Let's try some logical tautology to see what kind of audience I'm in:
Are these two statements logically the same?
"All mentally ill people are angry"
and
"All expressions of anger indicate a mental illness"
Answers to this non-poll are below the fold, and why I'm here to tell you that we - as a country - are losing the plot
The story which inspired this diary is that of James Eric Fuller who was "referred for mental health evaluation" for his outburst at a Town Hall whereupon he said,
"you're dead"
Anger is not a mental health condition if there are people amongst us who are fishing for angry people, throwing chum in the water to bring them in, and who bitch that the fishing sucks if nobody bites.
Given the current state of affairs, saying "you're dead" is something people now agree indicates a line has been crossed. How many would have said this was the case in the run-up to the 2008 presidential campaign?
The political Left particularly have indicated this type of anger is a measure of how far the political rhetoric has gone; from figurative implications to literal actions. The Right ignores that it's been using the hyperbole and hysteria quite effectively (to their delight at the polls) when it gets people out of their chairs and into a voting booth or to boost the ratings of a media figure)
But I'm here to offer something:
Both sides are right; both sides are blindly wrong.
Anger is not a mental illness if someone is out to inspire it.
Anger is not a mental illness if someone won't stop until they sense it, particularly if their goal is upon pointing it out to say, "GO get that guy! See! He's angry! Help!"
Anger is not a mental illness if someone uses it to rally the troops in a call to arms and then says, "wow, I need 1000 feet of protection from all these wannabe soldiers that have answered my call"
The current level of madness in America cannot be simplified to merely cause:effect any more than it can be said that everyone who is angry after being in the middle of it all is mentally ill for reacting to it.
Speak freely, you are allowed.
Accept responsibility for what we inspire;
No one can unring a bell - and who would blame the bell because it rings loudly when someone bangs on it.
The bell was not making any noise until someone hit it.
I've been on the receiving end of many of those "you should get help" claims, and I've just decided that I'd offer something for the consideration of all parties involved.
Freedom has lost all meaning in the United States; the dictionary defintion of how a word has been misused so badly that it's original meaning has been perverted or corrupted is bastardized. If you're willing to say anything you want to another person, that's perfectly fine because as we have been taught since grade school, that is your freedom of speech.
But freedom of speech in a canyon does not mean that one can blame the mountains when they return an echo.
When your parents give you the keys to the car, there is a caveat "with freedom comes responsibility". Our founders did not intend that there would be a megaphone in every hand without recognizing that if one screams into it day and night, the neighbors have a right to complain about the noise.
As far as free speech goes, when Oliver Wendel Holmes so famously said "one cannot yell 'fire' in a crowded theater", that's only half the story. Surely one can inded yell "fire" in a crowded theater if there is indeed a fire, it's a moral imperative to do so. However, his remarks were to admonish those who do so for their own amusement as they enjoy the hysterical stampede when people in panic flee in fear from a threat that is not there. Such panic can cause people to be trampled.
If Holmes had said "One cannot deliberately cause a panic without culpability" it would have cleared up a lot of the misuse of the quote.
And in this spirit lies the rhetoric of the Right. I'm not here to list the examples, Rachel Maddow did a great job of that last week in the wake of the Tucson shooting. They love it when it works to their advantage; they disavow any claim to it when there's an ugly headline.
What inspired this was the claim that an angry man needs a mental evaluation for screaming "you're dead". Given the current level of hyperbole and the sheer number of people who openly admit that the world is on fire (because that is what they want us to believe)...
it's sad to see the sole blame for a outburst land at the feet of one person with a diagnosis of an "illness" when what he offered was nothing more than a response.
Would this man have been arrested at a town-hall event during the election season of 2008?
Check your mirror before you respond so quickly.
It's too easy to scream "mental illness" and say that yep; it was just one guy, everyone can go back to business as usual. Because you and I know that the banshees be disappointed and ticked off if nobody had ever jumped up in response to their rhetoric. The would have redoubled their efforts until they got as many people as possible to stand up and scream "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore".
It's happened here at Kos, it happened at "cool blue" Street Prophets, too where a few people who feel privileged will banter and antagonize someone for 59 rounds and then scream "OH, now you've gone TOO FAR!" when the other guy goes goes to round 60.
I'm not here to say that the rhetoric does not need to be toned down, it does.
But there is precisely enough blame to go around to match exactly the number of people who are blaming everyone but themselves.
What I'm here to suggest, without any references to my own history here or to linkable real-world events, is a perspective on "free speech"
Yes, you are free to say whatever you want...
...provided you are not allowed to walk away and disavow the echo if it causes an avalanche.
Simple: You want freedom, you must accept responsibility.
And here's why:
The NRA, the Republican Party, the "Right" in general have attempted to insulate themselves from the hyperbole that generated precisely the level of anger which put them into office, in the wake of the Tucson shooting by simply saying that Laughtner was crazy.
