A new article by Beverly Eakman, one of the smartest people I know, has me shivering, but I know it to be true. Read on, you who are stout of heart.
New Initiative Launches Police State Under Guise of Mental Health
by Beverly Eakman,
Author, Educator
Former Editor-In-Chief, NASAs Newspaper
It’s zero hour in America. Do you know where your country went?
Now that America’s education system and parenting “experts” have brainwashed a generation of now-grown schoolchildren-cum-parents into believing that what we once called personality quirks, character flaws and moral issues are, in essence, mental disorders, politicians have taken the ball and run with it. Law enforcement agencies and the judicial system are in the process of adopting Stalinist and Mao-inspired methods of controlling dissidents at home.
Only a few, short years ago, what was held up as independent thinking; speaking one’s mind; and robust dialogue is now decried as a prelude to terrorism. In America’s increasingly left-leaning climate, our nation’s leaders are pulling off communist-style thought-control by implying that any words uttered in print or out loud that runs contrary to “accepted wisdom” (and that can change in a “New York Minute”) is the result of mental illness.
Don’t believe it? Well, “google” this:
A recent report out of Missouri labeled “not-for-public-distribution” circulated anonymously by a shocked and patriotic police officer) specifically describes supporters of the three presidential candidates as “militia”-influenced terrorists and instructs police to be on the lookout for bumper stickers and other paraphernalia associated with, of all things, the Constitution—such as “Campaign for Liberty.” Even a few Members of Congress were implied to be security risks and potential domestic terrorists. The document, entitled “The Modern Militia Movement” (February 20, 2009), emanated from the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC), one of several so-called “Fusion Centers” established by the federal government around the country.
Most people are probably not familiar with the term “Fusion Center.” These were originally intended to allow local and state law-enforcement agents to work alongside federal officers after 9/11 so that terrorist-related activities could be identified, then pounced upon by all three entities at once. “Fusion Center” offices, therefore, incorporate local, state and federal law-enforcement personnel, a strategy which, prior to the launching of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was deliberately avoided to maintain independence and preserve impartiality. Predictably, these Centers got out of hand and fell into what is referred to as “mission creep.”
Mission creep is defined by Wikipedia as:
“the expansion of a project or mission beyond its original goals, often after initial successes…. [I]t is usually considered undesirable due to the dangerous path of each success breeding more ambitious attempts, only stopping when a final, often catastrophic, failure occurs. The term was originally applied exclusively to military operations, but has recently been applied to [other] fields, mainly the growth of bureaucracies.”
Recent improvements in tracking and monitoring of opinions via magazine subscriptions, charitable gifts, school and household surveys, and other computerized data collection has made political prediction on hot-button topics that much easier to secure. “Predictive computer technology” (already a staple of school assessment testing) entails the use of behavioral psychiatrists with concurrent degrees in statistics. This same capability has greatly accelerated mission creep among the nation’s Fusion Centers.
The PBS News Hour (not known for its conservatism or, for that matter, for being “alarmist”) recently reported on how political dissidents in China are forced into psychiatric hospitals Video: Chinese Dissidents Committed to Mental Hospitals. In the segment, aired September 13, 2009, the manner in which complainants (called petitioners), whistleblowers and outright protesters are “managed” bears an eerie resemblance to a policy shift right here in America. States’ rights (or the 10th Amendment) are among the first casualties of a top-down, federal effort to minimize, and eventually suppress, dissent.
Psychopolitics is the art and science of asserting and maintaining dominion over the thoughts and loyalties of individuals, officers, bureaus, and “the masses,” via various techniques ranging from “group dynamics,” “cognitive dissonance,” “de-sensitization,” “super-imposing alternate value structures,” artificial disruption of thought,” the Delphi Method, the Tavistock Technique, through negative or positive “reinforcement.”
If you don’t recognize any of these, don’t feel too badly, because they are not part of any school curriculum. The people who created them are, for the most part, unknown in our own country, except among those groomed by extremist political organizations to become “change agents,” professional agitators or “provocateurs.” The pioneers of psychopolitics, including attitude prediction, include individuals such as Wilhelm Reich, Kurt Lewin, Theodor Adorno and Erich Fromm (Germany); A. S. Neill, A. J. Oraje and John Rawlings Rees (Great Britain); Antonio Gramsci (Italy); Anatoly Lunacharsky and Georg Lukacs (Russia); G. Brock Chishom and Ewen Cameron (Canada); and the U.S.’s own Ralph Tyler and Ronald Havelock.
Although psychopolitics originated under Vladimir Lenin as “political literacy” and “polytechnical education” in the old Soviet Union, and was carried to the free world via Peter Sedgwick (1934–1983) a translator for Victor Serge, author of PsychoPolitics and a revolutionary socialist activist as well as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, the term psychopolitics found its way into the American lexicon via Isaac Asimov, a master of the sci-fi genre. But psychopolitics is no science fiction adventure, and never was.
By the 1970s, a slew of enablers were establishing a system of numerical codes for so-called mental disorders that would accommodate computerization. This lent legitimacy to what would otherwise have been considered “questionable illnesses.” The goal was to ensure that medical professionals, the media and government accepted these terms as they might “diabetes,” thereby ensuring that the mental illnesses so codified would remain indelible, beginning with the youngest and most vulnerable.
The long-term game plan of psychopolitics is the conquest, usually by proxy, of enemy nations through “mental healing,” better known as “re-education.” This entails what we know as “encounter groups,” extensive self-disclosure surveys and peer pressure to conform. If all that doesn’t work, if certain individuals are still not amenable, then the first step is marginalization as “mentally unbalanced.”
Example: A study by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation, funded by U.S. taxpayers to the tune of $1.2 million, announced on 1 August of this year that adherents to conventional moral principles and limited government are mentally disturbed. NIMH-NSF scholars from the Universities of Maryland, California at Berkeley, and Stanford attribute notions about morality and individualism to “dogmatism” and “uncertainty avoidance.” Social conservatives, in particular, were said to suffer from “mental rigidity,” a condition which, researchers assert, is probably hard-wired, condemning traditionalists to a lifelong, cognitive hell, with all the associated indicators for mental illness: “decreased cognitive function, lowered self-esteem, fear, anger, pessimism, disgust, and contempt” (Jost, J. T., J. Glaser, et al. (2003). “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition.” Psychological Bulletin 129(3): 339-375 online at http://www.apa.org/journals/bul/503ab.html).
This is the sort of unprovable, but nevertheless libelous condescension that is heaped upon anyone from talk show hosts, to authors to patriots who dare to contradict “common wisdom” (a.k.a. “political correctness”). If that doesn’t work, contempt may be followed up with “mandatory [psychiatric] counseling” (already a feature of the American judicial system), or even forcible psychiatric drugging (well on its way to legitimacy in this nation’s schools). Finally there is incarceration in a psychiatric hospital, which gratefully is not yet a fixture in American democracy, but the handwriting is on the wall, as the expression goes.
Totalitarian states like Communist China and Russia may be more blatant in their affronts to human rights and personal property — inasmuch as they don’t need a “reason” — but the differences are narrowing precipitously.
As emphasized during interviews on the PBS segment, the Chinese system is set up in such a way as to pre-empt complaints. The Chinese government doesn’t wait around to wait for somebody to sound off; it pre-emptively seeks out individuals likely to become troublesome, by assigning a mental-health diagnosis to anyone at the first sign of a provocative or inflammatory remark.
This lies at the heart of what is going on here in America, and we absolutely must put a stop to it, if it isn’t already too late. Data-mining (which actually pre-dates 9/11), along with longitudinal tracking (that’s tracking over long time periods) and, therefore, ongoing monitoring of individual perceptions, worldviews and beliefs is gaining momentum with every moment that computer technology evolves — which means constantly. When you combine this with the practice of assigning mental-illness labels to private opinions, based on snippets of various information — with anything that might be favorable to the individual conveniently left out!
This “diagnosis,” like the American school child’s, follows the person for life, often compromising his or her college and career prospects. And why not, after all? Computerization makes it impossible for anyone to prove that an erroneous or falsified accusation has been purged from the system with no backup copy.
Today’s Chinese authorities, like Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Mao Zedong (Tse-tung) before them, in order to avoid drawing attention to policies that may be morally or ethically distasteful abroad (e.g., the one-child policy and forced abortion) or invite protests that coincide with an event at which international media attention is expected (such as the Olympics), they employ spies, block careers and intimidate family members.
It may be shocking to hear from your college-age children that we are going down the same road. Several universities, like the University of Delaware, in which a lawsuit was filed, have planted paid opinion-monitors in university dormitories (called “resident assistants,” or RAs).
Adam Kissel, Director of the Individual Rights Defense Program, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, explains in a 2008 speech:
The freshman arrived for her mandatory one-on-one session in her dormitory at 8 pm. Classes had been in session for about a week. Her resident assistant handed her a questionnaire. He told her it was “a little questionnaire to help [you] and all the other residents relate to the curriculum.” She “looked a little uncomfortable.”
“When did you discover your sexual identity?” the questionnaire asked.
She wrote in response: “That is none of your damn business.”
Another question: “When was a time you felt oppressed?”
Her response: “I am oppressed every day [because of my] feelings for the opera. Regularly [people]… jeer me with cruel names.… But I will overcome! Hear me, you rock-loving majority?”
The resident assistant felt appalled…. He wrote up an incident report and reported her to his superiors.
This one-on-one session was not a punishment… for a recalcitrant student who had committed an infraction. It was mandatory sensitivity training, indeed, but it was part of a program that was mandatory for all 7,000 students in the University of Delaware dorms. It was a thorough thought-reform curriculum that was designed by the school’s Residence Life staff in order to treat and correct the allegedly incorrect thoughts, attitudes, values, and beliefs of the students….
Many other features — the mandatory one-on-one and group sessions throughout the year; the “confrontation” training to help RAs challenge students who were not complying [with political correctness]; the posters with [politicized] messages spread throughout the dorms; the zero-tolerance policy against anything deemed “oppressive”; the individual files on students and their beliefs, in some cases called “portfolios,” which were to be archived after graduation; the RA reports on their “best” and “worst” one-on-one sessions; the scientific analysis of the questionnaires in order to measure improvement toward the “educational objective”; the “strong male RAs” who were hired to break the “resistance to educational efforts” among [especially] the young male students — all of this, according to the university’s own materials, was part of a cutting-edge educational model that had won awards from a professional association for university administrators, the American College Personnel Association.
As if this weren’t enough to prove that psychopolitics is alive and well in America, with the pervasive undercurrent of “mental illness” as justification, schools below the college level have thoroughly succeeded in exchanging academic testing for mental-health “assessment”; left out, rewritten, and altered history texts until virtually nothing is left of the Framers ideals of a constitutional republic; redefined and watered down morality into something called “situation ethics”; removed the physiology from health classes and replaced it with graphic sex education, beginning in kindergarten.
Already, we see the results:
Do you vocally promote the right to self-defense? Do you voice support for the intact family; national sovereignty and strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution? Do you criticize easy immigration (i.e., without a citizen-sponsor); unrestricted free trade; free condoms hanging on some college freshmen’s dormitory doors; formalization of same-sex unions; abortion on-demand; mandatory mental-health screening of all pregnant women and schoolchildren? Do you have a problem with the policies of the Federal Reserve; with “traffic” cameras and other surreptitious surveillance devices; industry-wide bailouts; no-fault divorce and illegitimacy? Then, my friend, you are not merely holding to a “divergent viewpoint,” to use the 1950’s term; you are mentally ill and a prospective terrorists. You are a person who is ripe for radicalization and therefore suspect. Did you volunteer for certain political candidates in the 2008 election? Do you, by your choices of magazine literature and religious preference, show that you have “bought in to” theological tenets such as the Creation?
If any of these apply to you, good luck in ever securing a government grant or contract, or getting your child into a top university, when there are others who carry none of this psychological “baggage.”
Americans are supposed to view any opposition to all this as “paranoia.” Of course, the term paranoia carries a chilling effect, because it screams “mentally unbalanced” to the world.
Once it becomes possible, via technology, to track and legislate private opinions — and even to classify those that don’t conform as “mentally ill” — then we have left the realm of politics and moved into coercion. We have facilitated the stigmatization of political dissent and vocal objection using labels like such as “acute stress disorder” or “paranoid schizophrenia,” just as they do a right now, today, in China, according the aforementioned PBS segment.
As a former employee of the U.S. Justice Department, I personally saw several precursors to this document — “watch-out” reports (for lack of a better term) on a smaller scale under Janet Reno’s tenure there. These were distributed to employees following the first anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. Obviously, it has been greatly expanded, what with a network of government “Fusion Centers” in state after state.
With pharmaceutical company moguls and politicians sitting on each other’s boards (Sidney Taurel sat on the Homeland Security Council under George W. Bush’s administration); with nationwide mental health assessments like the New Freedom Commission sizing up the political “health” of schoolchildren, and the curriculum altered accordingly; and with “behavioral detection officers” (“BDOs”) looking for a sign of irritation among model citizens in airport security lines, while U.S. borders are left open for drug-runners who then get to sue Border Patrol agents for shooting them, America is in big trouble.
“Political dissent” is now in the eye of the bureaucratic beholder — or the surveillance camera, erected under the guise of traffic safety to pursue revenue and meaningless “gotchas.”
We’re all in China now.
_______________
Beverly K. Eakman is a CCHR Commissioner, a former educator and retired federal employee who served as speechwriter for the heads of three government agencies and as editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper at the Johnson Space Center. Today, she is a Washington, DC-based freelance writer, the author of five books, and a frequent keynote speaker on the lecture circuit. Her most recent work is Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks (Midnight Whistler Publishers).
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
The Low-Down on Depression and Mental Illness
Featured this week, an article by Beverly Eakman:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5190
The Low-Down on Depression and Mental Illness
Written by Beverly K. Eakman
Thursday, 06 August 2009 01:20
Fox News just informed viewers that 27 million Americans are being treated for depression. The Washington Times ran a three-part series this week on the tsunami of mental illness in New Orleans four years after Hurricane Katrina, mostly depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A rash of additional articles has appeared nationwide on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), including one from last Sunday’s (August 2) Washington Times “Pure suffering for OCD Patients,” by Cheryl Weinstein. All news sources, regardless of political persuasion, lend the aura of medical legitimacy to these phenomena.
But just three years ago, we were hearing a vastly different story: “Cheer up: U.S. not so depressed,” a 2006 Washington Times headline proclaimed, the gist being that reports of epidemic levels of clinical depression were greatly exaggerated — and possibly bogus, along with statistics on alcoholism and anxiety.
The problem — and nearly every news source and medical professional acknowledges it — is that mental illnesses, especially depression, PTSD and OCD, are difficult, if not impossible, to diagnose or quantify. There is no X-ray, blood test, DNA or other chemical analysis that nails these as bona fide sicknesses, such as one might seek, say, for a brain injury or diabetes. And while there is little question that people do suffer from acute, long-term sadness, stress and compulsive behaviors, there exists no direct, medical proof for the notion of biologically-based brain disorders, contrary to the claims of pharmaceutical companies and mental-health advocacy groups like the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).
What that means for average citizens is that there is no magic bullet, no medication, to “cure” what are essentially human phenomena, not medical conditions.
NAMI, the National Association of Mental Health, and the American Psychological Association, all of which receive federal and state dollars via grants and other subsidies, pump out one press release after another touting genetic and biological mental illnesses as well as “medicalized” mental disorders brought on by life events. But as most medicated individuals and their families eventually discover, affected sufferers do not seem to get better on psychotropic drugs and therapies.
Dr. Peter Breggin, one of the more outspoken medical authors addressing the issue of mental health treatments, especially psychotropic medications, describes antidepressants, tranquilizers and even some antipsychotics as essentially “brain-blunters,” meaning that they “dull” the emotions so that the patient doesn’t feel them as intensely as before, depending on the dosage. Otherwise, psychiatric drugs do little, if anything — except produce ghastly side-effects.
Stimulants like Ritalin may jolt the brain, say after a stroke, to “wake it up” a bit, but for strictly psychiatric uses, Ritalin is called a stimulant in adults and a tranquilizer in children — rather difficult to reconcile in an identical drug.
Now that black box warnings are appearing on one antidepressant after another, due to high-profile deaths among children and violent rampages by teens — beginning with the carnage in Columbine, Colorado — it would seem that the mainstream media, Congress and the medical industry in general would rethink their support for psychiatric labels, mental health screening, psychotropic substances and the mental health industry.
In Dolton, Illinois, for example, 6-year-old Kierra Garner was found dead in her home in January 2006. Nine weeks later, toxicology reports surfaced, pointing to intoxication from the drug amitriptyline, commonly used to “treat” manic depression or bipolar disorder, two supposedly biologically-based mental illnesses. In a 6-year-old! A pharmacist told the local NBC affiliate that the drug is not meant for children and would likely prove to be fatal in any dose if given to a child that age. Yet, the medication was prescribed.
Last April, Gabriel Myers, age 7, died by suicide in his South Florida foster home, hanging himself on an extendable shower hose. According to staff writer Kris Hundley of the St. Petersburg Times (May 8), the little boy was taking two powerful psychiatric drugs at the time of his death — Vyvanse, an ADHD drug, and Symbyax, a combination of the antipsychotic Zyprexa and the antidepressant Prozac, neither of which had been approved by his parent or a judge, as required by state law — when he killed himself. Symbyax carries a "black box" warning that it might lead to suicidal behavior among children and adolescents, especially when first prescribed. Documents made public in connection with a state investigation into Gabriel's death show that foster care workers repeatedly ignored the necessity of obtaining consent for psychotropic medications in a child under the state's care — apparently not a rare occurrence.
