war takes up at least two thirds of the book and unless you are a war junkie and despite some interesting parts begins, after awhile, to all sound the same.
The parts of the book I found most interesting were the initial planning stages and those portions dealing with the dissension that developed between Rumsfeld and Franks and later the turmoil between Franks and the generals in the field. The authors also point out how many of the problems that developed in the initial occupation of Baghdad and the aftermath were anticipated by various sources with suggestions, but were discounted or ignored by the administration. In short, the administration didn’t want to hear anything that might disrupt their vision of a forty day party.
Unfortunately the book only takes us through the war itself and the stirrings of the nascent insurgency. Three years later we are seeing what almost everyone agrees is a low grade civil war, verging on civil war.
Author’s Note; This review was written over a year ago. I would say things are pretty much the same, wouldn’t you?
The War That We Can’t Win
The Bottom Line; Before totally rejecting the merits of my editorial, I ask only that you keep an open mind and ask yourself, has anything we’ve done so far, worked?
The War That We Can’t Win
No not that one. There’s another war going on beside that one and it’s been going on a very long time, longer than I can remember and it’s unwinable. It is a war that we tend to forget about but from time to time we are reminded that we still are at war. When there is a huge drug bust or when a promising high school or college student dies from an overdose or several are killed in a drive by shooting or another drug lord is arrested in Columbia or another patch of marijuana is found in a National Forest or another meth lab in a neighbor’s basement is destroyed, then we are reminded that we are engaged in a daunting, frustrating, war that‘s impossible to win. The War on Drugs. But fight on we must. It’s the right thing to do, right?
Wrong!
Who says we have to keep beating our heads against the wall? I know this is unpopular but the hand writing is on the wall, we can’t win, so I’m advocating the extreme solution. Let’s put up the white flag and say ok drug pushers you win! Let’s surrender. Let’s legislate the thugs out of business. Let’s legalize drugs. Can it be any worse than it already is?
Ok the cat’s out of the bag. I’m a nut, a loon but let me explain my rational. It has been reported that some seven million Americans are already addicts with another ten million as users of varying degree. Folks, that’s almost six percent of us. Add another twenty million casual (occasional) users for anther seven percent for a total of thirteen percent, that for me is mind boggling. True legalizing drugs isn’t going to reduce the addicts and it may even increase them a little but the benefits are overwhelming.
Government figures state that something like eighty percent of violent and one on one crime is drug related. Why is that? I suppose we could assume that five or six million of the hard core addicts do not have jobs that are capable of supporting the cost of their addiction, so they are forced to mug, rob, steal, burgle or whore toward this purpose.
Make no mistake this is a growth business like any other business, the workers (pushers) are encouraged to bring in new addicts who are also encouraged to turn on friends, addicting them and so forth. The profit potential for sellers on up is enormous. It is said that the cost of the product sold on the streets is about one hundred times the production cost and that is the reason that despite the intrinsic dangers, the astounding profit potential keeps enlarging the pool of participants.
But what about the Downside?
What downside? If you’re talking about the availability of hardcore drugs to your kids, think about it. Right now it’s easier for a twelve year old to get crack than beer. Why? Because beer isn’t sold on the streets. You have to go into a store or a bar and buy it. If drugs were sold in stores, wouldn’t your kids have to go into a store to buy them as well. Can you see a teenager going into a store and buying a lid of weed or a vial of cocaine? Especially if you had to have a permit to buy there and a video camera would record every transaction. No way, Jose!
True, we would be encouraging existing and future addicts to make a direction of life decision. Do I want to lead a normal life or do I want to be a speed freak for the rest of my life? Probably fewer than you think would choose the latter and for those that did, they would no longer have to rob and steal to feed their habit and that’s the big bonus to legalizing drugs. Crime would fall up to eighty percent and the country would save billions and billions a year on law enforcement, courts, prosecutors, public defenders and prisons.
And here’s the best part. Legalizing drugs would put the drug cartels out of business. The drug scumbags from the drug lords on down to the street pushers will have to find another and most likely less harmful scam, for no one in their right mind would buy illegally on the street when they could buy legally from a licensed store.
Can it be that easy?
