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| Adventures in Facebook |
| 2013-03-10 |
| By Chris Covert Rantburg.com I received a friend request on Facebook and a twitter follower. The person requesting those claimed to be part of the Catholic Worker movement. Now, I am no longer a part of that community, which was 25 years ago, but I have known a few of those folks. Consider: they're pacifist, followers of Christ, believing that Good Works helping the poor is the work of the Lord. What's not to like, right? Consider also I moved past that many, many years ago abandoning most of those precepts, such as non-violence as a means of making peace, the concept itself of social justice, only to later learn that while looking good and sounding good on paper, those concepts are both potential social calamities for the poor. But I am a sentimental human being, and I thought it was good to maybe reconnect to see where individuals such as the requester were, or how far they had gone down those roads. The people I knew sure as hell knew how to throw a party, besides. Only a day or two later, around the the time of the anniversary of Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision, the guy posts this missive in which he said that antiabortionists were actually warmongers because they wanted to suppress womens rights enough so that women could spawn cannon fodder for the wars of the plutocracy. Squeezing those concepts through your brain is a little like trying to look out of one skull socket with both eyes. Unlike the great massive majority of conservatives, I know how to deal with crazy people. You really have two choices. You can chuck them out of your life summarily and without debate and never make contact with them again. In this method, you get all the safety you desire and nearly zero personal cost. But on the downside you don't get to look into the face or hear the voice of madness. Or you can listen to them, consider the ideas they have, perhaps even debate them at some moment. An intelligent individual can do this all without even fearing whether such contact will taint them, or that their ideas could overwhelm your own good sense. Then you tell them they are out of their minds and to either start drinking heavily or to get help. I have nothing against crazy people. They exist and they have as much right as anyone to express their views. The same with the majority of the population, crazy people are harmless, probably less than one percent of them represent a threat to others or even to themselves. Unfortunately, mentally ill people are about to become victims of the political class as discussions become more focused on making mental health issues a matter of public record for the purpose of purchasing a gun. I read Saturday morning an opinion piece by a Soviet immigrant now residing in Florida that gun registration is bad but mental health background checks are good. All of which has been proposed and advanced in some states in an effort to prevent tragedies such as the Sandi Hook school massacre last December. Criminal background checks, for warrants and the like make sense, but the rest of it, protective orders, misdemeanor convictions for assaults going back a lifetime do not. By the way, I am a prohibited person, not permitted to buy a gun through a federal firearms dealer because of a now 19 year old protective order. Getting the order lifted would cost me a month's pay, and the cooperation of the other party. Only one of those two conditions are insurmountable. My rights have been taken away from me forever for something that isn't even a crime. Does anyone think that mental health background checks would not be abused the way the law is now with gun buying? Do you really want the same people who interpret law to impose a lifetime ban for misdemeanors to make the same decisions with regard to your mental health? But it is law now, the court have endorsed this madness repeatedly to the degree that the only way real justice can be served is from the barrel of a gun. And we have friends who agree that it is a good thing I can't protect myself. To those, I say: wait until the state or a pissed off ex-wife and her lawyer in a divorce declares you as mentally ill. I'll be laughing my ass off. Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #3 My girlfriend's mother was recently murdered at breakfast by her 26 year old, diagnosed severely schizophrenic son. Everybody knew of the problem. The county therapeutic aid specialists agreed that she and her mother were at risk of violence at some point, and she'd been trying for a year to find some sort of treatment and residence for him so that her father didn't throw the lad out in the street for the safety of the rest of the family, where he would have died -- even when medicated he had the life skills of primary schoolchild. However, there was no way to force him to accept treatment once he was of legal age, and so when the Archangel Michael told him to kill Grandma, he calmly got a knife and stuck it into her back. Then he sat outside to wait for the nice policemen, as his mother told him to do while his grandmother bled to death in her husband's arms. That is the kind of mental illness that needs to be kept away from guns and locked up. Not someone with an angry soon-to-be ex-wife. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2013-03-10 19:34 |
| #2 Well said. Here is the one I like. Joe's kid comes cross/wise with somebody working at the school. Joe goes down there to find out what happened, he is directed to the principles office. As a way to prevent abuse, school policy requires somebody from the school clinic to also attend. Now at this point it does not matter if Joe is calm or loud, the school clinic has been deputized to determine if Joe is dangerous, and if labeled as such can summarily end Joe's ability to own firearms. Joe has challenged the State on something. Puts a lot of power into a couple of people, and if they decide Joe was irrational - even if he was not - he can appeal, hire a lawyer, take some tests, then go put his word above a certified health worker and a school principle with a judge or other local magistrate. All on his own dime and time. Also, I had an appointment at a hospital and Obamacare had just passed, so they had new paperwork for me to sign. In that contract was a brief statement saying my records could be opened if I ever made a threat IIRC any government official or foreign dignitary. So if I wanted to tell the King of Sod to go FOAD - there they go. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2013-03-10 17:37 |
| #1 Hear, hear. Mental illness can sometimes be in the mind of the beholder (see Stalin, Joy Behar, etal.). (pun intended).... |
| Posted by: Uncle Phester 2013-03-10 17:25 |