The media has historically been the public’s first line of defense against wrongheaded notions and policies. But today, with 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at educational facilities about to be screened for mental illnesses under the New Freedom Initiative (funded by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2004), using the psychiatric bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as a guide, most media services have dropped the ball. Most DSM labels cannot be verified through any medical test, yet impending government-subsidized universal health care proposals includes all aspects of mental health in lawmakers’ plans.
The point is that psychiatric therapies and drugs do not have good track records, especially in the long term. Some initially claim they feel better, but that may well be the power of suggestion inasmuch as it doesn’t appear to last long. The news article by Weinstein on post-Katrina mental health in New Orleans inadvertently confirms the point: Sufferers who had been treated and were on medication said they were no better, just as the infamous killers of their classmates and the offspring of “sick” mothers like Houston’s Andrea Yates apparently did not fare well on their prescribed, psychotropic “cocktails.”
What used to be approached as a personal or character issue, or even a religious concern, is now being “medicalized” without basis. What happens to a person in response to life events, even tragic ones, does not lend itself to a medical diagnosis. People can, of course, choose to live differently; to move elsewhere; to tackle problems such as anger, resentment and frustration squarely; to jettison unwarranted fixations on beauty, sex or even counterproductive “checking” and “hoarding” behaviors (as per OCD)…or they can succumb to a permanent condition of sadness and stress. In most cases, it comes down to a personal decision, one that a trusted friend or clergyman might be able to influence.
Unfortunately, the media, lawmakers and the medical profession have jettisoned principles once espoused in America through its religious institutions and families. They have instead created a new “religion” called Psychiatry — a state-sponsored religion complete with bible, doctrine and tax-supported institutions.
The United States — indeed the free world — now serves as hosts to hundreds of mental health advocacy and “behavioral science” institutions (especially those within university settings), all of which sup at the public trough. The “silent victims” are the troubled and upset individuals themselves — many of whom may have good reason to be upset and troubled. What’s different today is that they no longer have a legitimate advocate based in constitutionally recognized right of self-determination or religious choice.
Beverly K. Eakman is a former speechwriter for the heads of two federal agencies, a sought-after lecturer and the author of four books (including the best-selling award-winner, Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating Morality Through Education) on education policy, mental-health and illicit data-trafficking. Her latest book is Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Creating a Nation of Sitting Ducks. She can be reached through her web site: www.BeverlyE.com.
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5190
The Low-Down on Depression and Mental Illness
Written by Beverly K. Eakman
Thursday, 06 August 2009 01:20
Fox News just informed viewers that 27 million Americans are being treated for depression. The Washington Times ran a three-part series this week on the tsunami of mental illness in New Orleans four years after Hurricane Katrina, mostly depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A rash of additional articles has appeared nationwide on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), including one from last Sunday’s (August 2) Washington Times “Pure suffering for OCD Patients,” by Cheryl Weinstein. All news sources, regardless of political persuasion, lend the aura of medical legitimacy to these phenomena.
But just three years ago, we were hearing a vastly different story: “Cheer up: U.S. not so depressed,” a 2006 Washington Times headline proclaimed, the gist being that reports of epidemic levels of clinical depression were greatly exaggerated — and possibly bogus, along with statistics on alcoholism and anxiety.
The problem — and nearly every news source and medical professional acknowledges it — is that mental illnesses, especially depression, PTSD and OCD, are difficult, if not impossible, to diagnose or quantify. There is no X-ray, blood test, DNA or other chemical analysis that nails these as bona fide sicknesses, such as one might seek, say, for a brain injury or diabetes. And while there is little question that people do suffer from acute, long-term sadness, stress and compulsive behaviors, there exists no direct, medical proof for the notion of biologically-based brain disorders, contrary to the claims of pharmaceutical companies and mental-health advocacy groups like the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).
What that means for average citizens is that there is no magic bullet, no medication, to “cure” what are essentially human phenomena, not medical conditions.
NAMI, the National Association of Mental Health, and the American Psychological Association, all of which receive federal and state dollars via grants and other subsidies, pump out one press release after another touting genetic and biological mental illnesses as well as “medicalized” mental disorders brought on by life events. But as most medicated individuals and their families eventually discover, affected sufferers do not seem to get better on psychotropic drugs and therapies.
Dr. Peter Breggin, one of the more outspoken medical authors addressing the issue of mental health treatments, especially psychotropic medications, describes antidepressants, tranquilizers and even some antipsychotics as essentially “brain-blunters,” meaning that they “dull” the emotions so that the patient doesn’t feel them as intensely as before, depending on the dosage. Otherwise, psychiatric drugs do little, if anything — except produce ghastly side-effects.
Stimulants like Ritalin may jolt the brain, say after a stroke, to “wake it up” a bit, but for strictly psychiatric uses, Ritalin is called a stimulant in adults and a tranquilizer in children — rather difficult to reconcile in an identical drug.
Now that black box warnings are appearing on one antidepressant after another, due to high-profile deaths among children and violent rampages by teens — beginning with the carnage in Columbine, Colorado — it would seem that the mainstream media, Congress and the medical industry in general would rethink their support for psychiatric labels, mental health screening, psychotropic substances and the mental health industry.
In Dolton, Illinois, for example, 6-year-old Kierra Garner was found dead in her home in January 2006. Nine weeks later, toxicology reports surfaced, pointing to intoxication from the drug amitriptyline, commonly used to “treat” manic depression or bipolar disorder, two supposedly biologically-based mental illnesses. In a 6-year-old! A pharmacist told the local NBC affiliate that the drug is not meant for children and would likely prove to be fatal in any dose if given to a child that age. Yet, the medication was prescribed.
Last April, Gabriel Myers, age 7, died by suicide in his South Florida foster home, hanging himself on an extendable shower hose. According to staff writer Kris Hundley of the St. Petersburg Times (May 8), the little boy was taking two powerful psychiatric drugs at the time of his death — Vyvanse, an ADHD drug, and Symbyax, a combination of the antipsychotic Zyprexa and the antidepressant Prozac, neither of which had been approved by his parent or a judge, as required by state law — when he killed himself. Symbyax carries a "black box" warning that it might lead to suicidal behavior among children and adolescents, especially when first prescribed. Documents made public in connection with a state investigation into Gabriel's death show that foster care workers repeatedly ignored the necessity of obtaining consent for psychotropic medications in a child under the state's care — apparently not a rare occurrence.
The media has historically been the public’s first line of defense against wrongheaded notions and policies. But today, with 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at educational facilities about to be screened for mental illnesses under the New Freedom Initiative (funded by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2004), using the psychiatric bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as a guide, most media services have dropped the ball. Most DSM labels cannot be verified through any medical test, yet impending government-subsidized universal health care proposals includes all aspects of mental health in lawmakers’ plans.
The point is that psychiatric therapies and drugs do not have good track records, especially in the long term. Some initially claim they feel better, but that may well be the power of suggestion inasmuch as it doesn’t appear to last long. The news article by Weinstein on post-Katrina mental health in New Orleans inadvertently confirms the point: Sufferers who had been treated and were on medication said they were no better, just as the infamous killers of their classmates and the offspring of “sick” mothers like Houston’s Andrea Yates apparently did not fare well on their prescribed, psychotropic “cocktails.”
What used to be approached as a personal or character issue, or even a religious concern, is now being “medicalized” without basis. What happens to a person in response to life events, even tragic ones, does not lend itself to a medical diagnosis. People can, of course, choose to live differently; to move elsewhere; to tackle problems such as anger, resentment and frustration squarely; to jettison unwarranted fixations on beauty, sex or even counterproductive “checking” and “hoarding” behaviors (as per OCD)…or they can succumb to a permanent condition of sadness and stress. In most cases, it comes down to a personal decision, one that a trusted friend or clergyman might be able to influence.
Unfortunately, the media, lawmakers and the medical profession have jettisoned principles once espoused in America through its religious institutions and families. They have instead created a new “religion” called Psychiatry — a state-sponsored religion complete with bible, doctrine and tax-supported institutions.
The United States — indeed the free world — now serves as hosts to hundreds of mental health advocacy and “behavioral science” institutions (especially those within university settings), all of which sup at the public trough. The “silent victims” are the troubled and upset individuals themselves — many of whom may have good reason to be upset and troubled. What’s different today is that they no longer have a legitimate advocate based in constitutionally recognized right of self-determination or religious choice.
Beverly K. Eakman is a former speechwriter for the heads of two federal agencies, a sought-after lecturer and the author of four books (including the best-selling award-winner, Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating Morality Through Education) on education policy, mental-health and illicit data-trafficking. Her latest book is Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Creating a Nation of Sitting Ducks. She can be reached through her web site: www.BeverlyE.com.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Psychiatric Drugs, Violence and Suicide
I like bringing you articles by my own author, Beverly Eakman, but today, I'm bringing you an article from an author I wish I published. K. L. Carlson is a former pharmaceutical representative and knows of what she speaks. Her book is being shopped now.
Psychiatric Drugs, Violence and Suicide
K.L. Carlson
Former Pharmaceutical Rep.
People often go through times of depression due to job loss, relocation, loss of a loved one, divorce, and many other situations that cause us to feel insecure. Our bodies do have natural ways of dealing with these emotions especially if people use healthy means including adequate sleep, exercise, healthy eating and emotional support from friends and family.
SSRI/SNRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors/Selective Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors) are antidepressant drugs that interfere with the body-mind’s normal functioning. These drugs are literally mind-altering. They can cause people to terminate loving, supportive relationships with family and friends, the very relationships that are extremely important to helping people recover from depression. The drugs can cause hallucinations, paranoia, and mania.
There is a direct correlation with the increase of antidepressant drug use and the rise in extreme, senseless violent acts. There are experts who have been trying to bring this to the attention of physicians, the FDA, and the public for more than a decade. Depression is not the problem. The drugs are the problem.
In 2001, GlaxoSmithKline was ordered to pay $6.4 million to the surviving family members after 60 year old Donald Schnell flew into a rage and killed his wife, daughter, and granddaughter only 48 hours after he began to take Paxil.
“I keep asking, when is somebody going to see this? But we’ve been so brainwashed about drugs. We think legal means safe,” Ann Blake Tracy, Ph.D. explains. “Most people don’t know that LSD once was legal and prescribed as a wonder drug. That PCP was considered to have a large margin of safety in humans. Most people don’t know that ecstasy was prescribed and sold for five years to treat depression. ”
The adverse effects of psychiatric drugs are regularly misdiagnosed as more signs of depression, anxiety or some other created-by-vote psychiatric disorder. Then patients are prescribed additional psychiatric drugs or the dosage is increased. That was the case of California teenager Dominique Slater. Only 14 years old she was on several antidepressants including Celexa and Wellbutrin. When her erratic behavior worsened her doctor prescribed double dose of Effexor. Fifteen days later she killed herself. She was barely a teenager yet she was prescribed multiple antidepressant drugs at high doses. The year was 2003. Britain had already sent letters to all physicians sternly warning against the use of any of these drugs in anyone under the age of 18 years. It took the FDA another year to issue awarning of increased suicide in youths under 18 years old. No letters were sent to physicians. And the drug companies created marketing campaigns specifically to get antidepressants into the offices of all types of physicians, not just psychiatrists.
More than 10 million prescriptions for antidepressants are issued each year for children younger than 18 in the U.S. Any physician, not just psychiatrists, can write prescriptions for psychiatric drugs. The age of children being given these powerful mind-altering drugs continues to get younger. Ohio physicians in the month of July 2004 prescribedpsychiatric drugs for 696 babies aged newborn to 3 years old covered by Medicaid.
“It’s shocking,” said Dr. Ellen Bassuk, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “These medications are not benign. They can have dangerous side effects. Who is being helped by children being drugged, the babies or the caregivers?”
Scientific Evidence of Antidepressants’ Effects on Newborns
“When we put pregnant women on antidepressants, they can’t get off them,” an unconcerned gynecologist told my friend C. when she told him she had spent years trying to get off the antidepressant he had prescribed to her. Three years before this callous physician’s comments to C., the extreme health risks to the fetus had been reported in medical journals.
A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in February 2006 reports pregnant women taking antidepressants have babies who are 6 times more likely to have primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH) or a developing lung disorder. PPH is extremely serious. A baby’s organs such as brain, kidney and liver are stressed due to lack of oxygen. PPH requires neonatal intensive care. PPH can be fatal and for babies who do survive there is often long-term health problems including breathing difficulties, seizures and developmental disorders.
Women taking SSRI/SNRI drugs during the first trimester of pregnancy are at 60 percent greater risk of their babies having heart defects and 40 percent greater risk of their babies suffering malformation.
“In conclusion, our results suggest that maternal exposure to fluoxetine (Prozac, Luvox, Sarafem and Symbyax) during pregnancy and lactation results in enduring behavioral alterations… throughout life,” a study reports in Pharmacology, spring 2007. Although the study was done with mice the physiological systems are similar to humans. There is nothing preventing drugs a pregnant woman takes from going directly into the bloodstream and then all the tissues of the fetus. And as this study indicates, antidepressants are also transferred to the baby through the mother’s milk.
As of February 2009, the drug companies, using their puppets and financial influence, are lobbying the U.S. Senate to pass a bill called the Mothers Act. This insane bill has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives. Supposedly this bill is meant to address postpartum depression. The truth is that it’s the drug industry influencing legislation in order to have more taxpayers’ money flow into drug companies’ profits. The1,200 drug industry lobbyists on Capitol Hill are greasing the skids well so that this dangerous legislation that will harm, not help mothers, babies, and American families will easily pass. It’s about money, not health.
Psychiatric Drugs, Violence and Suicide
K.L. Carlson
Former Pharmaceutical Rep.
People often go through times of depression due to job loss, relocation, loss of a loved one, divorce, and many other situations that cause us to feel insecure. Our bodies do have natural ways of dealing with these emotions especially if people use healthy means including adequate sleep, exercise, healthy eating and emotional support from friends and family.
SSRI/SNRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors/Selective Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors) are antidepressant drugs that interfere with the body-mind’s normal functioning. These drugs are literally mind-altering. They can cause people to terminate loving, supportive relationships with family and friends, the very relationships that are extremely important to helping people recover from depression. The drugs can cause hallucinations, paranoia, and mania.
There is a direct correlation with the increase of antidepressant drug use and the rise in extreme, senseless violent acts. There are experts who have been trying to bring this to the attention of physicians, the FDA, and the public for more than a decade. Depression is not the problem. The drugs are the problem.
In 2001, GlaxoSmithKline was ordered to pay $6.4 million to the surviving family members after 60 year old Donald Schnell flew into a rage and killed his wife, daughter, and granddaughter only 48 hours after he began to take Paxil.
“I keep asking, when is somebody going to see this? But we’ve been so brainwashed about drugs. We think legal means safe,” Ann Blake Tracy, Ph.D. explains. “Most people don’t know that LSD once was legal and prescribed as a wonder drug. That PCP was considered to have a large margin of safety in humans. Most people don’t know that ecstasy was prescribed and sold for five years to treat depression. ”
The adverse effects of psychiatric drugs are regularly misdiagnosed as more signs of depression, anxiety or some other created-by-vote psychiatric disorder. Then patients are prescribed additional psychiatric drugs or the dosage is increased. That was the case of California teenager Dominique Slater. Only 14 years old she was on several antidepressants including Celexa and Wellbutrin. When her erratic behavior worsened her doctor prescribed double dose of Effexor. Fifteen days later she killed herself. She was barely a teenager yet she was prescribed multiple antidepressant drugs at high doses. The year was 2003. Britain had already sent letters to all physicians sternly warning against the use of any of these drugs in anyone under the age of 18 years. It took the FDA another year to issue awarning of increased suicide in youths under 18 years old. No letters were sent to physicians. And the drug companies created marketing campaigns specifically to get antidepressants into the offices of all types of physicians, not just psychiatrists.
More than 10 million prescriptions for antidepressants are issued each year for children younger than 18 in the U.S. Any physician, not just psychiatrists, can write prescriptions for psychiatric drugs. The age of children being given these powerful mind-altering drugs continues to get younger. Ohio physicians in the month of July 2004 prescribedpsychiatric drugs for 696 babies aged newborn to 3 years old covered by Medicaid.
“It’s shocking,” said Dr. Ellen Bassuk, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “These medications are not benign. They can have dangerous side effects. Who is being helped by children being drugged, the babies or the caregivers?”
Scientific Evidence of Antidepressants’ Effects on Newborns
“When we put pregnant women on antidepressants, they can’t get off them,” an unconcerned gynecologist told my friend C. when she told him she had spent years trying to get off the antidepressant he had prescribed to her. Three years before this callous physician’s comments to C., the extreme health risks to the fetus had been reported in medical journals.
A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in February 2006 reports pregnant women taking antidepressants have babies who are 6 times more likely to have primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH) or a developing lung disorder. PPH is extremely serious. A baby’s organs such as brain, kidney and liver are stressed due to lack of oxygen. PPH requires neonatal intensive care. PPH can be fatal and for babies who do survive there is often long-term health problems including breathing difficulties, seizures and developmental disorders.
