Tucson And The Political Debate

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I didn't say I wanted to let them get away with it. A person who is mentally unstable enough to kill another "in cold blood" should be locked away and never see the light a day again. I really don't care if a psychologist, psychiatrist, religious clergy, attorney, politician, or judge believes the person insane or not. Lock the murder up and throw away the key ... or execute them.

 

Why, exactly, do you think someone needs to be unstable to kill someone else in cold blood? If you really believe that, I suggest you read The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill. Killing people, even in cold blood, has been a survival trait of humanity for a very long time. To suggest that it is a 'mental instability' simply because we don't need it any more is to render the term 'mental instability' meaningless.

And why would you do that for a person who genuinely believes all they did was chop up a piece of wood? Or, as is often the case with real cases of insanity, is put on meds, 'cured' for as long as he's on the meds, and completely horrified at what he's done?

I'll agree that such people should be carefully monitored to ensure they stay on their meds (and they often don't), but I don't think we need to lock them up and throw away the keys, or execute them. Doing that would be as bad as the assylums from the 1700s. I'd like to think that mental health practices have improved since then, but sadly I'm learning that the public understanding of mental health issues hasn't.

 

I love this review of Murderer Next Door:

Reviewers with scientific training have no kind words for The Murderer Next Door. The author’s investiture in the controversial field of evolutionary psychology—which posits that human behavior is the product of evolution—leads him to assert that homicidal fantasies are more common than the reader might believe, and smacks of self promotion. While Buss’s argument is internally consistent, his premise runs counter to established anthropological and biological studies. Readers unversed in those sciences might receive Buss’s claims about homicide’s roots more openly, and find them both credible and disturbing.​

I think I won't waste my time reading it. I'll really just stick with more accepted interpretations of homicidal tendancies. I really don't care if meds will help the homicidal lunatic -- I don't ever want them out in public again. Mental instability is really meaningless in the framework of murder. Some people may be "more insane" than others, but does that really matter?

 

I don't know about the book under discussion, but I do know that anyone who says he hasn't had a violent urge in his past, the urge to fricking kill someone, is a damn liar. We all have violent urges. The mark of a good citizen is the person who can control those urges.

Some people become so wrapped up in their own desires that they kill or commit otherwise heinous offences. I see that as a function of moral agency -- they know that other people have feelings, hopes, dreams, and the like, but they simply don't care, and thinking only of themselves, do what they want to satisfy whatever appetites they have at the moment. In other words, they choose to do horrible things, and I believe that they should be held accountable for their choices.

Now there are some who really don't understand the nature of their acts, as NOG pointed out. They don't choose to do horrible things just to satisfy their desires, but rather they don't know what they are doing. These few need help, to be sure, but I agree that whatever the reason, for public safety they need to be kept away from the general public. I don't really care if a crazy person or a selfish person guns down my wife, she's just as dead and I'd want to know that the person who did it wouldn't have the ability to do it again -- ever.

 

I completely agree. That's too fine a line between the clinically crazy and the public. What if that person decides, for whatever reason, to stop taking meds?

 

You might want to do more research first. Here's a review by a fellow psychologist. It was also used as a supplimentary text-book in my wife's psychology program. I'm not saying it's gospel, and I don't agree with his evolutionary biology reasoning at all times (I think it closes his mind to other possibilities in addition to his theory), but it is well written and well grounded in facts.

And yes, yes mental instability matters. Like I said, you may want to make sure they're taking their meds, by force if necessary, but it definitely does matter. Keep them in an assylum if need be, but model it after a retirement home rather than a prison yard. I'm not arguing they should be let off without even ticking a box, but I am saying they're a different animal than your ordinary murderer. And, for the record, I deeply hope you never suffer from any mental problems. It would be a wonderfully eye-opening experience, but I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

 

I find it very telling that people who otherwise disagree about pretty much everything (like I do with NOG and LKD) can have such a similar view on a topic simply due to shared experience and exposure.

The ignorance and prejudice surrounding mental health is appalling and everyone suffer for it. Insane people are sick and need help, that help might be to help them not hurt themselves or others and they may have to be isolated from society but they need help, not punishment. As things stand today the suicide rate among mentally ill people is staggering, left to their own devices they all too often kill themselves but in rare rare cases others. The only time we hear about the mentally ill is when someone has gone on a killing spree otherwise they are ignored despite it not being all that uncommon but there is such a social stigma attached to it. We hide it, we hide them, we ignore them and it is neigh on impossible for them to get help. Too often when one snaps we hear like this shooter that he was in contact with the authorities and let go, here in Sweden we had several cases where people had been at the hospital begging for help just hours before giving in to the voices and doing something horrible.

Insanity is more common than you might think, most bear their torment alone and never hurt anyone and it is a minute minority who are dangerous but they all need our help, support and understanding.

 

Not to derail the thread completely, but here in my province the right wing idiots decided, in the name of "respecting people's rights to self determination and autonomy" (read that -- cost cutting) forced large numbers of the mentally ill from the facilities where they were living and told them "you can take care of yourselves, good luck!" Well, these people can't take care of themselves. they can't live independantly and they cause huge headaches for their neighbours and communities. Many resort to drug use and panhandling, and they just don't have the coping mechanisms to deal with life's stresses. A few devolve into violence.

In the long run, they will cost society more than if we just gave them the living supports they need to begin with -- that is to say, took preventative rather than reactive action.

This proves that purely ideological policies that have no regard for reality or reasonably foreseeable consequences suck major dong, regardless of whether those policies come from the left or the right or from elsewhere.

 

This suggests that informed opinions based on experential knowledge tend to 'ring true.' No surprise.

 

I don't know if it was political in nature, but I just heard that there was a shooting in LA this morning at a high school. 2 dead. Another tragedy with 2 families now suffering the loss of their loved ones. There just aren't the words.

Edit: Misread on my part, as of now the status of the two victims is unknown.

 

I heard about this at work and there wasn't much known at the time. Now, though, it looks like it was all an accident. One wonders what a student was doing in school with a gun in the first place, though.

Also, for anyone interested in understanding mental illness better (particularly paranoid schizophrenia), I suggest you read or watch "A Beautiful Mind". The book is more accurate to life, but the movie preserves the spirit of both the man and his insanity while diverging from actual events. Both do an excellent job of portraying mental illness from the perspective of the mentally ill.

 

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I think that Beck's histrionic performances spreading paranoid narratives - that the president is deliberately wrecking the U.S. economy to advance his scheme to overthrow the constitution and transform the nation into a Marxist or Leninist or even Maoist tyranny, or a state under Sharia law - is doing lasting damage to the fabric of democracy. That is so because they aim on keeping the folks riled up and angry.

Which makes me recall a comment by the Larry Wilkerson, who is ever since he left office in the Bush administration is doing atonement. He quoted his father saying:

Looking at left and right in my country, I think he has a point.

 

For those people who are ignorant of how Rachel Maddow treats her guests, and the unimformed who compare her to Rush and Beck:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#41184199

What? A civil debate on Pro-life, Pro-choice?

 

And we have a new douchebag of the week ... Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)

Tea party favorite Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) isn't about to let tragedy change his tone. In an interview on ABC Sunday he said:

Yes, that's the spirit!

On an entirely unrelated note, ever since Glenn Beck, apparently also intent on defying the shooter, falsely claimed that Frances Fox Piven has a plan to “intentionally collapse our economic system,” the 78-year-old professor at City University of New York has been receiving threats of violence, and anonymous visitors to Beck's website have been calling for her death.

 

Just a reminder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide#Media_propaganda

Draw your conclusions.