I know it’s not that simple, that there are a lot of nuances and intangibles but I’m not talking about a plan. This is an idea. Let the legislators work out the nuts and bolts. As far as I can see legalizing drugs would be a ridiculously easy solution to the rampant crime that exists today and remember, it wasn’t that long ago (approx. a hundred years) that illegal drugs were legal and since narcotics were made illegal their use, on a per capita basis, has increased and crime has gone through the roof.
Career Oppurtunities
CAREER OPPURTUNITIES
Help Wanted:
Urgent; young men needed immediately to fill recent vacancies. Opportunity for education and advancement based upon ability to lead while blindly following orders. Travel around the world, admiring sights of the civilization you are committed to destroy. Meet and live among interesting people whom you despise for their dissimilarity and may be forced to kill. Learn to work with other equally committed individuals to further honorable goals. Make your family proud by killing and maiming hundreds maybe thousands and if you die, be honored as a revered Martyr. Learn to despise mainstream Muslims for their weakness and timidity.
Benefits
Job security; for life or until killed.
Income; Living expenses plus little or no salary.
Health care; You’re on your own.
Life Insurance; as a martyr, you will go straight to Heaven, do not pass GO.
Education; In one of our vacation camps, you will learn how to make bombs, kill other humans silently, how to use the weapons of the West against them and become pious.
Advancement; likely as confederates become incapacitated
Fame; See your name in print or mentioned on the air.(If you’re alive)
Requirements
Must be Muslim (Arabs preferred).
Must be willing to relocate.
Must swear unquestioned fealty to your leader.
Must abandon your humanity, if you have it
Must be willing to tear down of destroy a millennium of human accomplishments.
Must never question the wisdom of your orders, even if it includes sacrificing your life.
Must embrace terrorism and chaos to further our nebulous agenda–the right to kill indiscriminately.
Must hate entrenched Muslim Heads of State and their infidel backers.
Must hate progress, especially of Western origin.
Must blame Western Civilization for the plight and stagnation of Islamic society.
Must hate all secular societies and proponents of such.
Must hate all pretentious non Islamic religions even if they worship the same God.
Must hate, Must hate, Must hate, Must hate, Must hate, Hate,
Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate.
Apply to Usama bin Laden c/o Al Qaeda, General Delivery Peshawar, Pakistan.
On a Lighter note: Here’s a funny from one of my favorites, Rodney Dangerfield.
This girl I know calls me up and says, “Nobody’s home. C’mon over.” So I go over and… nobody is home. LMAO
Do You Feel Safer?
The Bottom Line I say Bush has made us less safe by morphing young Muslim hot heads into terrorists. What do you think?
The big discussion these days, just prior to the midterm election seems to be whether we are safer or less safe than we were after 9/11.
I’m confused about that myself so I’ve decided to take a poll.
Here are a dozen multiple choice questions to show what we think..
President Bush’s pre-emptive war on Iraq has made –
a. U.S. citizens safer
b. Iraqi citizens safer
c. American servicemen safer
d. Osama bin Laden safer
President Bush and Republican claim that the Democrats don’t have the stomach to fight terrorism. Is that –
a. A known known
b. A known unknown
c. An unknown known
d. Partisan bullsh*t
The Democratic response to this is that President Bush and his advisors don’t have the brains to fight terrorism. Is that –
a. Partisan bullsh*t
b. A chip off the ole block
c. Hard work
d. A known known
Weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq because –
a. They’re there – buried in the desert
b. The Iraqi people were so hungry, they ate them
c. The intelligence was taken out of a comic book.
d. They was fooled
The intelligence used to justify the war was flawed because –
a. Clinton didn’t do enough to catch Osama bin Laden
b. Richard Clarke was a traitor
c. Saddam Hussein started a disinformation campaign
d. They picked only the intelligence backed their position.
The real reason the Bush cabal pushed for war in Iraq was -
a. Although they couldn’t prove it, they knew Hussein was behind 9/11
b. Rumsfeld was real good at playing Risk. Monopoly too! (but not sorry)
c. Cheney decided that he missed something in the Viet Nam experience after all.
d. The butt of jokes in West Texas for years, Bush wanted to show everybody he could really find oil.