Women taking SSRI/SNRI drugs during the first trimester of pregnancy are at 60 percent greater risk of their babies having heart defects and 40 percent greater risk of their babies suffering malformation.
“In conclusion, our results suggest that maternal exposure to fluoxetine (Prozac, Luvox, Sarafem and Symbyax) during pregnancy and lactation results in enduring behavioral alterations… throughout life,” a study reports in Pharmacology, spring 2007. Although the study was done with mice the physiological systems are similar to humans. There is nothing preventing drugs a pregnant woman takes from going directly into the bloodstream and then all the tissues of the fetus. And as this study indicates, antidepressants are also transferred to the baby through the mother’s milk.
As of February 2009, the drug companies, using their puppets and financial influence, are lobbying the U.S. Senate to pass a bill called the Mothers Act. This insane bill has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives. Supposedly this bill is meant to address postpartum depression. The truth is that it’s the drug industry influencing legislation in order to have more taxpayers’ money flow into drug companies’ profits. The1,200 drug industry lobbyists on Capitol Hill are greasing the skids well so that this dangerous legislation that will harm, not help mothers, babies, and American families will easily pass. It’s about money, not health.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
You know the Nation is in Trouble When...
by Beverly K. Eakman
Friday, 21 August 2009 01:51
When a child gets in more trouble for opening a lemonade stand in a public park than does a “student” at a tax-supported university traveling to a foreign country to install a terrorist state detrimental to America’s existence, you know our nation is in trouble.
The specifics of this particular “disconnect” in U.S. law-making and enforcement involve two news reports in one week: First, an August 16 story in the New York Post revealing how police with the city’s Parks Department slapped a $50 fine, without warning, on a 10-year-old and her flummoxed dad, who responsibly accompanied her, for setting up an “unlicensed” lemonade stand, something every child used to do 25 years ago no matter where it was.
The very next day, the Washington Times carried a report by Iason Athanasiadis concerning how, in 1978 (the height of Boomer student activism), a brash young man named Moshen Sazegara “quit his studies at the University of Illinois to join Ayatollah Rubollah Khomeini’s return from exile to lead Iran’s Islamic Revolution” and to help establish “Iran’s Revolutionary Guard…an ideological army entrusted with safeguarding the principles of the revolution”.
Apparently, the student’s eventual fall-out with the abusive, terrorist regime proved a reality check, and Sazegara returned to the U.S. to lead a global opposition movement to the regime he once so brashly supported.
This story, picked up by several news outlets, unfailingly implied an endorsement of this “resistance leader,” despite the fact that in his youthful arrogance, Sazegara bears substantial responsibility for the overthrow of a pro-Western government and for plunging Iran into an 8th-century horror. One woman who escaped Iran relays how her young, female colleague, forced into burqa-like garb, accidentally allowed her black head shawl to slip backward. One of the Revolutionary Guards yanked the heavy scarf down to “where it ought to be,” took a short nail and hammered the shawl into the woman’s forehead. That’s the kind of “peace and nonviolence” the naïve, young Sazegara thought he was installing to replace the old shah — admittedly no saint, but at least with visions of a more democratic nation. Some of that was sparked when the shah was forced by old traditions to divorce his beloved wife, Soroya, when she could not bear him an heir. But such was forgotten in the rush to demonize anything pro-Western.
The larger point here is why Sazegara, who caused so much harm, was allowed to return, or indeed why he, and others like him, are allowed to intervene in the affairs of potentially hostile nations. Apparently, he was an undergraduate student at both Sharif University of Technology in Iran and the Illinois Institute of Technology while a leader of the student movement against the shah. This smacks of dual citizenship, but could not be confirmed in an online search.
What is striking is that both then and now Sazegara is a supporter of “civil disobedience” and “protest movements.” Where did he learn that? Not in Iran, for sure. He learned it in America, where universities are steeped in Marxist strategies of inciting dissent through mob psychology. He would have been better off setting up lemonade stands.
Sazegara’s post-graduate work in multiple countries is impressive, yet one has to wonder at our system of “law enforcement” which has since the 1970s glossed over important connections to terrorist organizations, illegal immigration, and other matters of national security and public safety, yet has no trouble delivering a citation to a ten-year-old over a lemonade stand.
From idiot programs like “click it or ticket,” to non-programs like “aggressive driver imaging” (which never focuses on anyone driving erratically), to so-called “airport security” that plays tough with elderly women, the message is: Good citizens are easy; but we don’t mess with really dangerous folks.”
There have been thousands of warnings since the volatile 70s that out-of-control, violent crime; terrorist attacks; and grandiose fraud scams, to mention just a few of the societal changes that now affect everyone, were coming — without intervention from the courts or “the law.” As By Ron Ewart, President of the National Association of Rural Landowners, put it in an article, “How Can We Undo It?”: “We are a country under the rule of law all right, but we have taken law and rule-making to the extreme edge of absurdity, if not insanity.”
Mr. Ewart cites the 80,700 pages in the Federal Register to make his case. “The United States Code is perched on multiple shelves and is 16,845 pages, according to the government printing office. The Tax Code, Title 26 [alone], is 3,387 pages. This doesn't even begin to cover millions of pages of state and local laws, regulations, restrictions and ordinances...[many of which] are patently without constitutional authority.
The duty of government is to protect Americans from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to support parents in their efforts to protect children from harm. But what if it is our own elected officials, both by their sins of omission (in failing to read the bills it passes, and insist on enforcement of existing criminal statutes) and its sins of commission (passing “gotcha” ordinances that restrict normal, everyday activities of individuals, such as “unlicensed” lemonade stands), who are doing the harm?
Beverly K. Eakman is a former teacher and retired federal employee who served as speechwriter for the heads of three government agencies and as editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper at the Johnson Space Center. Based now in Washington, DC, she is a freelance writer, the author of five books, and frequent keynote speaker on the lecture circuit. Her most recent book is "Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks" (Midnight Whistler Publishers).
Friday, 21 August 2009 01:51
When a child gets in more trouble for opening a lemonade stand in a public park than does a “student” at a tax-supported university traveling to a foreign country to install a terrorist state detrimental to America’s existence, you know our nation is in trouble.
The specifics of this particular “disconnect” in U.S. law-making and enforcement involve two news reports in one week: First, an August 16 story in the New York Post revealing how police with the city’s Parks Department slapped a $50 fine, without warning, on a 10-year-old and her flummoxed dad, who responsibly accompanied her, for setting up an “unlicensed” lemonade stand, something every child used to do 25 years ago no matter where it was.
The very next day, the Washington Times carried a report by Iason Athanasiadis concerning how, in 1978 (the height of Boomer student activism), a brash young man named Moshen Sazegara “quit his studies at the University of Illinois to join Ayatollah Rubollah Khomeini’s return from exile to lead Iran’s Islamic Revolution” and to help establish “Iran’s Revolutionary Guard…an ideological army entrusted with safeguarding the principles of the revolution”.
Apparently, the student’s eventual fall-out with the abusive, terrorist regime proved a reality check, and Sazegara returned to the U.S. to lead a global opposition movement to the regime he once so brashly supported.
This story, picked up by several news outlets, unfailingly implied an endorsement of this “resistance leader,” despite the fact that in his youthful arrogance, Sazegara bears substantial responsibility for the overthrow of a pro-Western government and for plunging Iran into an 8th-century horror. One woman who escaped Iran relays how her young, female colleague, forced into burqa-like garb, accidentally allowed her black head shawl to slip backward. One of the Revolutionary Guards yanked the heavy scarf down to “where it ought to be,” took a short nail and hammered the shawl into the woman’s forehead. That’s the kind of “peace and nonviolence” the naïve, young Sazegara thought he was installing to replace the old shah — admittedly no saint, but at least with visions of a more democratic nation. Some of that was sparked when the shah was forced by old traditions to divorce his beloved wife, Soroya, when she could not bear him an heir. But such was forgotten in the rush to demonize anything pro-Western.
The larger point here is why Sazegara, who caused so much harm, was allowed to return, or indeed why he, and others like him, are allowed to intervene in the affairs of potentially hostile nations. Apparently, he was an undergraduate student at both Sharif University of Technology in Iran and the Illinois Institute of Technology while a leader of the student movement against the shah. This smacks of dual citizenship, but could not be confirmed in an online search.
What is striking is that both then and now Sazegara is a supporter of “civil disobedience” and “protest movements.” Where did he learn that? Not in Iran, for sure. He learned it in America, where universities are steeped in Marxist strategies of inciting dissent through mob psychology. He would have been better off setting up lemonade stands.
Sazegara’s post-graduate work in multiple countries is impressive, yet one has to wonder at our system of “law enforcement” which has since the 1970s glossed over important connections to terrorist organizations, illegal immigration, and other matters of national security and public safety, yet has no trouble delivering a citation to a ten-year-old over a lemonade stand.
From idiot programs like “click it or ticket,” to non-programs like “aggressive driver imaging” (which never focuses on anyone driving erratically), to so-called “airport security” that plays tough with elderly women, the message is: Good citizens are easy; but we don’t mess with really dangerous folks.”
There have been thousands of warnings since the volatile 70s that out-of-control, violent crime; terrorist attacks; and grandiose fraud scams, to mention just a few of the societal changes that now affect everyone, were coming — without intervention from the courts or “the law.” As By Ron Ewart, President of the National Association of Rural Landowners, put it in an article, “How Can We Undo It?”: “We are a country under the rule of law all right, but we have taken law and rule-making to the extreme edge of absurdity, if not insanity.”
Mr. Ewart cites the 80,700 pages in the Federal Register to make his case. “The United States Code is perched on multiple shelves and is 16,845 pages, according to the government printing office. The Tax Code, Title 26 [alone], is 3,387 pages. This doesn't even begin to cover millions of pages of state and local laws, regulations, restrictions and ordinances...[many of which] are patently without constitutional authority.
The duty of government is to protect Americans from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to support parents in their efforts to protect children from harm. But what if it is our own elected officials, both by their sins of omission (in failing to read the bills it passes, and insist on enforcement of existing criminal statutes) and its sins of commission (passing “gotcha” ordinances that restrict normal, everyday activities of individuals, such as “unlicensed” lemonade stands), who are doing the harm?
Beverly K. Eakman is a former teacher and retired federal employee who served as speechwriter for the heads of three government agencies and as editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper at the Johnson Space Center. Based now in Washington, DC, she is a freelance writer, the author of five books, and frequent keynote speaker on the lecture circuit. Her most recent book is "Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks" (Midnight Whistler Publishers).
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Psychiatry Goes Back to the Future
Beverly Eakman has been a friend since we were in theater together at age 15. She has become a best selling writer and speaker. She so impressed me with her notes for a book that I insisted she publish it and she challenged me to publish it myself. Midnight Whistler expanded to include books at that point. Below is her latest article.
Psychiatry Goes Back to the Future
Friday, August 21, 2008
By Beverly Eakman
New American Magazine
The New York Times’ Benedict Carey reported this week that the Army “plans to require that all 1.1 million of its soldiers take intensive training in emotional resiliency.” The Times says it “learned of the [psychological resiliency training] program from Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman, chairman of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center, who has been consulting with the Pentagon.”
The training is being billed as “the first of its kind in the military,” with a goal to “improve performance in combat and head off the mental health problems, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide,” allegedly affecting “one-fifth of troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.”
First to receive what is essentially psychological training will be “active-duty soldiers, reservists and members of the National Guard,” then it will be “made available to family members and to civilian employees.” The term “made available” implies that something is voluntary, but when government uses it, the word “mandatory” soon follows.
Ah, how quickly people forget the lessons of the past!
First off, this would not be “the first [training] of its kind in the military.”
In 1943, psychiatrist and British military officer, John Rawlings Rees, head of England’s famous Tavistock Clinic, an outgrowth of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, provided such “training” to American and British soldiers, ostensibly to prepare them for combat and capture or interrogation. What he wanted to ascertain, however, was whether, under conditions of induced or controlled stress, groups of normal individuals could be made to behave erratically. In particular, he wanted to find out whether they would “let go” of firmly held beliefs under pressure, including peer pressure, in order to conform to a predetermined set of “popular” beliefs. Like political organizer and activist Saul Alinsky later on, Rees believed that one of man’s worst fears was ridicule and ostracism, so his experiments centered on what we now know as “encounter”-style strategies — high-stress, spirit-breaking, psychological “conditioning.”
Rees also field-tested various techniques of inducing “mass neurosis,” based on methods established by — of all people — German psychologist Kurt Lewin (“thought reform” strategies) and infamous Soviet psychologist Alexander R. Luria (the “artificial disruption of behavior”). Luria’s defining book centered on “the artificial disruption of behavior,” in which he praised Kurt Lewin as being among the first to succeed in provoking “acute disruption of the psyche” by alternately applying stress and reassurance until individuals and groups became so confused that they couldn’t sustain their train of thought — i.e., “emotional chaos.” Rees, upon applying Lewin’s method to soldiers, boasted that he could turn an adult population into the emotional equivalent of little children.
So successful was Rees’ “Tavistock Method,” based upon a combination of Lewin’s and Luria’s work, that at the close of the war, Rockefeller Foundation Medical Director Alan Gregg toured the clinic and asked whether anyone would be willing to apply the Army’s enemy-analysis research in social psychiatry to civilian populations. Tavistock was not only willing, but able, and it received a Rockefeller Foundation grant that redirected its work and changed the clinic’s name in 1947 to Tavistock Institute of Human Relations.
Among the first visible successes attributable to this redirected “preventive psychotherapy” was the rebellion and protests of the 1960s. In an astounding turnabout, children of high-functioning, patriotic, and mostly religious World War II veterans — men and women who had sacrificed life and limb to protect their country and families — were suddenly “letting go” of the values they had been taught to cherish. These youngsters embraced, instead, an essentially foreign counterculture of promiscuity, drugs, virulent anti-Americanism, and irresponsibility. Their parents, for the most part, never knew what hit them. They didn’t realize that their kids were being “turned,” if you will, in school. Anti-authoritarianism was a psychological tool developed by Lewin, and colleagues like Erich Fromm, that undermined parental discipline, applied “social pressure” via songs, surveys, and encounter-style class “discussions.” These were takeoffs on wartime psychological experiments that, used with children, set the kids up to need their peers more than they needed their principles. Suddenly, young people did not want to be seen as mavericks or as sticking up for themselves; they wanted only to “fit in” and “be popular.”
The New York Times article reveals that the “new” $117 million psychological program, similarly aimed at “preventative psychology” for soldiers, will “be introduced at two bases in October and phased in gradually throughout the service, starting in basic training.” Then in a telling statement, the article states that the program “is modeled on techniques that have been tested mainly in middle schools.” (Italics mine.)
In the early 1990s, I exposed one of those programs in Pennsylvania schools under the banner of “assessment testing.” I pointed also to an infamous psychological training ground for teachers called the National Training Laboratory in Bethel, Maine. It was eventually run under the auspices of the nation’s largest teacher union, National Education Association, which lured teachers to undergo (and emulate) encounter-style, high-stress tactics, and take them back into in their classrooms. Teachers taking the course still have to sign a disclaimer prior to enrollment, absolving the NEA of all liability in the event that they experience an emotional breakdown while pursuing their studies at the NTL!
In a major article (Oct. 20, 1993) for Education Week, the primary newspaper of the education establishment, I wrote “It’s About Mental Health, Stupid!” describing the shift toward psychological calisthenics over academics. I explained how both test questions and curricula were increasingly focusing on personal opinions, emotional temperature-taking, “coping skills,” “self-esteem,” and “finding one’s own value system.” I explained how this instant-success concept was, in reality, having a demoralizing effect on the students, causing them to become apathetic with the lack of real, substantive challenges. I noted that teachers were becoming frustrated and emotionally drained from spending their days as babysitters and entertainers and that many were changing professions as a result.
Due to the outpouring of reader response to my article — including one irate bluster from the former head of Pennsylvania’s Division of Testing, who I named as complicit in the psychologizing of educational testing and curriculum — I wrote a follow-up on December 15 of that year, adding (in response to his demand), that I was submitting copies of everything to Education Week to provide “evidence substantiating that psychological curriculums had been devised to improve scores on the psychological tests” out of his office — all passed off to the public as “academics.” The federal monetary connection was often right on the covers.
Thus, it’s no surprise to me that this latest brainstorm in “emotional resiliency training” emanates from the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center.
As Jay Leno has famously quipped, “Gee, who could have seen that coming?”
“Resiliency” is not something learned in a “crash course.” It’s a backdrop for what we used to call “character,” something parents and religious organizations instilled over years. You can have all the “resiliency” classes and role-playing and “conflict resolution” strategies you like, but if it is not in keeping with the underlying personality of the individual, it won’t work in the end. Let’s face it: people are extremely complicated, which is why so many are enticed by psychology as a field of study. Yet, while behavioral “scientists” have concocted hundreds of labels to describe and categorize human behaviors, and devised manipulative strategies, some of them successful, to make folks amenable to suggestion (or “stimuli,” in technical parlance), nobody can quite explain why one person can hold up to years of torture and abuse, while the fellow next to him falls apart upon seeing a dead body in the road. This phenomenon speaks to the existence of “individuality,” or “soul,” which serves as an inborn antidote to manipulation and brainwashing. Mind-altering drugs can break down this inherent check, which is why the military (and terrorist training camps) sometimes resort to them. Drug-induced effects are heightened in children, vulnerable individuals and fanatic groups, who are easier to provoke into acting impulsively (for example, in response to surreptitious or inflammatory marketing campaigns). But the fact remains, most people in the end will “default” to their individual wiring — i.e., to conduct in keeping with their unique personality. This is what psychiatrists like Rees, Lewin, and Luria tried desperately to alter, with disastrous results, and which the U.S. Army, under the pretense of “teaching resiliency” now apparently is attempting to modify again.