Their best defense is that they were screaming hyperbolic rhetoric into a crowd of people they knew had some loose nuts in it.
Hey - let's ponder that for a minute.
Some people who are just crazy. That's a rather perverse argument from a group of people who are suggesting that seeing a doctor is not a right but a privilege, would not one think?
The best answer the Right can offer in the wake of Tuscon is "Hey, there are crazy people out there; its' not the speech that tickles their nose and inspires them to swat at something".
If you, or the Right, or anyone else are willing to admit that even you recognize the place is already soaked in volitility and you're willing to parade around with a flamethrower just to prove you can, you have little room to insulate yourself when you find yourself in the middle of a conflagration. Sure, you can argue it was coincidence, but...
Arguments like this just conceded that everyone was counting on the other guy, knowing he was not all that stable, to be able to maintain the same composure as everyone else.
That's different than saying "well, we never knew there were vulnerable, unstable, or hostile people out there; we thought everyone was healthy, sober, and well composed"; no, what the Republicans have said is
"Yep, we knew the place was populated with some number of loose cannons, but we walked around with a flaming torch and if we happened to light a fuse, well then it's up to the cannons to recognize that no one really gave a call to launch the weapons."
One can indeed yell "Fire" in a crowded theater:
1.) if there is a fire. Then you are exercising the moral responsibility of alerting the public in time to evacuate and save themselves.
However,
2.) if there is no fire and you scream out "FIRE!" anyway, you are indeed counting on the weakest members of the audience to somehow be able to compose themselves and walk calmly out of the theater so that no one is crushed or trampled in the panic.
The Right wants to have it's cake, they want to eat it to, and furthermore demand that everyone but them is responsible to clean up after the party and do the dishes, too.
Anger is a natural human emotion. Our adrenal gland is designed to produce chemicals that will physically move us - incite us, if you will - to action so that we may react to things that are threatening to us. This is essential in emergencies to save ourselves.
Going out of one's way to ramp up that level of anger does not allow one to then somehow walk around the corner from the madness when it finally goes all wrong. Especially if the one speaking urgently for a call to action is disappointed if it doesn't grow, coming back again and again to make sure everyone knew it was serioius.
I'm not here to seek your approval. People here will slam me for saying what I've said here, I can almost list them by name in advance as I've been admonished before.
I leave it to you to ponder - if it's so easy to admit that there are indeed some people who will just react badly to some situations - it can't be also acceptable to demand someone has control over the responses.
Because if no one reacts, you and I know the bleating sheep, the patriots crying for revolution, would just ramp up the level of madness to get a reaction. That's their goal.
So stoking someone's anger and then blaming them for the outburst is the kind of game that we caution kids in second grade will lead to a mess.
The level of vitriol - personal attacks on "YOU" in the general and then disavowing that it could be received by "ME" as an individual - is not simply a measure of mental illness in the guy who reacts.
If you want to spray napalm on a fire, do not blame the fire for not extinguishing itself. The fire reacted precisely (and more importantly) predictably to the accelerant. It was not a measure of the weakness or vulnerability or even the failure of the person who reacted.
People push to get a reaction, and the keep coming back until they get one.
Such people do not have the right to blame the person, people, or society that gave them precisely what they came for - as if the only fault is on the receiver.
Why do we put up "don't feed the bears" signs?
Because counting on the bear to be reasonable and polite is just plain stupid.
With freedom comes responsibility; dog whistles are designed to get the dogs attention. All dogs are not going to react the same.
Knowing this, blowing a dog whistle while inside the fence of the pound does not mean that the dogs were out of control or "sick" or "mentally ill" when they jump up and snap.
The Republicans best argument is that there are crazy people out there, and that's why their rhetoric did not cause violence.
People who freely unleash that kind of catalyst, that kind of trigger, into a crowd when they just admitted may have "loaded" people in it, have just admitted gross negligence at best; deliberate and willfull recklessness in truth.
Anger is not a mental illness if someone is asking for it.
Anger is not a mental illness if someone won't stop until they inspire it, particularly if their goal is to say, "GO get that guy! See! He's angry! Help!"
Anger is not a mental illness if someone uses it to rally the troops in a call to arms and then says, "wow, I need 1000 feet of protection from all these wannabe soldiers that have answered my call"
The current level of madness in America cannot be simplified to merely cause:effect any more than it can be said that everyone who is angry after being in the middle of it all is mentally ill for reacting to it.
Speak freely, you are allowed.
Accept responsibility for what you inspire; for you can't unring a bell - and you can't rightly blame the bell because it rings loudly when you bang on it.
The bell was not making any noise until someone hit it.
We are all in a society together; this current game of always trying to pin the blame for every wrong on one group of people, for one reason, so that everything can be explained in 12 seconds so we can continue as before -
well, if we continue as before, we can expect the results to be no different.
Anger is not a mental health condition if there are people amongst us who are fishing for angry people, throwing chum in the water to bring them in, and who bitch that the fishing sucks if nobody bites.