If you had an emergency, like your house was about to flood from a hurricane or something. You would call –
a. George W. Bush
b. The Ghostbusters
c. Osama bin Laden
d. Your insurance agent
Democrats and some Republicans say the administration fixed the intelligence to make the case for war. You think.
a. It’s partisan bullsh*t
b. The end justifies the means
c. Democrats can’t take a joke
d. We should impeach the bastard
Six Generals who had served in Iraq, recently said Rumsfeld has mismanaged the war and should go. You think
a. Everybody is entitled to a booboo or fifty (look at the President)
b. Rummy is no dummy. He just acts like it
c. He gives the most interesting press conferences since Baghdad Bob
d. Put him in charge of security for Darth Cheney.
President Bush keeps saying we are fighting the terrorists in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here. You think.
a. No attacks in five years – good job George.
b. The big ones take time
c. Can’t you just picture George decapitating a terrorist with his golf club.
d. At the rate we’re going we won’t have an army to fight them over there.
The Bush administration has recently been accused of portraying a rosier picture in Iraq than the reality. You think.
a. The Iraqis are cry babies
b. Wouldn’t you
c. I like roses
d. Saddam is looking better and better
President Bush, Vice Pres, Cheney and Sec of State Rice have all said, Knowing what they know now they would still attack Iraq. You think.
a. I told you they were tough.
b. They’re all nuttier than a fruitcake
c. Has there ever been a military coup in the U.S.?
d. Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.
Okay. That completes the poll. Total up your answers allowing one point for an a. answer, two for b., three for c and four for d, total up you answers and look below for the results.
Twelve to fifteen points – You are a true believer. Report for duty in Iraq immediately for adventure Bush style.
Sixteen to twenty-six points – You are an independent person but not too bright and not too safe.
Twenty-seven to thirty-eight points – You are not too bright. Have you thought of running for President.
Thirty-nine points to forty-eight points – You didn’t vote for Bush. Did you?
Whopper
George Whopper Bush,
The forty-third President of the United States is George W. Bush. Many citizens think the middle initial stands for Walker after his maternal Grandfather, as in George Walker Bush. However, I postulate that another middle name fits reality better. In my opinion W. really stands for Whopper as in George Whopper Bush. Whopper as I shall call him from here out has spun some dandies. Perhaps you are not aware of this, preferring to believe Whopper instead of your lying ears and eyes. If so, I have some gold mine stock I’d like to unl…er discuss with you.
I have taken the time to edify you to some of the Whopprisms we all have been subjected to, yet you may not be aware of.
Since the buck stops in the Oval office, I have included some of the blatant Whoppers that have been foisted upon us by his so-called advisors.
George Whopper Bush top forty-three Whoppers. (In no particular order)
1. We’ll get Osama bin Laden, dead or alive.
2. Iraq is the center in the War on Terror.
3. Brownie. You’re doing a hell of a job.
4. We’re fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here.
5. Oil revenues will pay for the Iraqi war
6. Mission accomplished.
7. I’m not into nation building.
8. We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
9. Saddam Hussein tried to obtain uranium from Niger.
10. Aluminum tubes the Iraqis have obtained can only be used for nuclear centrifuges.
11. You go to war with the army you have, not the one you’d like to have.
12. Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague
13. Iraq is known to have weapons of mass destruction.
14. We will be greeted in Iraq as liberators.
15. The damage that Katrina inflicted on New Orleans was unexpected.
16. We went into Iraq to build a democracy in the Middle East
17. Islam is a peaceful religion.
18. Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11
19. Iraq was a sponsor of Terror.
20. Abu Musab Zarqawri was an agent of Al Qaeda (not at first)
21. Iraq is a terrorist haven (now it is.)
22. We’re not facing an insurgency.
23. A few dead enders.
24. We give our military all the troops they ask for.
25. Things are not as bad in Iraq as they appear (one of those lying eyes things)
26. Today marks the end of hostilities. (over three years ago)
27. We have a plan.
28. Osama bin Laden is now insignificant.
29. We will stand down when they stand up.
30. The insurgency is in its last throes.
31. The insurgency should slow down now that Iraq has a freely elected government.
32. The insurgency should slow down now that they have a constitution.
33. The insurgency should slow down now that they have an interim government.
34. The insurgency should slow down now that Zarqawri is dead.
35. The insurgency should slow down now that Hussein is in custody.
36. Over 200,000 Iraqi troops are now trained.
37. There is no civil war in Iraq.
38. We should be out of Iraq in six months.
39. We went with the best intelligence we had. (should’ve said we could pick)
40. Congress had the same information we had.
41. We gave the UN all the time we could.
42. The war in Iraq did not distract us from the war on Terror.
43. We didn ‘t start planning the invasion of Iraq until after 9/11.
Bonus Lie: I finished my tour with the Air National Guard.