As we pass the 60th Anniversary of World War II and the Holocaust — with its time-honored shouts of “never again!” — highlighting the grisly discoveries, critical milestones, battles, armistices and accords, let us also call on any American and British soldiers who may still be alive to attest to their ordeals at Tavistock in the 1940s. Now is the time for them to speak up, as it appears we are about to repeat history.
Beverly K. Eakman is a former educator and retired federal employee who served as speechwriter for the heads of three government agencies and as editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper “Roundup.” Today, she is a Washington, DC-based freelance writer, the author of five books, and a frequent keynote speaker on the lecture circuit. Her most recent book is Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks (Midnight Whistler Publishers www.midnightwhistler.com).
Psychiatry Goes Back to the Future
Friday, August 21, 2008
By Beverly Eakman
New American Magazine
The New York Times’ Benedict Carey reported this week that the Army “plans to require that all 1.1 million of its soldiers take intensive training in emotional resiliency.” The Times says it “learned of the [psychological resiliency training] program from Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman, chairman of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center, who has been consulting with the Pentagon.”
The training is being billed as “the first of its kind in the military,” with a goal to “improve performance in combat and head off the mental health problems, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide,” allegedly affecting “one-fifth of troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.”
First to receive what is essentially psychological training will be “active-duty soldiers, reservists and members of the National Guard,” then it will be “made available to family members and to civilian employees.” The term “made available” implies that something is voluntary, but when government uses it, the word “mandatory” soon follows.
Ah, how quickly people forget the lessons of the past!
First off, this would not be “the first [training] of its kind in the military.”
In 1943, psychiatrist and British military officer, John Rawlings Rees, head of England’s famous Tavistock Clinic, an outgrowth of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, provided such “training” to American and British soldiers, ostensibly to prepare them for combat and capture or interrogation. What he wanted to ascertain, however, was whether, under conditions of induced or controlled stress, groups of normal individuals could be made to behave erratically. In particular, he wanted to find out whether they would “let go” of firmly held beliefs under pressure, including peer pressure, in order to conform to a predetermined set of “popular” beliefs. Like political organizer and activist Saul Alinsky later on, Rees believed that one of man’s worst fears was ridicule and ostracism, so his experiments centered on what we now know as “encounter”-style strategies — high-stress, spirit-breaking, psychological “conditioning.”
Rees also field-tested various techniques of inducing “mass neurosis,” based on methods established by — of all people — German psychologist Kurt Lewin (“thought reform” strategies) and infamous Soviet psychologist Alexander R. Luria (the “artificial disruption of behavior”). Luria’s defining book centered on “the artificial disruption of behavior,” in which he praised Kurt Lewin as being among the first to succeed in provoking “acute disruption of the psyche” by alternately applying stress and reassurance until individuals and groups became so confused that they couldn’t sustain their train of thought — i.e., “emotional chaos.” Rees, upon applying Lewin’s method to soldiers, boasted that he could turn an adult population into the emotional equivalent of little children.
So successful was Rees’ “Tavistock Method,” based upon a combination of Lewin’s and Luria’s work, that at the close of the war, Rockefeller Foundation Medical Director Alan Gregg toured the clinic and asked whether anyone would be willing to apply the Army’s enemy-analysis research in social psychiatry to civilian populations. Tavistock was not only willing, but able, and it received a Rockefeller Foundation grant that redirected its work and changed the clinic’s name in 1947 to Tavistock Institute of Human Relations.
Among the first visible successes attributable to this redirected “preventive psychotherapy” was the rebellion and protests of the 1960s. In an astounding turnabout, children of high-functioning, patriotic, and mostly religious World War II veterans — men and women who had sacrificed life and limb to protect their country and families — were suddenly “letting go” of the values they had been taught to cherish. These youngsters embraced, instead, an essentially foreign counterculture of promiscuity, drugs, virulent anti-Americanism, and irresponsibility. Their parents, for the most part, never knew what hit them. They didn’t realize that their kids were being “turned,” if you will, in school. Anti-authoritarianism was a psychological tool developed by Lewin, and colleagues like Erich Fromm, that undermined parental discipline, applied “social pressure” via songs, surveys, and encounter-style class “discussions.” These were takeoffs on wartime psychological experiments that, used with children, set the kids up to need their peers more than they needed their principles. Suddenly, young people did not want to be seen as mavericks or as sticking up for themselves; they wanted only to “fit in” and “be popular.”
The New York Times article reveals that the “new” $117 million psychological program, similarly aimed at “preventative psychology” for soldiers, will “be introduced at two bases in October and phased in gradually throughout the service, starting in basic training.” Then in a telling statement, the article states that the program “is modeled on techniques that have been tested mainly in middle schools.” (Italics mine.)
In the early 1990s, I exposed one of those programs in Pennsylvania schools under the banner of “assessment testing.” I pointed also to an infamous psychological training ground for teachers called the National Training Laboratory in Bethel, Maine. It was eventually run under the auspices of the nation’s largest teacher union, National Education Association, which lured teachers to undergo (and emulate) encounter-style, high-stress tactics, and take them back into in their classrooms. Teachers taking the course still have to sign a disclaimer prior to enrollment, absolving the NEA of all liability in the event that they experience an emotional breakdown while pursuing their studies at the NTL!
In a major article (Oct. 20, 1993) for Education Week, the primary newspaper of the education establishment, I wrote “It’s About Mental Health, Stupid!” describing the shift toward psychological calisthenics over academics. I explained how both test questions and curricula were increasingly focusing on personal opinions, emotional temperature-taking, “coping skills,” “self-esteem,” and “finding one’s own value system.” I explained how this instant-success concept was, in reality, having a demoralizing effect on the students, causing them to become apathetic with the lack of real, substantive challenges. I noted that teachers were becoming frustrated and emotionally drained from spending their days as babysitters and entertainers and that many were changing professions as a result.
Due to the outpouring of reader response to my article — including one irate bluster from the former head of Pennsylvania’s Division of Testing, who I named as complicit in the psychologizing of educational testing and curriculum — I wrote a follow-up on December 15 of that year, adding (in response to his demand), that I was submitting copies of everything to Education Week to provide “evidence substantiating that psychological curriculums had been devised to improve scores on the psychological tests” out of his office — all passed off to the public as “academics.” The federal monetary connection was often right on the covers.
Thus, it’s no surprise to me that this latest brainstorm in “emotional resiliency training” emanates from the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center.
As Jay Leno has famously quipped, “Gee, who could have seen that coming?”
“Resiliency” is not something learned in a “crash course.” It’s a backdrop for what we used to call “character,” something parents and religious organizations instilled over years. You can have all the “resiliency” classes and role-playing and “conflict resolution” strategies you like, but if it is not in keeping with the underlying personality of the individual, it won’t work in the end. Let’s face it: people are extremely complicated, which is why so many are enticed by psychology as a field of study. Yet, while behavioral “scientists” have concocted hundreds of labels to describe and categorize human behaviors, and devised manipulative strategies, some of them successful, to make folks amenable to suggestion (or “stimuli,” in technical parlance), nobody can quite explain why one person can hold up to years of torture and abuse, while the fellow next to him falls apart upon seeing a dead body in the road. This phenomenon speaks to the existence of “individuality,” or “soul,” which serves as an inborn antidote to manipulation and brainwashing. Mind-altering drugs can break down this inherent check, which is why the military (and terrorist training camps) sometimes resort to them. Drug-induced effects are heightened in children, vulnerable individuals and fanatic groups, who are easier to provoke into acting impulsively (for example, in response to surreptitious or inflammatory marketing campaigns). But the fact remains, most people in the end will “default” to their individual wiring — i.e., to conduct in keeping with their unique personality. This is what psychiatrists like Rees, Lewin, and Luria tried desperately to alter, with disastrous results, and which the U.S. Army, under the pretense of “teaching resiliency” now apparently is attempting to modify again.
As we pass the 60th Anniversary of World War II and the Holocaust — with its time-honored shouts of “never again!” — highlighting the grisly discoveries, critical milestones, battles, armistices and accords, let us also call on any American and British soldiers who may still be alive to attest to their ordeals at Tavistock in the 1940s. Now is the time for them to speak up, as it appears we are about to repeat history.
Beverly K. Eakman is a former educator and retired federal employee who served as speechwriter for the heads of three government agencies and as editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper “Roundup.” Today, she is a Washington, DC-based freelance writer, the author of five books, and a frequent keynote speaker on the lecture circuit. Her most recent book is Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks (Midnight Whistler Publishers www.midnightwhistler.com).
Sunday, August 23, 2009
We the people are coming!
While I do not want to turn this into a political statement, after all, the business of Midnight Whistler is publishing, I feel that given the state of the economy today, someone has to speak out. Here is a letter that says it as well or better than I could, so I am reprinting it here.
Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming.
The following letter, read on Glenn Beck's show, is rapidly circulating around the country. Americans everywhere identify with this 53-year-old woman. She has given us a voice.
GLENN BECK: I got a letter from a woman in Arizona. She writes an open letter to our nation's leadership:
I'm a home grown American citizen, 53, registered Democrat all my life. Before the last presidential election I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me.
Now I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. There must be someone.
Please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me that you are there and that you're willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now. You might ask yourself what my views and issues are that I would horribly feel so disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut job am I? Will you please tell me?
Well, these are briefly my views and issues for which I seek representation:
One, illegal immigration. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution.
P.S., I'm not a racist. This isn't to be confused with legal immigration.
Two, the TARP bill, I want it repealed and I want no further funding supplied to it. We told you no, but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze, repeal.
Three: Czars, I want the circumvention of our checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the czars. No more czars. Government officials answer to the process, not to the president. Stop trampling on our Constitution and honor it.
Four, cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over.
There is more to say.
Five, universal healthcare. I will not be rushed into another expensive decision. Don't you dare try to pass this in the middle of the night and then go on break. Slow down!
Six, growing government control. I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. Shrink it down. Mind your own business. You have enough to take care of with your real obligations. Why don't you start there.
Seven, ACORN. I do not want ACORN and its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them every time on every real estate deal that closes. Stop the funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audits and investigations.
I do not trust them with taking the census over with our taxpayer money. I don't trust them with our taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before taxpayers get any more involved with them. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, hello. Stop protecting your political buddies. You work for us, the people. Investigate.
Eight, redistribution of wealth. No, no, no. I work for my money. It is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs. That is the only redistribution of wealth that I will support. I never got a job from a poor person. Why do you want me to hate my employers? Why -- what do you have against shareholders making a profit?
Nine, charitable contributions. Although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities, where we know our needs best and can use our local talent and our local resources. Butt out, please. We want to do it ourselves.
Ten, corporate bailouts. Knock it off. Sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we'll be better off just getting into it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful. Have you ever ripped off a Band-Aid? We will pull together.
Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us the chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.
Eleven, transparency and accountability. How about it? No, really, how about it? Let's have it. Let's say we give the buzzwords a rest and have some straight honest talk. Please try -- please stop manipulating and trying to appease me with clever wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around and meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me.
Twelve, unprecedented quick spending. Stop it now. Take a breath. Listen to the people. Let's just slow down and get some input from some non-politicians on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed reading our bills into law.
I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant or a violent person. I am a parent and a grandparent. I work. I'm busy. I am busy, and I am tired.
I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawn, wash our cars on the weekends and be responsible contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same all while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.
I entrusted you with upholding the Constitution. I believed in the checks and balances to keep from getting far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think I find humor in the hiring of a speed reader to unintelligently ramble all through a bill that you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not. It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face.
I am not laughing at your arrogance. Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it but you should expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children. We did not want the TARP bill. We said no. We would repeal it if we could. I am sure that we still cannot. There is such urgency and recklessness in all of the recent spending.
From my perspective, it seems that all of you have gone insane.
I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back. You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess that you are making.
We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on you to bring our concerns to Washington.
Our president often knows all the right buzzword is unsustainable. Well, no kidding. How many tens of thousands of dollars did the focus group cost to come up with that word? We don't want your overpriced words. Stop treating us like we're morons.
We want all of you to stop focusing on your reelection and do the job we want done, not the job you want done or the job your party wants done. You work for us and at this rate I guarantee you not for long because we are coming. We will be heard and we will be represented. You think we're so busy with our lives that we will never come for you?
We are the formerly silent majority, all of us who quietly work, pay taxes, obey the law, vote, save money, keep our noses to the grindstone and we are now looking up at you. You have awakened us, the patriotic spirit so strong and so powerful that it had been sleeping too long. You have pushed us too far. Our numbers are great. They may surprise you.
For every one of us who will be there, there will be hundreds more that could not come. Unlike you, we have their trust. We will represent them honestly, rest assured. They will be at the polls on voting day to usher you out of office. We have canceled vacations. We will use our last few dollars saved. We will find the representation among us and a grassroots campaign will flourish.
We didn't ask for this fight. But the gloves are coming off. We do not come in violence, but we are angry. You will represent us or you will be replaced with someone who will. There are candidates among us when he will rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you have made of our constitution.
Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian. Understand this. We don't care. Political parties are meaningless to us. Patriotic Americans are willing to do right by us and our Constitution and that is all that matters to us now. We are going to fire all of you who abuse power and seek more. It is not your power. It is ours and we want it back. We entrusted you with it and you abused it.
You are dishonorable. You are dishonest. As Americans we are ashamed of you. You have brought shame to us. If you are not representing the wants and needs of your constituency loudly and consistently, in spite of the objections of your party, you will be fired.
Did you hear? We no longer care about your political parties. You need to be loyal to us, not to them. Because we will get you fired and they will not save you. If you do or can represent me, my issues, my views, please stand up. Make your identity known. You need to make some noise about it. Speak up. I need to know who you are.
If you do not speak up, you will be herded out with the rest of the sheep and we will replace the whole damn congress if need be one by one. We are coming. Are we coming for you? Who do you represent? What do you represent?
Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming.
H/T Shelly
Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming.
The following letter, read on Glenn Beck's show, is rapidly circulating around the country. Americans everywhere identify with this 53-year-old woman. She has given us a voice.
GLENN BECK: I got a letter from a woman in Arizona. She writes an open letter to our nation's leadership:
I'm a home grown American citizen, 53, registered Democrat all my life. Before the last presidential election I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me.
Now I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. There must be someone.
Please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me that you are there and that you're willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now. You might ask yourself what my views and issues are that I would horribly feel so disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut job am I? Will you please tell me?
Well, these are briefly my views and issues for which I seek representation:
One, illegal immigration. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution.
P.S., I'm not a racist. This isn't to be confused with legal immigration.
Two, the TARP bill, I want it repealed and I want no further funding supplied to it. We told you no, but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze, repeal.
Three: Czars, I want the circumvention of our checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the czars. No more czars. Government officials answer to the process, not to the president. Stop trampling on our Constitution and honor it.
Four, cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over.
There is more to say.
Five, universal healthcare. I will not be rushed into another expensive decision. Don't you dare try to pass this in the middle of the night and then go on break. Slow down!
Six, growing government control. I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. Shrink it down. Mind your own business. You have enough to take care of with your real obligations. Why don't you start there.
Seven, ACORN. I do not want ACORN and its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them every time on every real estate deal that closes. Stop the funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audits and investigations.
I do not trust them with taking the census over with our taxpayer money. I don't trust them with our taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before taxpayers get any more involved with them. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, hello. Stop protecting your political buddies. You work for us, the people. Investigate.
Eight, redistribution of wealth. No, no, no. I work for my money. It is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs. That is the only redistribution of wealth that I will support. I never got a job from a poor person. Why do you want me to hate my employers? Why -- what do you have against shareholders making a profit?
Nine, charitable contributions. Although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities, where we know our needs best and can use our local talent and our local resources. Butt out, please. We want to do it ourselves.
Ten, corporate bailouts. Knock it off. Sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we'll be better off just getting into it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful. Have you ever ripped off a Band-Aid? We will pull together.
Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us the chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.
Eleven, transparency and accountability. How about it? No, really, how about it? Let's have it. Let's say we give the buzzwords a rest and have some straight honest talk. Please try -- please stop manipulating and trying to appease me with clever wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around and meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me.
Twelve, unprecedented quick spending. Stop it now. Take a breath. Listen to the people. Let's just slow down and get some input from some non-politicians on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed reading our bills into law.
I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant or a violent person. I am a parent and a grandparent. I work. I'm busy. I am busy, and I am tired.
I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawn, wash our cars on the weekends and be responsible contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same all while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.
I entrusted you with upholding the Constitution. I believed in the checks and balances to keep from getting far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think I find humor in the hiring of a speed reader to unintelligently ramble all through a bill that you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not. It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face.
I am not laughing at your arrogance. Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it but you should expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children. We did not want the TARP bill. We said no. We would repeal it if we could. I am sure that we still cannot. There is such urgency and recklessness in all of the recent spending.
From my perspective, it seems that all of you have gone insane.
I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back. You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess that you are making.
We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on you to bring our concerns to Washington.
Our president often knows all the right buzzword is unsustainable. Well, no kidding. How many tens of thousands of dollars did the focus group cost to come up with that word? We don't want your overpriced words. Stop treating us like we're morons.
We want all of you to stop focusing on your reelection and do the job we want done, not the job you want done or the job your party wants done. You work for us and at this rate I guarantee you not for long because we are coming. We will be heard and we will be represented. You think we're so busy with our lives that we will never come for you?
We are the formerly silent majority, all of us who quietly work, pay taxes, obey the law, vote, save money, keep our noses to the grindstone and we are now looking up at you. You have awakened us, the patriotic spirit so strong and so powerful that it had been sleeping too long. You have pushed us too far. Our numbers are great. They may surprise you.
For every one of us who will be there, there will be hundreds more that could not come. Unlike you, we have their trust. We will represent them honestly, rest assured. They will be at the polls on voting day to usher you out of office. We have canceled vacations. We will use our last few dollars saved. We will find the representation among us and a grassroots campaign will flourish.
We didn't ask for this fight. But the gloves are coming off. We do not come in violence, but we are angry. You will represent us or you will be replaced with someone who will. There are candidates among us when he will rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you have made of our constitution.
Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian. Understand this. We don't care. Political parties are meaningless to us. Patriotic Americans are willing to do right by us and our Constitution and that is all that matters to us now. We are going to fire all of you who abuse power and seek more. It is not your power. It is ours and we want it back. We entrusted you with it and you abused it.
You are dishonorable. You are dishonest. As Americans we are ashamed of you. You have brought shame to us. If you are not representing the wants and needs of your constituency loudly and consistently, in spite of the objections of your party, you will be fired.
Did you hear? We no longer care about your political parties. You need to be loyal to us, not to them. Because we will get you fired and they will not save you. If you do or can represent me, my issues, my views, please stand up. Make your identity known. You need to make some noise about it. Speak up. I need to know who you are.
If you do not speak up, you will be herded out with the rest of the sheep and we will replace the whole damn congress if need be one by one. We are coming. Are we coming for you? Who do you represent? What do you represent?
Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming.
H/T Shelly
Friday, August 7, 2009
WALKING TARGETS makes a comeback
The economy. All you have to say is those two words to send shivers up the spine of most folks. Jobs have been lost, companies have gone under and predictions made in my novel of last year, DEADLY RESEARCH, are coming true. I'm afraid to write my next novel. So with money tight and attention elsewhere, it looked like WALKING TARGETS, B. K. Eakman's latest book, would not be selling much. Education, after all, is not on anyone's mind - unless you're a parent, or a teacher, or a home-schooler, or a policy maker, then your attention is firmly on education.
WALKING TARGETS, How Our Psychologized Classrooms are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks, is also coming true with a vengeance. Not that we wanted it to. But with two-income families becoming three-income families, which still doesn't pay the bills, the chapter on "Outsourcing Parenthood" is oddly foreboding.
Implant IDs are in the news again and being touted as the latest miracle to handle your missing pet, child, aging parent or soldier in the field. Bev's article, "Implanted IDs: Click Here" brings that into focus.
So WALKING TARGETS is still moving out to people who want a viewpoint on what's happening. And Beverly Eakman is still a trustworthy predictor of things to come. You can view the book and order it at http://www.midnightwhistler.com.
The short story blog is at http://jonbatson.blogspot.com
Jon
WALKING TARGETS, How Our Psychologized Classrooms are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks, is also coming true with a vengeance. Not that we wanted it to. But with two-income families becoming three-income families, which still doesn't pay the bills, the chapter on "Outsourcing Parenthood" is oddly foreboding.
Implant IDs are in the news again and being touted as the latest miracle to handle your missing pet, child, aging parent or soldier in the field. Bev's article, "Implanted IDs: Click Here" brings that into focus.
So WALKING TARGETS is still moving out to people who want a viewpoint on what's happening. And Beverly Eakman is still a trustworthy predictor of things to come. You can view the book and order it at http://www.midnightwhistler.com.
The short story blog is at http://jonbatson.blogspot.com
Jon
Scandal at Shady Point
From the collection: Murder at Thompson Bog
Episode 2
Randy Turner had been in love with Dana since he first saw her in history class. When his folks moved to the city, he changed schools and Dana took up with Mike. Randy hadn't seen her since. Now he was lying beside her all sweaty and warm. He felt as if he had completed something, like he could strike an item off of a list and move on with his life, now that it was complete. He had wanted to bed her since junior year; now he had.
But the front door opening made them both sit up. They didn't look at each other, they jumped up in different directions. Randy scooped up his tighty-whities from the floor and put them on, then his shirt. He looked for his jeans, then remembered he had left them in the living room. He picked up his boots and one sock. The other one wasn't within his field of vision and he wasn't going to waste valuable time looking.
Dana had thrown on her cleaning shift and ran out to cut off her husband, closing the bedroom door behind her.
“You're all sweaty and I'm in the middle of cleaning our bathroom.” Dana said, pushing him away before he could smell another man's cologne on her. “Go on into the other shower and get cleaned up before you even try to kiss me.”
When the door closed and the shower could be heard running, Randy Turner came out of the bedroom with his boots in his hand. He grabbed the jeans from the back of the couch and pulled them on, trying not to make a noise or fall down. He barely got them zipped when Dana motioned to him from the front door.
“Go!” she whispered, and she pushed him out, closing the door behind him.
Randy Turner wasted no time running, barefoot and holding his boots, to his dusty gray Honda up on the road. He jumped in, pulled the visor down and caught his keys in his right hand. Randy pulled out into the lane, thankful that it was a quiet Saturday afternoon and not a busy weekday. He was hoping none of the neighbors had seen him leave. He wondered if anyone had witnessed their innocent meeting at the book store or the way they warmed up to each other at the coffee shop next door. He hoped none of Mike's friends observed one thing leading to another until they fell into bed, heaving and sweating, entwined like grapevines.
Randy Turner pulled the up to the curb in front of his small townhouse, turned off the engine and sat, staring out of the windshield. Once inside the house, he threw down his boots, flopped on the couch and reflected on the mess he had made of things. “But at least,” he thought, “I got out of there without getting caught.”
Still it didn't feel right. He didn't feel right. Even his pants didn't feel right. There was a lump in his jeans that didn't make sense. He felt the front pocket and found a set of keys ― truck keys, and a house key. Randy could feel the blood drain from his face. These were not his jeans!
When Mike came in, he had in a long, dusty case from the garage. In the case was a rifle. He was one of the few residents of Shady Point who did not have a firearm handy, but that changed now, he had his old rifle in the house. He opened a box of .22 shells, pulled the bolt, loaded a shell into the chamber and closed the bolt. Dana heard the sound. She shuddered to hear it.
“Sooner or later,” he said, calmly to the bedroom door, “you will tell me who he is. Then I'll kill him.”
The locksmith charged triple to come out on a Sunday. Mike didn't care.
“Double-key, I want to be able to lock the door from both sides,” he said.
“Sure, no problem,” replied the locksmith.
Mike sat in the large, central living room, with a glass of whiskey in his hand, keeping an eye on every door and window, in case the culprit should come back to speak to his wife. He doubted the man would show up at the door to return his wallet and keys.
“I'm sorry,” Mike imagined him saying, “I got your jeans by mistake when I was stumbling over myself getting out of your house after banging your wife.” Yeah, Mike could just imagine that apology going down.
“All done,” said the locksmith.
Mike stood by the door watching the locksmith drive away. He closed the door and locked it with his new key. “No one's getting in – or out – of this house now,” he thought.
“Harry,” Mike told his boss on Monday morning, “I'm taking some time. I've got leave coming, so I'm taking it.”
“Everything OK, Mike? Is Dana OK?”
“I'll get back to you on that.”
“Well if there's anything I can do...”
“Thanks, Harry. I'll let you know.”
Mike hung up the phone. The call was a courtesy to Harry; Mike didn't care about the job – not anymore. He still had on the same khaki pants and shirt. He had slept on the couch in them. He nibbled at snacks, but wasn't hungry. He hadn't drunk much of the whiskey, most of it was left. He wasn't drowning his sorrow, he was numb to it.
If he had thought about it, he would have wondered if Dana was hungry, but he didn't think about it. He didn't think about her at all.
At nine, he showered in the guest bathroom. He heard Dana moving about the house. When he came out, he saw the bedroom door open; Dana was not in sight. Mike went into the bedroom, dressed in clean slacks and a shirt and left for the bank; without his wallet, there were arrangements to make.
Upon his return, Mike found Sheriff Willis waiting for him outside the house. Sheriff Willis had caught Mike and Dana necking after the prom a few years back, warned Mike not to drive drunk at his bachelor party and later, attended their wedding in his only fitting suit. Now he was at their door in his uniform.
“Dana tells me you've locked her in,” said Sheriff Willis.
“I locked the door to keep strangers out. If she was inside when I did it, then there you are.”
Mike took out his house key and went to the front door. He opened it to find Dana standing there in blue jeans, cloth shoes and a large, cable-knit sweater. She had been crying. She wore no makeup and her hair was pulled back into a hasty pony-tail. She looked terrified.
Sheriff Willis stepped through the door and looked from Mike to Dana.
“Doors open, Dana,” said Mike. “If you want to leave, no one's stopping you. There is one thing I'd like to know: the name of your lover.”
Dana turned pale as fear overcame embarrassment. Sheriff Willis looked from her to Mike, sizing up what he had to deal with. Dana ran past them out of the door, up the drive and onto the road.
“Let me talk with her. Maybe I can help you sort this out,” said Willis.
“If she won't tell me, I'll find out sooner or later,” said Mike, throwing the keys on the counter. “Until then, she can stay out there for all I care.”
“Mike, don't do anything hasty. Let this simmer some, you and Dana have a good thing going. Don't let one stupid mistake screw it up.”
Mike just looked at the sheriff with lowered eyes, tight lips and clenched fists. It was plain that the conversation was over.
All through the night, Mike's demons danced through his head, keeping him only half asleep. His jeans, his house, his wife; his anger. The man had taken his wallet and keys. He could steal his truck anytime, but he couldn't get into the house, not anymore. He could still get into his wife, though, wherever she was. So what! He didn't care anymore. He was cold and numb. Priorities had shifted.
Episode 2
Randy Turner had been in love with Dana since he first saw her in history class. When his folks moved to the city, he changed schools and Dana took up with Mike. Randy hadn't seen her since. Now he was lying beside her all sweaty and warm. He felt as if he had completed something, like he could strike an item off of a list and move on with his life, now that it was complete. He had wanted to bed her since junior year; now he had.
But the front door opening made them both sit up. They didn't look at each other, they jumped up in different directions. Randy scooped up his tighty-whities from the floor and put them on, then his shirt. He looked for his jeans, then remembered he had left them in the living room. He picked up his boots and one sock. The other one wasn't within his field of vision and he wasn't going to waste valuable time looking.
Dana had thrown on her cleaning shift and ran out to cut off her husband, closing the bedroom door behind her.
“You're all sweaty and I'm in the middle of cleaning our bathroom.” Dana said, pushing him away before he could smell another man's cologne on her. “Go on into the other shower and get cleaned up before you even try to kiss me.”
When the door closed and the shower could be heard running, Randy Turner came out of the bedroom with his boots in his hand. He grabbed the jeans from the back of the couch and pulled them on, trying not to make a noise or fall down. He barely got them zipped when Dana motioned to him from the front door.
“Go!” she whispered, and she pushed him out, closing the door behind him.
Randy Turner wasted no time running, barefoot and holding his boots, to his dusty gray Honda up on the road. He jumped in, pulled the visor down and caught his keys in his right hand. Randy pulled out into the lane, thankful that it was a quiet Saturday afternoon and not a busy weekday. He was hoping none of the neighbors had seen him leave. He wondered if anyone had witnessed their innocent meeting at the book store or the way they warmed up to each other at the coffee shop next door. He hoped none of Mike's friends observed one thing leading to another until they fell into bed, heaving and sweating, entwined like grapevines.
Randy Turner pulled the up to the curb in front of his small townhouse, turned off the engine and sat, staring out of the windshield. Once inside the house, he threw down his boots, flopped on the couch and reflected on the mess he had made of things. “But at least,” he thought, “I got out of there without getting caught.”
Still it didn't feel right. He didn't feel right. Even his pants didn't feel right. There was a lump in his jeans that didn't make sense. He felt the front pocket and found a set of keys ― truck keys, and a house key. Randy could feel the blood drain from his face. These were not his jeans!
When Mike came in, he had in a long, dusty case from the garage. In the case was a rifle. He was one of the few residents of Shady Point who did not have a firearm handy, but that changed now, he had his old rifle in the house. He opened a box of .22 shells, pulled the bolt, loaded a shell into the chamber and closed the bolt. Dana heard the sound. She shuddered to hear it.
“Sooner or later,” he said, calmly to the bedroom door, “you will tell me who he is. Then I'll kill him.”
The locksmith charged triple to come out on a Sunday. Mike didn't care.
“Double-key, I want to be able to lock the door from both sides,” he said.
“Sure, no problem,” replied the locksmith.
Mike sat in the large, central living room, with a glass of whiskey in his hand, keeping an eye on every door and window, in case the culprit should come back to speak to his wife. He doubted the man would show up at the door to return his wallet and keys.
“I'm sorry,” Mike imagined him saying, “I got your jeans by mistake when I was stumbling over myself getting out of your house after banging your wife.” Yeah, Mike could just imagine that apology going down.
“All done,” said the locksmith.
Mike stood by the door watching the locksmith drive away. He closed the door and locked it with his new key. “No one's getting in – or out – of this house now,” he thought.
“Harry,” Mike told his boss on Monday morning, “I'm taking some time. I've got leave coming, so I'm taking it.”
“Everything OK, Mike? Is Dana OK?”
“I'll get back to you on that.”
“Well if there's anything I can do...”
“Thanks, Harry. I'll let you know.”
Mike hung up the phone. The call was a courtesy to Harry; Mike didn't care about the job – not anymore. He still had on the same khaki pants and shirt. He had slept on the couch in them. He nibbled at snacks, but wasn't hungry. He hadn't drunk much of the whiskey, most of it was left. He wasn't drowning his sorrow, he was numb to it.
If he had thought about it, he would have wondered if Dana was hungry, but he didn't think about it. He didn't think about her at all.
At nine, he showered in the guest bathroom. He heard Dana moving about the house. When he came out, he saw the bedroom door open; Dana was not in sight. Mike went into the bedroom, dressed in clean slacks and a shirt and left for the bank; without his wallet, there were arrangements to make.
Upon his return, Mike found Sheriff Willis waiting for him outside the house. Sheriff Willis had caught Mike and Dana necking after the prom a few years back, warned Mike not to drive drunk at his bachelor party and later, attended their wedding in his only fitting suit. Now he was at their door in his uniform.
“Dana tells me you've locked her in,” said Sheriff Willis.
“I locked the door to keep strangers out. If she was inside when I did it, then there you are.”
Mike took out his house key and went to the front door. He opened it to find Dana standing there in blue jeans, cloth shoes and a large, cable-knit sweater. She had been crying. She wore no makeup and her hair was pulled back into a hasty pony-tail. She looked terrified.
Sheriff Willis stepped through the door and looked from Mike to Dana.
“Doors open, Dana,” said Mike. “If you want to leave, no one's stopping you. There is one thing I'd like to know: the name of your lover.”
Dana turned pale as fear overcame embarrassment. Sheriff Willis looked from her to Mike, sizing up what he had to deal with. Dana ran past them out of the door, up the drive and onto the road.
“Let me talk with her. Maybe I can help you sort this out,” said Willis.
“If she won't tell me, I'll find out sooner or later,” said Mike, throwing the keys on the counter. “Until then, she can stay out there for all I care.”
“Mike, don't do anything hasty. Let this simmer some, you and Dana have a good thing going. Don't let one stupid mistake screw it up.”
Mike just looked at the sheriff with lowered eyes, tight lips and clenched fists. It was plain that the conversation was over.
All through the night, Mike's demons danced through his head, keeping him only half asleep. His jeans, his house, his wife; his anger. The man had taken his wallet and keys. He could steal his truck anytime, but he couldn't get into the house, not anymore. He could still get into his wife, though, wherever she was. So what! He didn't care anymore. He was cold and numb. Priorities had shifted.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Health Care – Yes! Mental Parity – No!
Dear Mr. President,
What has not been mentioned in the debates about mental health, because there are those who don't want it mentioned for fear that we will realize that the wool is being pulled over our eyes, is Mental Health Parity. MHP (ask your doctor if heavy drugs are right for you) is the mistaken belief that a medical doctor and a psychiatrist are the same, that a broken leg and a feeling of depression are equal.
The medical health world has tests and cures. You check this, you see that, you drink this bottle, you're cured. The mental health world has no tests; there are only hunches, best guesses and things that certain chosen ones agree should be what a certain thing should be called. The names change. Schizophrenia is not Bi-Polar, but not quite. There are invented names, RLS – Restless Leg Syndrome, PPD, Postpartum Depression – which, incidentally, can be handled hundreds of ways which involve no drugs. I could go on, but you are the President and your time is valuable.