Extra Big Lie: I would still go into Iraq, knowing what I know now.
Wow, all them Whoppers, sure made me hungry. I think I’ll go to Burger King.
Viewpoints I – A look at Psychiatry
From time to time I will post viewpoints from academicians which tend to mirrorm mine. Here is the first of such postings:
MORE BRITISH ACADEMICS SPEAK OUT!
Tom Cruise is most certainly right. Psychiatry is, and will remain a
pseudoscience and the only caveat to that statement is that it may give it
more credibility than it deserves.
I speak as a medical ethicist and I congratulate Tom Cruise first for his
courage to speak out on such issues and second on his obvious dedicated
interest in the subject demonstrated by his knowledge of the issues. The
detractors especially those who support psychiatry because it has ‘helped
them’ miss the point. Tom Cruise is speaking about the subject, they are
speaking about themselves. The subject is this. Psychiatry demands
recognition within the healing arts and claims to be both a science and a
branch of medicine. It is neither for these reasons.
For years psychiatry has propagated a myth that mental illnesses are
biological and has even gone so far in many cases to deny that we are
creatures of free will at all. For years those who refuse to accept this
dogma have asked them for evidence, not conjecture, to support this
position. It has not been forthcoming and the best they have ever been able
to come up with are “maybes”, “possiblies” and “we believe”. Not one piece
of real evidence has ever been adduced and it places this branch of
’science’ in the same category as that that searches for the Yeti and the
Sasquatch, except of course that those who believe in Yetis and Sasquatches
have never had access to the vast research funds that the biopsychiatric
fraternity have.
Medicine is bound by an ancient and laudable tradition of ethics in which
primum non nocere (first do no harm) is the foundation stone that the
doctrines of beneficence and non-malfeasance are built on. Those ethics are
abrogated and control has primacy over care, first do no harm but second do
what you like. Lying to patients in any branch of medicine is a breach of
that ethic. Forcing medication is a breach of that ethic, denying the right
of consent is a breach of those ethics and if those ethical conditions
cannot be met then psychiatry does not belong in their world.
Respect for autonomy is a pillar of medical ethics. Autonomy is a myth in
psychiatry and cannot be found in any psychiatric hospital or in any society
where medication with dangerous drugs is a condition of liberty. Justice is
the fourth pillar of medical ethics and as with the others it is totally
absent in psychiatry. Where is the justice in telling patients that ‘mental
illness is for life’ when that excludes them from many areas that those of
us who are not ‘mad’ take for granted. Where is the justice in lying to
patients that mental illness means they must take drugs forever when real
science has shown that is not the case. Where is the justice in detaining
people against their will, without due process, on the spurious grounds that
they are a risk to themselves. Where is the justice in billions of dollars
being spent on mood adapting drugs while those drugs that save lives ‘cannot
be afforded.’
Even if psychiatry were a ’science’ it would belong in the field of what is
now described as the most dishonest science of all, Biological Science.
This once noblest of sciences was originally a search for knowledge and
truth. It is now a search for dollars and when truth gets in the way of
that, it is buried. Case after case is now coming to light where the
bioscientists have lied to get research dollars, kudos and personal wealth.
Some of these scientists gone bad are now facing well deserved jail
sentences. Manufactured mental illnesses have provided the biggest growth
industry to these characters, puffing up egos and fattening wallets. Real
science and real people have suffered the cost of this with real illness
neglected and real science ignored.
Biopsychiatry is the biggest pseudoscientific lie since eugenics, to which
it is of course closely related. A big hand to Tom Cruise and all who keep
reminding us of this.
Barry Turner
Lecturer in Medical Ethics and Law
University of Lincoln
London, England