Two outlandish lies become glaringly obvious if you look closely, which is why mentioning it in the debates is frowned upon. One is that the whole end product of the mental health industry is to sell drugs, not to heal the sick. The end game is profit, not wellness. Water is more effective than Prozac, with no side effects. Chocolate is a better treatment for depression than any drug on the market. The second lie is that anything gets cured. As there are no tests, there is no test for a patient being well. When a student goes crazy from his medication and shoots his classroom pals, the doctors say he needed more medication or different medication, or he went off his medication – meaning you should take it for the rest of your life. There are plans in place to screen every new mother, every student, and to put those who have a disorder on drugs. There's a defiant disorder, like when your teen doesn't want to clean her room – if you want to sell drugs, everything's a disorder. The Big Pharma companies want every man, woman and child, even your pet, on drugs for life – at seven times the cost of any other country.
Psychiatrists admit that there is no cure and no way to test for a cure, just as there is no way to test for the disorder. It's all opinion and “what do we have to do to sell drugs?” So to place “Mental Health” on an equal par with “Physical Health” is like comparing apples and albatrosses. The drug companies and those who make a fortune dispensing their poisons are hoping it will pass with parity because then they can insist that people see a shrink and take the drugs. It will then be law that they have to take the drugs, that the average person will have to pay for the psychiatric research to find new and more serious mental disorders for which they just found the “cure” in the form of a new pill – that you can get for only a small king's ransom.
In short, Health Plan? Yes! Mental Health Parity – No! Mental health, of which the great proliferation of drug ads on television is just a symptom, is one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on this country. If you give it legitimacy, you also give a death sentence for the sanity of this country.
Jon Batson
Raleigh, NC
What has not been mentioned in the debates about mental health, because there are those who don't want it mentioned for fear that we will realize that the wool is being pulled over our eyes, is Mental Health Parity. MHP (ask your doctor if heavy drugs are right for you) is the mistaken belief that a medical doctor and a psychiatrist are the same, that a broken leg and a feeling of depression are equal.
The medical health world has tests and cures. You check this, you see that, you drink this bottle, you're cured. The mental health world has no tests; there are only hunches, best guesses and things that certain chosen ones agree should be what a certain thing should be called. The names change. Schizophrenia is not Bi-Polar, but not quite. There are invented names, RLS – Restless Leg Syndrome, PPD, Postpartum Depression – which, incidentally, can be handled hundreds of ways which involve no drugs. I could go on, but you are the President and your time is valuable.
Two outlandish lies become glaringly obvious if you look closely, which is why mentioning it in the debates is frowned upon. One is that the whole end product of the mental health industry is to sell drugs, not to heal the sick. The end game is profit, not wellness. Water is more effective than Prozac, with no side effects. Chocolate is a better treatment for depression than any drug on the market. The second lie is that anything gets cured. As there are no tests, there is no test for a patient being well. When a student goes crazy from his medication and shoots his classroom pals, the doctors say he needed more medication or different medication, or he went off his medication – meaning you should take it for the rest of your life. There are plans in place to screen every new mother, every student, and to put those who have a disorder on drugs. There's a defiant disorder, like when your teen doesn't want to clean her room – if you want to sell drugs, everything's a disorder. The Big Pharma companies want every man, woman and child, even your pet, on drugs for life – at seven times the cost of any other country.
Psychiatrists admit that there is no cure and no way to test for a cure, just as there is no way to test for the disorder. It's all opinion and “what do we have to do to sell drugs?” So to place “Mental Health” on an equal par with “Physical Health” is like comparing apples and albatrosses. The drug companies and those who make a fortune dispensing their poisons are hoping it will pass with parity because then they can insist that people see a shrink and take the drugs. It will then be law that they have to take the drugs, that the average person will have to pay for the psychiatric research to find new and more serious mental disorders for which they just found the “cure” in the form of a new pill – that you can get for only a small king's ransom.
In short, Health Plan? Yes! Mental Health Parity – No! Mental health, of which the great proliferation of drug ads on television is just a symptom, is one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on this country. If you give it legitimacy, you also give a death sentence for the sanity of this country.
Jon Batson
Raleigh, NC
I hope he fails – and by 'he' I mean Rush.
I voted for the other guy. But say what you will, after the dust had settled, the other guy is not in the oval office. The guy who is now running things is my president and I will stand behind him. While I do not agree with everything he is doing and has done, I also don't have all the facts, so it's a moot point and not one I'm going to debate here. No, here my only point is that Rush Limbaugh said on radio for all to hear, “I hope he fails!” Well, I don't. For that and many other thoughtless statements, I hope Rush fails.
If President Obama fails, the implications will resound for decades to come, but it will also resound today for you and for me. If he fails, the economy fails, the major companies fail and an awful lot of minor companies will fail. I have held opinions that bailing out people who already get billion dollar bonuses is wrong. But I hope he proves me wrong. I hope he succeeds and the economy recovers. I hope we enter into an era of prosperity hitherto unknown and that everyone who, like me, voted for the other guy says to himself, “Boy! Was I wrong! The guy succeeded!”
So you might be saying that I sound like one of those “My president, right or wrong” guys. Perhaps that's what I've become. I want his decisions, his programs, his leadership to be spot-on the money each and every time. Sure, I've heard all the nay-sayers before and after the election, all the junk shooting around the Internet, all the “proof-positive” about this, that and the other – and if he screws up, there will be a lot of very smug people folding their arms and saying that they told us so. I hope they never get the chance. For one thing, I hate that! But I hope they never get the chance because I hope he doesn't screw up, I hope the economy recovers and we bring the troops home victorious and that the nations of the world will come to love us and a hundred other things that were impossible but a few months ago.
Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I want our President to succeed beyond our wildest expectations. May healthcare be easy, cheap and fun, yet rewarding for the practitioners. May the economy spur a new era of growth and well-being for all, with jobs and opportunities a-plenty. May art and music flourish, may other nations see the goodness in us and seek to emulate us, creating a world-wide prosperity boom. May there be peace on Earth, without everyone dying in order to achieve it. I hope he succeeds.
If President Obama fails, the implications will resound for decades to come, but it will also resound today for you and for me. If he fails, the economy fails, the major companies fail and an awful lot of minor companies will fail. I have held opinions that bailing out people who already get billion dollar bonuses is wrong. But I hope he proves me wrong. I hope he succeeds and the economy recovers. I hope we enter into an era of prosperity hitherto unknown and that everyone who, like me, voted for the other guy says to himself, “Boy! Was I wrong! The guy succeeded!”
So you might be saying that I sound like one of those “My president, right or wrong” guys. Perhaps that's what I've become. I want his decisions, his programs, his leadership to be spot-on the money each and every time. Sure, I've heard all the nay-sayers before and after the election, all the junk shooting around the Internet, all the “proof-positive” about this, that and the other – and if he screws up, there will be a lot of very smug people folding their arms and saying that they told us so. I hope they never get the chance. For one thing, I hate that! But I hope they never get the chance because I hope he doesn't screw up, I hope the economy recovers and we bring the troops home victorious and that the nations of the world will come to love us and a hundred other things that were impossible but a few months ago.
Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I want our President to succeed beyond our wildest expectations. May healthcare be easy, cheap and fun, yet rewarding for the practitioners. May the economy spur a new era of growth and well-being for all, with jobs and opportunities a-plenty. May art and music flourish, may other nations see the goodness in us and seek to emulate us, creating a world-wide prosperity boom. May there be peace on Earth, without everyone dying in order to achieve it. I hope he succeeds.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
The Short Story Episodes Continue
It's nearly August and the long, hot summer continues. The economy is on everyone's mind. Some pundits say the recession is over, but we're not sure if we can survive the recovery.
Midnight Whistler Publishing marches on, and in future weeks will endeavor to bring you hopeful words from author Beverly Eakman and founder, Jon Batson - being me.
For now, let me say that the only thing you can really count on is you and your own ability to make things go right in spite of everything.
The short stories will continue, but not here. For that, please go to my personal blog, http://jonbatson.blogspot.com. The first episode of the next story, Scandal at Shady Point, is up today.
Midnight Whistler Publishing marches on, and in future weeks will endeavor to bring you hopeful words from author Beverly Eakman and founder, Jon Batson - being me.
For now, let me say that the only thing you can really count on is you and your own ability to make things go right in spite of everything.
The short stories will continue, but not here. For that, please go to my personal blog, http://jonbatson.blogspot.com. The first episode of the next story, Scandal at Shady Point, is up today.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Luna Nightmares
From the collection: Murder at Thompson Bog
Episode 7
At the arraignment, I plead guilty. A murmur was heard behind me. I didn't turn. I knew who was there. Alice was there. The kids were not. They were with their grandmother, Ted's mom, who was home crying.
The judge struck his gavel and the room got quiet. He spoke. I didn't hear it. I'm sure he said something, but I have no idea what he actually said. I knew more or less what he said, that I would be going away for 25 years to life for premeditated murder. Somehow, the fact that I had lost everything didn't hit me, either that or I just didn't care. I had lost most of it anyway.
The guard lead me from the table to the door off to one side. I couldn't help a last glance over my shoulder at Alice, standing to leave the courtroom. Her face was contorted with pain and she cried out to me, “Why?” The guard tugged at my arm and Alice turned to go through the large double doors. I replied, though she could not hear me, “Because I love you and the kids.”
The sign on the wall by the dispensary says, “Now accepting test subjects for a new anti-depressant, Lunaxypryn. Sign up at the dispensary.”
“Unless I'm mistaken, that's pure Luna-C,” I mutter.
The sign-up sheet is on the table, a pen on a chain next to it. I pick up the pen. Before I can write, a hand reaches out and takes mine. It's an old man, short with wire glasses. His prison grays are starched stiff and look new, though I know he has been there a long time.
“They'll make you sign a waver. Last two tests they did every subject died. They covered it up, called it a construction accident. The first one wasn't pretty. The second was quieter, but those guys are still dead.”
I shrug my shoulders, as if 'so what'. The old guy lets go of my hand. He backs off, distancing himself from the crazy man who is putting his name on the paper of certain death.
I feel something I had not felt in a long time, a smile. I'm smiling. Ted and I engineered Luna-A, then Luna-B and finally Luna-C. Now I will get to see if it works or if it'll have similar results. Secretly I hope it will have the same result as Luna-A, so I will get to experience what Ted did in his last minute. I would like a painful and wretched death. But just as much I hope it's a Luna-B death, so I could just slip off quietly. Either way, I know that I have been the engineer of my own fate and that my nightmare will soon be over.
The End
Episode 7
At the arraignment, I plead guilty. A murmur was heard behind me. I didn't turn. I knew who was there. Alice was there. The kids were not. They were with their grandmother, Ted's mom, who was home crying.
The judge struck his gavel and the room got quiet. He spoke. I didn't hear it. I'm sure he said something, but I have no idea what he actually said. I knew more or less what he said, that I would be going away for 25 years to life for premeditated murder. Somehow, the fact that I had lost everything didn't hit me, either that or I just didn't care. I had lost most of it anyway.
The guard lead me from the table to the door off to one side. I couldn't help a last glance over my shoulder at Alice, standing to leave the courtroom. Her face was contorted with pain and she cried out to me, “Why?” The guard tugged at my arm and Alice turned to go through the large double doors. I replied, though she could not hear me, “Because I love you and the kids.”
The sign on the wall by the dispensary says, “Now accepting test subjects for a new anti-depressant, Lunaxypryn. Sign up at the dispensary.”
“Unless I'm mistaken, that's pure Luna-C,” I mutter.
The sign-up sheet is on the table, a pen on a chain next to it. I pick up the pen. Before I can write, a hand reaches out and takes mine. It's an old man, short with wire glasses. His prison grays are starched stiff and look new, though I know he has been there a long time.
“They'll make you sign a waver. Last two tests they did every subject died. They covered it up, called it a construction accident. The first one wasn't pretty. The second was quieter, but those guys are still dead.”
I shrug my shoulders, as if 'so what'. The old guy lets go of my hand. He backs off, distancing himself from the crazy man who is putting his name on the paper of certain death.
I feel something I had not felt in a long time, a smile. I'm smiling. Ted and I engineered Luna-A, then Luna-B and finally Luna-C. Now I will get to see if it works or if it'll have similar results. Secretly I hope it will have the same result as Luna-A, so I will get to experience what Ted did in his last minute. I would like a painful and wretched death. But just as much I hope it's a Luna-B death, so I could just slip off quietly. Either way, I know that I have been the engineer of my own fate and that my nightmare will soon be over.
The End
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Luna Nightmares
From the collection: Murder at Thompson Bog
Episode 6
Ted opened the door, “Phil? What's up?”
“You know,” I was thinking fast but talking slow, I hadn't thought this through. “I'm just perplexed by this whole thing and I thought, you know, that we have, you know,” I realized that I had said 'you know' three times in a sentence. “that we don't spend any down-time together. We used to do that, and I thought it would be a good idea ...” My eyes fell on a cut-glass decanter of Scotch on the counter, “... if we could just have a drink together...” I looked at Ted, an innocent smile crossing my face. Ted just looked back at me. It seemed like an hour, but it was only a few seconds before he spoke.
“Sure, Phil, it's a little early for me, but I have no plans, so why not. I'll get us a glass.” Ted took out two short glasses with heavy, cut-glass bottoms. They were part of the set with the decanter. He poured two of what I knew to be first class Scotch and added water from a bottle in the fridge. As he opened the fridge door to return the bottle to the shelf inside, I emptied the pink envelope into Ted's glass. I watched the few tiny crystals disappear into the Scotch.
“Here's to a successful test and a popular product,” I said, lifting my glass.
“I'll drink to that,” responded Ted, drinking half the glass in a gulp. I drank as well, looking around for something to take the attention off of the glass, just in case there was a taste.
“Have you redone the kitchen?”
“Nope. It's the same as the last time you were here.”
“Hmm! That was Thanksgiving...” I realized that I had brought up a memory of Carol and decided to stop there. “Well, I must have forgotten what it looked like, you keep it so nice, it looks new.” I smiled, taking another sip.
Ted finished his drink on that cue. We stood there regarding each other. Then Ted got a look on his face; he stiffened, moving his hand to his belly. His face questioned what he felt, then the answer was written in his eyes. Ted looked straight at me. His mouth opened. I expected him to ask, 'What have you done?' but he didn't, he just gagged and his eyes lost focus.
Ted convulsed and fell on the floor, writhing out of control. I stepped back, giving him room to flail against the floor and cabinets. He spat up some ugly, colorless gunk and jerked to a stop. His arms and legs, hands and feet were all at right angles; his fingers splayed. Ted spasmed once, twice, a third time and then released across the floor, completely limp. The eyes were open.
Standing there, watching my friend of so many years, I couldn't help but feel that this was the right thing to do. In his front pocket, I pulled the paper, torn from the pad at work, with a corner missing. It said, “I love you and the kids.” It was exactly like my dream, only it was Ted on the floor, not his wife and kids. I reached into his shirt pocket and took out the blue envelope.
“Ted? Are you home?” sang Alice, coming in the front door. I ran to stop her from coming into the kitchen. She was surprised to see me. “Phil! Uh, how nice to see you. You haven't visited in a while. Where's Ted?”
“Alice, you've got to go upstairs.”
“What are you talking about?” Alice gave a shallow laugh, then became afraid. “What's going on? Where's Ted?”
“Alice, just go upstairs now. Everything will be all right, but I need you to go upstairs right now.” A noise at the door revealed my worst fear, the kids were with her. “Alice, go upstairs and take the kids. Please!”
“Phil, you're scaring me.”
“Go! Now!” I cried.
“Tyler, Spencer, come with mommy.” Alice reached her hands for her children and lead them upstairs, her face pale, her eyes wide with fright.
There was only one thing for me to do; go to the phone and dial 911.
“911 Operator,” said a male voice.
“I've just killed my best friend,” I told him.
Episode 6
Ted opened the door, “Phil? What's up?”
“You know,” I was thinking fast but talking slow, I hadn't thought this through. “I'm just perplexed by this whole thing and I thought, you know, that we have, you know,” I realized that I had said 'you know' three times in a sentence. “that we don't spend any down-time together. We used to do that, and I thought it would be a good idea ...” My eyes fell on a cut-glass decanter of Scotch on the counter, “... if we could just have a drink together...” I looked at Ted, an innocent smile crossing my face. Ted just looked back at me. It seemed like an hour, but it was only a few seconds before he spoke.
“Sure, Phil, it's a little early for me, but I have no plans, so why not. I'll get us a glass.” Ted took out two short glasses with heavy, cut-glass bottoms. They were part of the set with the decanter. He poured two of what I knew to be first class Scotch and added water from a bottle in the fridge. As he opened the fridge door to return the bottle to the shelf inside, I emptied the pink envelope into Ted's glass. I watched the few tiny crystals disappear into the Scotch.
“Here's to a successful test and a popular product,” I said, lifting my glass.
“I'll drink to that,” responded Ted, drinking half the glass in a gulp. I drank as well, looking around for something to take the attention off of the glass, just in case there was a taste.
“Have you redone the kitchen?”
“Nope. It's the same as the last time you were here.”
“Hmm! That was Thanksgiving...” I realized that I had brought up a memory of Carol and decided to stop there. “Well, I must have forgotten what it looked like, you keep it so nice, it looks new.” I smiled, taking another sip.
Ted finished his drink on that cue. We stood there regarding each other. Then Ted got a look on his face; he stiffened, moving his hand to his belly. His face questioned what he felt, then the answer was written in his eyes. Ted looked straight at me. His mouth opened. I expected him to ask, 'What have you done?' but he didn't, he just gagged and his eyes lost focus.
Ted convulsed and fell on the floor, writhing out of control. I stepped back, giving him room to flail against the floor and cabinets. He spat up some ugly, colorless gunk and jerked to a stop. His arms and legs, hands and feet were all at right angles; his fingers splayed. Ted spasmed once, twice, a third time and then released across the floor, completely limp. The eyes were open.
Standing there, watching my friend of so many years, I couldn't help but feel that this was the right thing to do. In his front pocket, I pulled the paper, torn from the pad at work, with a corner missing. It said, “I love you and the kids.” It was exactly like my dream, only it was Ted on the floor, not his wife and kids. I reached into his shirt pocket and took out the blue envelope.
“Ted? Are you home?” sang Alice, coming in the front door. I ran to stop her from coming into the kitchen. She was surprised to see me. “Phil! Uh, how nice to see you. You haven't visited in a while. Where's Ted?”
“Alice, you've got to go upstairs.”
“What are you talking about?” Alice gave a shallow laugh, then became afraid. “What's going on? Where's Ted?”
“Alice, just go upstairs now. Everything will be all right, but I need you to go upstairs right now.” A noise at the door revealed my worst fear, the kids were with her. “Alice, go upstairs and take the kids. Please!”
“Phil, you're scaring me.”
“Go! Now!” I cried.
“Tyler, Spencer, come with mommy.” Alice reached her hands for her children and lead them upstairs, her face pale, her eyes wide with fright.
There was only one thing for me to do; go to the phone and dial 911.
“911 Operator,” said a male voice.
“I've just killed my best friend,” I told him.
Luna Nightmares
From the collection: Murder at Thompson Bog
Episode 6
Ted opened the door, “Phil? What's up?”
“You know,” I was thinking fast but talking slow, I hadn't thought this through. “I'm just perplexed by this whole thing and I thought, you know, that we have, you know,” I realized that I had said 'you know' three times in a sentence. “that we don't spend any down-time together. We used to do that, and I thought it would be a good idea ...” My eyes fell on a cut-glass decanter of Scotch on the counter, “... if we could just have a drink together...” I looked at Ted, an innocent smile crossing my face. Ted just looked back at me. It seemed like an hour, but it was only a few seconds before he spoke.
“Sure, Phil, it's a little early for me, but I have no plans, so why not. I'll get us a glass.” Ted took out two short glasses with heavy, cut-glass bottoms. They were part of the set with the decanter. He poured two of what I knew to be first class Scotch and added water from a bottle in the fridge. As he opened the fridge door to return the bottle to the shelf inside, I emptied the pink envelope into Ted's glass. I watched the few tiny crystals disappear into the Scotch.
“Here's to a successful test and a popular product,” I said, lifting my glass.
“I'll drink to that,” responded Ted, drinking half the glass in a gulp. I drank as well, looking around for something to take the attention off of the glass, just in case there was a taste.
“Have you redone the kitchen?”
“Nope. It's the same as the last time you were here.”
“Hmm! That was Thanksgiving...” I realized that I had brought up a memory of Carol and decided to stop there. “Well, I must have forgotten what it looked like, you keep it so nice, it looks new.” I smiled, taking another sip.
Ted finished his drink on that cue. We stood there regarding each other. Then Ted got a look on his face; he stiffened, moving his hand to his belly. His face questioned what he felt, then the answer was written in his eyes. Ted looked straight at me. His mouth opened. I expected him to ask, 'What have you done?' but he didn't, he just gagged and his eyes lost focus.
Ted convulsed and fell on the floor, writhing out of control. I stepped back, giving him room to flail against the floor and cabinets. He spat up some ugly, colorless gunk and jerked to a stop. His arms and legs, hands and feet were all at right angles; his fingers splayed. Ted spasmed once, twice, a third time and then released across the floor, completely limp. The eyes were open.
Standing there, watching my friend of so many years, I couldn't help but feel that this was the right thing to do. In his front pocket, I pulled the paper, torn from the pad at work, with a corner missing. It said, “I love you and the kids.” It was exactly like my dream, only it was Ted on the floor, not his wife and kids. I reached into his shirt pocket and took out the blue envelope.
“Ted? Are you home?” sang Alice, coming in the front door. I ran to stop her from coming into the kitchen. She was surprised to see me. “Phil! Uh, how nice to see you. You haven't visited in a while. Where's Ted?”
“Alice, you've got to go upstairs.”
“What are you talking about?” Alice gave a shallow laugh, then became afraid. “What's going on? Where's Ted?”
“Alice, just go upstairs now. Everything will be all right, but I need you to go upstairs right now.” A noise at the door revealed my worst fear, the kids were with her. “Alice, go upstairs and take the kids. Please!”
“Phil, you're scaring me.”
“Go! Now!” I cried.
“Tyler, Spencer, come with mommy.” Alice reached her hands for her children and lead them upstairs, her face pale, her eyes wide with fright.
There was only one thing for me to do; go to the phone and dial 911.
“911 Operator,” said a male voice.
“I've just killed my best friend,” I told him.
Episode 6
Ted opened the door, “Phil? What's up?”
“You know,” I was thinking fast but talking slow, I hadn't thought this through. “I'm just perplexed by this whole thing and I thought, you know, that we have, you know,” I realized that I had said 'you know' three times in a sentence. “that we don't spend any down-time together. We used to do that, and I thought it would be a good idea ...” My eyes fell on a cut-glass decanter of Scotch on the counter, “... if we could just have a drink together...” I looked at Ted, an innocent smile crossing my face. Ted just looked back at me. It seemed like an hour, but it was only a few seconds before he spoke.
“Sure, Phil, it's a little early for me, but I have no plans, so why not. I'll get us a glass.” Ted took out two short glasses with heavy, cut-glass bottoms. They were part of the set with the decanter. He poured two of what I knew to be first class Scotch and added water from a bottle in the fridge. As he opened the fridge door to return the bottle to the shelf inside, I emptied the pink envelope into Ted's glass. I watched the few tiny crystals disappear into the Scotch.
“Here's to a successful test and a popular product,” I said, lifting my glass.
“I'll drink to that,” responded Ted, drinking half the glass in a gulp. I drank as well, looking around for something to take the attention off of the glass, just in case there was a taste.
“Have you redone the kitchen?”
“Nope. It's the same as the last time you were here.”
“Hmm! That was Thanksgiving...” I realized that I had brought up a memory of Carol and decided to stop there. “Well, I must have forgotten what it looked like, you keep it so nice, it looks new.” I smiled, taking another sip.
Ted finished his drink on that cue. We stood there regarding each other. Then Ted got a look on his face; he stiffened, moving his hand to his belly. His face questioned what he felt, then the answer was written in his eyes. Ted looked straight at me. His mouth opened. I expected him to ask, 'What have you done?' but he didn't, he just gagged and his eyes lost focus.
Ted convulsed and fell on the floor, writhing out of control. I stepped back, giving him room to flail against the floor and cabinets. He spat up some ugly, colorless gunk and jerked to a stop. His arms and legs, hands and feet were all at right angles; his fingers splayed. Ted spasmed once, twice, a third time and then released across the floor, completely limp. The eyes were open.
Standing there, watching my friend of so many years, I couldn't help but feel that this was the right thing to do. In his front pocket, I pulled the paper, torn from the pad at work, with a corner missing. It said, “I love you and the kids.” It was exactly like my dream, only it was Ted on the floor, not his wife and kids. I reached into his shirt pocket and took out the blue envelope.
“Ted? Are you home?” sang Alice, coming in the front door. I ran to stop her from coming into the kitchen. She was surprised to see me. “Phil! Uh, how nice to see you. You haven't visited in a while. Where's Ted?”
“Alice, you've got to go upstairs.”
“What are you talking about?” Alice gave a shallow laugh, then became afraid. “What's going on? Where's Ted?”
“Alice, just go upstairs now. Everything will be all right, but I need you to go upstairs right now.” A noise at the door revealed my worst fear, the kids were with her. “Alice, go upstairs and take the kids. Please!”
“Phil, you're scaring me.”
“Go! Now!” I cried.
“Tyler, Spencer, come with mommy.” Alice reached her hands for her children and lead them upstairs, her face pale, her eyes wide with fright.
There was only one thing for me to do; go to the phone and dial 911.
“911 Operator,” said a male voice.
“I've just killed my best friend,” I told him.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Luna Nightmares
From the collection: Murder at Thompson Bog
Episode 5
Not drinking the night before agreed with me. I felt better.
“Rensler's in the office. Better come,” said Ted as I poured a cup of coffee.
I felt a chill run through me. Charles Rensler was the board liaison. When they wanted to tell us something, it was Mr. Rensler who came out of the elevator and into our lab. Not Charlie or Chuck, but Mr. Rensler. He didn't know a test tube from a shoe horn but he gave the orders, or at least relayed them.
In the lab, Rensler was leaning with one hand on the table, as if he had been waiting for me to finish playing with myself. He looked disturbed, but then he always looked that way.
“Gentlemen, we are going into testing in a week.” (“Ready or not,” said the word-bubble over his head.) “You have been playing with this new concoction long enough. It's time to take it to the subjects. We want this ready for market before the snow falls.”
Rensler's eyebrows were furrowed, admonishing his wayward children who never did as they were told. He had already decided that we were holding up this project on purpose. He had made up his mind about us; we were bad.
“It's not ready,” said Ted.
Rensler flared, his eyes wild. “Well, get it ready! The board wants to know if we've made a mistake with you two. The holidays are a stressful time and we want our new anti-depressant out and on the market in time to deal with it. You get it ready to go or it's you who will be going. No more hold ups, no more excuses.”
Rensler strode to the door, turned and put one hand on the door, he was making his grand exit. “We're calling it 'Lunaxapryn' and it had better be ready by the time the box is printed.” Rensler exited with a flourish, punctuating his commands with a loud march to the elevator. 'Click, clack, click, clack!' The sound of our doom.
“That man has no idea what he is doing,” said Ted, shaking his head. “If the six o'clock news mentions our product it won't be good for anyone.”
“Are we sure about it? Is there something we don't know?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Ted, as if it was obvious, “We don't know how many will die when they start taking this!” Ted turned his back to me, walking forcefully to the back of the office, picking up samples of “C” in green envelopes. He was trying to compose himself enough to actually do something. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him slump. His shoulders dropped; Ted was shaking his head.
“You OK, buddy?” I asked.
“Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just peachy!” Ted stood up, squaring himself around and picked up the daily log. “I'm logging out, leaving a little early.”
“OK, Ted. You've put in enough hours to do that. Say hi to Alice.”
“Yeah,” said Ted, taking off his lab coat. “Tomorrow, same time.”
“You bet!” I replied, trying to be as light and casual as I could. I watched him go down the hall.
The pad caught my eye. There was a corner still attached to the top where the paper tore off. Ted had ripped a piece off and left a corner. My thoughts went back to my dream, to the paper with the missing corner.
I looked over the line of envelopes on the desk: colored envelopes with the active ingredient of each generation, concentrated for analysis. There were three green envelopes of “C” and one pink of “A”. The blue envelope was missing. I remembered my dream, Ted slipping that envelope into his pocket. A chill ran through me.
Returning to the pad, I recalled an old movie I saw on one of those sleepless nights, where the detective used a pencil to discover what was written on a pad. I took the pencil from the drawer and lightly ran it over the pad. There, in the impressions left by Ted's pen, was the note he had taken with him. “I love you and the kids.”
My heart went to my throat. I couldn't breathe. I steadied myself against the table. There had to be a way to stop him! I took the remaining envelope of Luna-A and put it into my pocket. I threw my white coat over the chair and ran to the nearest exit, my short-cut to the parking lot.
It was before rush hour and the traffic was still light. I figured Ted wouldn't be driving fast, but I was. My hands were shaking and there was sweat on my forehead. I couldn't think where the tissues were. The radio was on and a distraction. I switched it off and veered to the right, narrowly missing a car slowing to turn. I tore through the last intersection on a yellow light, beating the red by the skin of my teeth.
At Ted's house, I pulled up and turned the car off. Ted's Cherokee was already there. The quiet was thunderous. I could hear myself sweat.
Episode 5
Not drinking the night before agreed with me. I felt better.
“Rensler's in the office. Better come,” said Ted as I poured a cup of coffee.
I felt a chill run through me. Charles Rensler was the board liaison. When they wanted to tell us something, it was Mr. Rensler who came out of the elevator and into our lab. Not Charlie or Chuck, but Mr. Rensler. He didn't know a test tube from a shoe horn but he gave the orders, or at least relayed them.
In the lab, Rensler was leaning with one hand on the table, as if he had been waiting for me to finish playing with myself. He looked disturbed, but then he always looked that way.
“Gentlemen, we are going into testing in a week.” (“Ready or not,” said the word-bubble over his head.) “You have been playing with this new concoction long enough. It's time to take it to the subjects. We want this ready for market before the snow falls.”
Rensler's eyebrows were furrowed, admonishing his wayward children who never did as they were told. He had already decided that we were holding up this project on purpose. He had made up his mind about us; we were bad.
“It's not ready,” said Ted.
Rensler flared, his eyes wild. “Well, get it ready! The board wants to know if we've made a mistake with you two. The holidays are a stressful time and we want our new anti-depressant out and on the market in time to deal with it. You get it ready to go or it's you who will be going. No more hold ups, no more excuses.”
Rensler strode to the door, turned and put one hand on the door, he was making his grand exit. “We're calling it 'Lunaxapryn' and it had better be ready by the time the box is printed.” Rensler exited with a flourish, punctuating his commands with a loud march to the elevator. 'Click, clack, click, clack!' The sound of our doom.
“That man has no idea what he is doing,” said Ted, shaking his head. “If the six o'clock news mentions our product it won't be good for anyone.”
“Are we sure about it? Is there something we don't know?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Ted, as if it was obvious, “We don't know how many will die when they start taking this!” Ted turned his back to me, walking forcefully to the back of the office, picking up samples of “C” in green envelopes. He was trying to compose himself enough to actually do something. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him slump. His shoulders dropped; Ted was shaking his head.
“You OK, buddy?” I asked.
“Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just peachy!” Ted stood up, squaring himself around and picked up the daily log. “I'm logging out, leaving a little early.”
“OK, Ted. You've put in enough hours to do that. Say hi to Alice.”
“Yeah,” said Ted, taking off his lab coat. “Tomorrow, same time.”
“You bet!” I replied, trying to be as light and casual as I could. I watched him go down the hall.
The pad caught my eye. There was a corner still attached to the top where the paper tore off. Ted had ripped a piece off and left a corner. My thoughts went back to my dream, to the paper with the missing corner.
I looked over the line of envelopes on the desk: colored envelopes with the active ingredient of each generation, concentrated for analysis. There were three green envelopes of “C” and one pink of “A”. The blue envelope was missing. I remembered my dream, Ted slipping that envelope into his pocket. A chill ran through me.
Returning to the pad, I recalled an old movie I saw on one of those sleepless nights, where the detective used a pencil to discover what was written on a pad. I took the pencil from the drawer and lightly ran it over the pad. There, in the impressions left by Ted's pen, was the note he had taken with him. “I love you and the kids.”
My heart went to my throat. I couldn't breathe. I steadied myself against the table. There had to be a way to stop him! I took the remaining envelope of Luna-A and put it into my pocket. I threw my white coat over the chair and ran to the nearest exit, my short-cut to the parking lot.
It was before rush hour and the traffic was still light. I figured Ted wouldn't be driving fast, but I was. My hands were shaking and there was sweat on my forehead. I couldn't think where the tissues were. The radio was on and a distraction. I switched it off and veered to the right, narrowly missing a car slowing to turn. I tore through the last intersection on a yellow light, beating the red by the skin of my teeth.
At Ted's house, I pulled up and turned the car off. Ted's Cherokee was already there. The quiet was thunderous. I could hear myself sweat.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Luna Nightmares
From the collection: Murder at Thompson Bog
Episode 4
Ted's Grand Cherokee was already in the parking lot early next morning.
“What're you doing here at this ungodly hour?” asked Ted, looking up.
“I could ask you the same thing,” I replied.
“Couldn't sleep. Thought I'd come in and make sure we weren't on the wrong track again. You?”
“About the same,” I said, trying to find something to look at.
“Too many voices in my head,” said Ted, returning to whatever he was working on before I came in.
“Me too. Is it warm in here, or is it me?”
“It's you. The air kicked on more than an hour ago.”
“You've been here more than an hour?” I asked, “How did you get in?”
“I got them to give me a key; I've been coming earlier lately.”
“But you're here when I leave.” I was wondering if I might not be right, there was something wrong with Ted.
“Not for long, I usually follow you out. It's just that we came up with Luna-A and Luna-B. Now we've got “C” and I don't want to be the guy who killed a bunch of subjects with three products in a row.”
“I share some of that blame, you know. And we're not alone here, we have a large staff of people, anyone of which could have discovered the flaws in “A” and “B” and didn't. You can't carry this all on your shoulders.”
“I'm not, Phil,” said Ted, getting up and reaching for his empty coffee cup, “I'm just trying to make sure we don't have to formulate a Luna-D.” Ted left for the coffee room.
In the trash, were two blue envelopes. Ted had been using some of the “B” samples. Had Ted been retesting? But we discovered what was causing the results in “B”. Why would he have Luna-B out?
At the end of the day, Ted seemed fine and normal. He even left at a reasonable time. Ted gave me a wave and ambled off to his Grand Cherokee. It looked like another world to me, his gleaming clean Grand Cherokee, knowing that he would go home to the beautiful Alice who would have dinner on the table. Two endearing children would run in to hug their daddy and the cares of the day would fade into oblivion without the use of artificial nerve-dullers.
I drove my aging wreck to the poor side of town where I nuked a burger and fries meal that didn't live up to it's advertising. Settling down in front of the television, I reached for the bottle of hooch, then stopped myself. No, three didn't do it, four certainly wouldn't. I would try my theory and have none.
Just before I toddled off to bed, I breathed a quiet prayer that Carol would fall in love and get remarried, then I could have my paycheck back and could move out of that lousy neighborhood.
The breeze through the window was just right, the bums were quiet and there were few cars at that late hour.
Then the dreams came. I saw the table, Ted's kids slumped over and Ted with his note, roughly torn from the pad at work and carrying it's chilling message. The blue envelope fell from his hand to the floor. My gaze followed the envelope to the floor. Then a strange cry entered the scene and I woke up to a siren passing; an ambulance going by. I turned and looked at the clock – little after three in the morning. I got up and went to the couch, turning on the television. There was nothing on, so I turned it off, laid back on the couch and drifted off.
Episode 4
Ted's Grand Cherokee was already in the parking lot early next morning.
“What're you doing here at this ungodly hour?” asked Ted, looking up.
“I could ask you the same thing,” I replied.
“Couldn't sleep. Thought I'd come in and make sure we weren't on the wrong track again. You?”
“About the same,” I said, trying to find something to look at.
“Too many voices in my head,” said Ted, returning to whatever he was working on before I came in.
“Me too. Is it warm in here, or is it me?”
“It's you. The air kicked on more than an hour ago.”
“You've been here more than an hour?” I asked, “How did you get in?”
“I got them to give me a key; I've been coming earlier lately.”
“But you're here when I leave.” I was wondering if I might not be right, there was something wrong with Ted.
“Not for long, I usually follow you out. It's just that we came up with Luna-A and Luna-B. Now we've got “C” and I don't want to be the guy who killed a bunch of subjects with three products in a row.”
“I share some of that blame, you know. And we're not alone here, we have a large staff of people, anyone of which could have discovered the flaws in “A” and “B” and didn't. You can't carry this all on your shoulders.”
“I'm not, Phil,” said Ted, getting up and reaching for his empty coffee cup, “I'm just trying to make sure we don't have to formulate a Luna-D.” Ted left for the coffee room.
In the trash, were two blue envelopes. Ted had been using some of the “B” samples. Had Ted been retesting? But we discovered what was causing the results in “B”. Why would he have Luna-B out?
At the end of the day, Ted seemed fine and normal. He even left at a reasonable time. Ted gave me a wave and ambled off to his Grand Cherokee. It looked like another world to me, his gleaming clean Grand Cherokee, knowing that he would go home to the beautiful Alice who would have dinner on the table. Two endearing children would run in to hug their daddy and the cares of the day would fade into oblivion without the use of artificial nerve-dullers.
I drove my aging wreck to the poor side of town where I nuked a burger and fries meal that didn't live up to it's advertising. Settling down in front of the television, I reached for the bottle of hooch, then stopped myself. No, three didn't do it, four certainly wouldn't. I would try my theory and have none.
Just before I toddled off to bed, I breathed a quiet prayer that Carol would fall in love and get remarried, then I could have my paycheck back and could move out of that lousy neighborhood.
The breeze through the window was just right, the bums were quiet and there were few cars at that late hour.
Then the dreams came. I saw the table, Ted's kids slumped over and Ted with his note, roughly torn from the pad at work and carrying it's chilling message. The blue envelope fell from his hand to the floor. My gaze followed the envelope to the floor. Then a strange cry entered the scene and I woke up to a siren passing; an ambulance going by. I turned and looked at the clock – little after three in the morning. I got up and went to the couch, turning on the television. There was nothing on, so I turned it off, laid back on the couch and drifted off.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Luna Nightmares
From the collection: Murder at Thompson Bog
Episode 3
Evening found me eating a ready-made meal with whiskey and water. The television show was one I'd seen before but I couldn't tell you what happened next. Finding a picture was tough and I could only get two channels in that neighborhood; it was the land that time forgot.
Outside the window the usual show was going on, shouting and shooting, sirens and horns; how could people live like that? Why did they stay? Why did I, for that matter?
I decided that I stayed because I couldn't find another place to live in that price range and got up to get myself a second drink. Trying one of my theories: I only had two whiskey and water the other night so that night I poured three. More is better, right?
On the TV, the bad guy was taken down and the commercial came on. I turned the television off, then turned it back on but lowered the sound. I was on my way to get the second drink so I couldn't go to bed yet. I got a fresh glass, just so I could keep score.
With three empty glasses in front of me, I looked up to see that the host's monologue was a repeat; he told that joke before and to just as few laughs. I turned the tube off and fell into bed.
In my dream, Ted took a small envelope out of his shirt pocket and went into the dining room. The envelope was from the lab, blue like those that held samples of Luna-B. He opened the envelope and poured some of the powder into the glasses of iced tea. Ted had tears in his eyes. In his hand he held a piece of paper, white with thin lines and a ragged corner, torn from a pad at the lab. Across the paper he had written, “I love you and the kids.”
I woke up sweating to the sound of banging on the wall next to me. “You wanna shut up in there? People are trying to sleep!” shouted the guy in the next apartment. I held still, gripping the sweat-soaked sheets, hoping he'd shut up.
“It's not like when you live in a house,” I whispered to myself, “where you can scream in peace.”
After a few minutes of quiet, I got up to get a glass of water then returned to bed, looking at the ceiling, trying to think of anything to stay awake. I couldn't think of anything at all other than my dream and my own deplorable situation. I got up and turned on the television. A sexy woman was licking her lips inviting me to call her. She said she was waiting just for me. I laughed, “Not if you could see me,” and turned to the other channel. The late-late-late show was just wrapping up.
Episode 3
Evening found me eating a ready-made meal with whiskey and water. The television show was one I'd seen before but I couldn't tell you what happened next. Finding a picture was tough and I could only get two channels in that neighborhood; it was the land that time forgot.
Outside the window the usual show was going on, shouting and shooting, sirens and horns; how could people live like that? Why did they stay? Why did I, for that matter?
I decided that I stayed because I couldn't find another place to live in that price range and got up to get myself a second drink. Trying one of my theories: I only had two whiskey and water the other night so that night I poured three. More is better, right?
On the TV, the bad guy was taken down and the commercial came on. I turned the television off, then turned it back on but lowered the sound. I was on my way to get the second drink so I couldn't go to bed yet. I got a fresh glass, just so I could keep score.
With three empty glasses in front of me, I looked up to see that the host's monologue was a repeat; he told that joke before and to just as few laughs. I turned the tube off and fell into bed.
In my dream, Ted took a small envelope out of his shirt pocket and went into the dining room. The envelope was from the lab, blue like those that held samples of Luna-B. He opened the envelope and poured some of the powder into the glasses of iced tea. Ted had tears in his eyes. In his hand he held a piece of paper, white with thin lines and a ragged corner, torn from a pad at the lab. Across the paper he had written, “I love you and the kids.”
I woke up sweating to the sound of banging on the wall next to me. “You wanna shut up in there? People are trying to sleep!” shouted the guy in the next apartment. I held still, gripping the sweat-soaked sheets, hoping he'd shut up.
“It's not like when you live in a house,” I whispered to myself, “where you can scream in peace.”
After a few minutes of quiet, I got up to get a glass of water then returned to bed, looking at the ceiling, trying to think of anything to stay awake. I couldn't think of anything at all other than my dream and my own deplorable situation. I got up and turned on the television. A sexy woman was licking her lips inviting me to call her. She said she was waiting just for me. I laughed, “Not if you could see me,” and turned to the other channel. The late-late-late show was just wrapping up.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Luna Nightmares
From the collection: Murder at Thompson Bog
Episode 2
Horns woke me. I was toppled over onto the couch; my neck and back were stiff. I got up and went into the bathroom, stubbing a toe on the way.
Standing in front of the mirror as the florescent bulb flickered to life, I looked myself over. 'Gees! I look terrible. No wonder Carol left. No, that wasn't it,' I told myself, starting my daily routine, going through the steps as if it mattered. 'It was the fights, the long hours, the second drink, then the third just to tune out the day. Then a fourth to tune out Carol, screaming how I promised her more.' I sighed deeply, picked up a razor and looked at it. 'Not much chance of me cutting myself badly enough to do any good. Might as well just shave.'
An hour later I pulled into the lot at Lunadyne, parking far away from the entrance, hoping no one would see me in a car I ordinarily would have traded two years earlier. The back stairs were rarely used and even more rarely swept; they had become my 'main entrance' so as not to be detected by co-workers I wanted to avoid. Only Ted was in the lab as I opened the door.
“Hi Ted,” I cheerily tossed over to him, already in his white coat and looking over the results of yesterday's tests.
“Hi Phil,” Ted said without looking up. “C might be the one. C seems to be testing like we hoped Luna-A and B would. If these preliminary results keep up we may have something.”
“Glad to hear it. That'll take some heat off.” I said as I busied myself with some items on the desk, trying to get up some excitement for the work. Ted nodded solemnly.
There hadn't been a lot of enthusiasm of late. Word came down that Lunaprex was falling off, people were starting to think of it as the 'old way' to handle depression. “Other brands are touting new cures to new stresses of life,” said the people upstairs in the rarefied air of the board room, “the public wants breakthroughs – Lunaprex is something they already knew about; It's yesterday's news!”
Luna-A, as we called it until Marketing could come up with a catchy name, was the answer. Fewer side effects and a stronger internal formula with a thinner, faster-acting coating made Luna-A a leading contender for the top slot in the anti-depressant race. “A” removed the highs and lows of life leaving a gray middle ground where nothing was very good, but nothing was very bad. It was like whiskey-and-water in a capsule.
There was only one problem with “A”; the subjects died. We couldn't tell what it was that made “A” deadly, because every autopsy result was different, thought the results were the same. After a dose of Luna-A, the subjects would convulse wildly and eventually beat themselves to death. It was ugly and very disturbing to watch. It was a wonder I didn't have nightmares about that.
Luna-B was much better. There were no fits, no convulsions, no beating of oneself to death. It was a breakthrough. “B” was testing well in the lab, then went to the animals where it tested well, then to human tests where one of the subjects simply dropped his head into his mashed potatoes. We went back to the lab.
We found what was causing it this time. One of the masking ingredients interacted badly with common foods, resulting in death. You could take Luna-B safely, you just couldn't eat. It was a disaster. Pressure was on from the board room upstairs to come up with a safe product.
Reformulation of “B”, avoiding the pitfalls of “A” brought us to what we called, naturally enough, “C.” When tests began, first in the lab, then on animals, it seemed to be working. Of course, no one breathed that sigh of relief until human test subjects took it without dying.
“Yes, this may be it,” said Ted calmly, not being one to get excited prematurely. “The first returns seem to be within acceptable levels.”
“You mean no one has died yet?” I asked, standing beside Ted looking over his shoulder at the results.
“Precisely!” said Ted. “Of course, we're still doing in-house lab tests.”
We both scanned the reports in silence.
“You up for a coffee?” I asked, once the report was fully digested.
“Yes, I'm ready for a coffee,” replied Ted, putting the report down and turning his attention to more worldly things.
The coffee bar was a long walk from the lab on purpose. We wouldn't want anything falling into the coffee, now would we?
“How's things?” I ventured.
“Things?” replied Ted.
“Yeah, you know, Alice, the kids, life in general.”
“Great! Couldn't be better. Alice is going to start photography classes now that both the kids are in school. They're doing great, seem to get on well in the school environment. All in all, life is good. The only cloud on the horizon is the Luna-alphabet problem.”
“Well, I'm glad things are good at home.” I was, in fact, glad to hear it. Of course, that meant that my dream was totally a projection of my own problems, but that was expected.
“And how are you, Phil. Adjusting OK?” asked Ted.
“As well as can be expected, but I could sure use a bonus.” Carol was financially draining me dry. She must have gotten advice from every divorced friend and sister she had. Carol had three divorced sisters, all full of spite and advice.
“The failures were costly. Some of those test subjects had relatives who want to be compensated. I doubt there will be a bonus,” Ted said, wincing at his coffee.
“They were homeless volunteers – paid volunteers who signed wavers. Any family they had abandoned them years ago. How can they expect compensation?”
“That's the way the world works. People smell money and the third-cousin twice-removed-that-never-got-invited-to-Thanksgiving-dinner suddenly becomes a terrible loss to the family.”
Ted and I stood there, looking into our coffees and pondering the ways of the world.
Episode 2
Horns woke me. I was toppled over onto the couch; my neck and back were stiff. I got up and went into the bathroom, stubbing a toe on the way.
Standing in front of the mirror as the florescent bulb flickered to life, I looked myself over. 'Gees! I look terrible. No wonder Carol left. No, that wasn't it,' I told myself, starting my daily routine, going through the steps as if it mattered. 'It was the fights, the long hours, the second drink, then the third just to tune out the day. Then a fourth to tune out Carol, screaming how I promised her more.' I sighed deeply, picked up a razor and looked at it. 'Not much chance of me cutting myself badly enough to do any good. Might as well just shave.'
An hour later I pulled into the lot at Lunadyne, parking far away from the entrance, hoping no one would see me in a car I ordinarily would have traded two years earlier. The back stairs were rarely used and even more rarely swept; they had become my 'main entrance' so as not to be detected by co-workers I wanted to avoid. Only Ted was in the lab as I opened the door.
“Hi Ted,” I cheerily tossed over to him, already in his white coat and looking over the results of yesterday's tests.
“Hi Phil,” Ted said without looking up. “C might be the one. C seems to be testing like we hoped Luna-A and B would. If these preliminary results keep up we may have something.”
“Glad to hear it. That'll take some heat off.” I said as I busied myself with some items on the desk, trying to get up some excitement for the work. Ted nodded solemnly.
There hadn't been a lot of enthusiasm of late. Word came down that Lunaprex was falling off, people were starting to think of it as the 'old way' to handle depression. “Other brands are touting new cures to new stresses of life,” said the people upstairs in the rarefied air of the board room, “the public wants breakthroughs – Lunaprex is something they already knew about; It's yesterday's news!”
Luna-A, as we called it until Marketing could come up with a catchy name, was the answer. Fewer side effects and a stronger internal formula with a thinner, faster-acting coating made Luna-A a leading contender for the top slot in the anti-depressant race. “A” removed the highs and lows of life leaving a gray middle ground where nothing was very good, but nothing was very bad. It was like whiskey-and-water in a capsule.
There was only one problem with “A”; the subjects died. We couldn't tell what it was that made “A” deadly, because every autopsy result was different, thought the results were the same. After a dose of Luna-A, the subjects would convulse wildly and eventually beat themselves to death. It was ugly and very disturbing to watch. It was a wonder I didn't have nightmares about that.
Luna-B was much better. There were no fits, no convulsions, no beating of oneself to death. It was a breakthrough. “B” was testing well in the lab, then went to the animals where it tested well, then to human tests where one of the subjects simply dropped his head into his mashed potatoes. We went back to the lab.
We found what was causing it this time. One of the masking ingredients interacted badly with common foods, resulting in death. You could take Luna-B safely, you just couldn't eat. It was a disaster. Pressure was on from the board room upstairs to come up with a safe product.
Reformulation of “B”, avoiding the pitfalls of “A” brought us to what we called, naturally enough, “C.” When tests began, first in the lab, then on animals, it seemed to be working. Of course, no one breathed that sigh of relief until human test subjects took it without dying.
“Yes, this may be it,” said Ted calmly, not being one to get excited prematurely. “The first returns seem to be within acceptable levels.”
“You mean no one has died yet?” I asked, standing beside Ted looking over his shoulder at the results.
“Precisely!” said Ted. “Of course, we're still doing in-house lab tests.”
We both scanned the reports in silence.
“You up for a coffee?” I asked, once the report was fully digested.
“Yes, I'm ready for a coffee,” replied Ted, putting the report down and turning his attention to more worldly things.
The coffee bar was a long walk from the lab on purpose. We wouldn't want anything falling into the coffee, now would we?
“How's things?” I ventured.
“Things?” replied Ted.
“Yeah, you know, Alice, the kids, life in general.”
“Great! Couldn't be better. Alice is going to start photography classes now that both the kids are in school. They're doing great, seem to get on well in the school environment. All in all, life is good. The only cloud on the horizon is the Luna-alphabet problem.”
“Well, I'm glad things are good at home.” I was, in fact, glad to hear it. Of course, that meant that my dream was totally a projection of my own problems, but that was expected.
“And how are you, Phil. Adjusting OK?” asked Ted.
“As well as can be expected, but I could sure use a bonus.” Carol was financially draining me dry. She must have gotten advice from every divorced friend and sister she had. Carol had three divorced sisters, all full of spite and advice.
“The failures were costly. Some of those test subjects had relatives who want to be compensated. I doubt there will be a bonus,” Ted said, wincing at his coffee.
“They were homeless volunteers – paid volunteers who signed wavers. Any family they had abandoned them years ago. How can they expect compensation?”
“That's the way the world works. People smell money and the third-cousin twice-removed-that-never-got-invited-to-Thanksgiving-dinner suddenly becomes a terrible loss to the family.”
Ted and I stood there, looking into our coffees and pondering the ways of the world.
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