I can always tell when the government, medical or psychiatric organizations have been dabbling in our television shows, the message is singular, obvious and insane.
It was clear as a bell when the popular (for a while) television show, Touched by an Angel, came out in favor of psychotropic medications. In that episode, a jazz musician was a danger to himself and his family if he was not on his medication, but he was not creative or even a good musician when he was all doped up like that – in fact, he hated it. So he didn't take his meds, got creative and was happy playing music to die for. The “Angel of the Lord” came and told him, “Your medication is a gift from God. You must take it.” Thereafter, he did “the right thing,” taking his meds and opting for mediocrity instead of musical greatness. That was the last time I turned that show on. It was canceled soon after.
The other night, I was doing late work and my wife was watching “Law and Order.” The culprit was a loving mother who did not believe in getting her child vaccinated. Her failure to get her child vaccinated caused another child to be sick and die. They arrested the mother, took her child away and the world was again safe. The message repeated again and again during the show was “Get your child vaccinated.”
For years I have feared that there was something going into the vaccine that the government wanted us to get but that we wouldn't stand for given the choice. The answer: remove the choice. There are many parents who will not have their child vaccinated. They do not believe in it, or they do not believe in government intrusion. Perhaps they are organic people and do not believe in the artificial, chemical, Brave New World that is being sold to us daily.
For years, I have had a rule: Where there is a hard sell, there is something of which I should beware. Now here is none other than the “Do no evil” cops of “Law and Order” telling us we should get vaccinated. I say “No!” Just because the government or some medical organization or psychiatric organization (especially a psychiatric organization) says to line up and get stuck with a needle full of something mysterious and magical, that is no reason for me or anyone else to do so. In fact, when they sell it to us so hard, that's a good reason to be extra careful.
It was Karl Marx who said, “Give me a child before he's five and I'll have him for life.” I fear that what is in that vaccination is something that will be in my child for life and not to his betterment. The proof of the pudding is that the powers who want that needle in the kid's arm have gone to the writers of popular television shows to sell it to us.
Shame on you, Law and Order.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
The PBS-NPR Debate's Unmentionable Dilemma
WRITTEN BY BEVERLY K. EAKMAN
MONDAY, 14 MARCH 2011 14:59 The New American (www.thenewamerican.com)
As House Republicans pushed to eliminate federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) this month, Democrats fought back with a vengeance. Barack Obama even upped the ante a whopping $6 million, by asking $451 million for CPB as part of his $3.7 Trillion-Dollar Baby. This is the same historic 2012 budget that many lawmakers say is already trimmed to the bone (with a gross federal debt approaching $14 trillion).
In response, NPR and PBS stations nationwide stepped up their rhetoric to listening and viewing audiences, going so far as to ask them to “stop the Senate” (and even “Republicans” in particular) and “defend federal funding” for public broadcasting. Some legislators and opponents predictably cried “foul,” insisting that CPB and/or its affiliates had violated laws that ban nonprofits and government-funded entities from lobbying.
Try telling that to leaders at the National Education Association, which for years has not only produced a highly politicized, and barely education-related, Legislative Agenda, but by advocating for every leftist cause imaginable. It also owns a big, apparently tax-exempt, office building in the heart of Washington, D.C.
Weekly Standard writer Philip Terzian has pointed out in his recent article that just because “public broadcasting depends on federal funds does not mean that it cannot subsist without federal funds"; and advocated breaking its “welfare dependency.” He also notes that “If NPR and PBS were to go private, that would not only end the perpetual tension … between taxpayer funds and public accountability, it would leave them exempt from political pressure and interference” so they could air whatever they wanted.
All true. But Mr. Terzian’s best point broaches an issue rarely discussed in public, although frequently in closed company: “…while it is theoretically possible that a certain number of stations in marginal markets would succumb, that might well be the cost (if it happens)….” The underlying issue here is a topic that other countries, such as France, once believed to be crucial. Like our own nation, France, too, wound up overwhelmed by what some disdainfully describe as “the popular culture,” despite a Ministry that worked for years, in their case, to avoid what one appointee once described as “the horror of American radio and television.”
Mr. Terzian opined that the kinds of radio and television he likes — classic jazz and classical music, as well as documentaries on history, literature, and science — were nearly nonexistent on the air, except on PBS and NPR, but that “the market has demonstrated that no private broadcaster would [ever] fill the vacuum.”
He is not alone in his basic complaint, but it is far from clear that the “market” per se has demonstrated any such thing. If Mr. Terzian is correct in his view that the typical fare presented on commercial radio and television is “predominantly … or relentlessly lowbrow” whereas “the kind of elitist fare” he likes is found only on PBS and NPR, then it might be because the “market” for lowbrow entertainment has been artificially subsidized.
Beginning in the 1950s (read about "Payola"), disc jockeys were lambasted for taking kickbacks from managers and other interested parties to play certain songs and music, to feature the works of particular entertainers, and, finally, to offer only “reliable” genres like soul, country, classical, or rock to the public. Stations were often bought and sold with that in mind. By the 1990s, many people were turned off by the nonstop howling and screeching of so-called popular music, not to mention noisy, crass commercials. They didn’t want to set their alarms and wake up to such cacophony.
So, radios started being sold that had an accompanying audiotape feature so one could awake to a favorite tape, commercial-free. As digital came along, Sirius and XM satellite providers provided listeners with the capability to access their favorite genre 24/7, even in their car. No more station-fade-out problems on the road or local jabber when traveling through an unfamiliar part of the country.
The only problem was that one didn’t get any weather, traffic updates or news that way. That is probably the largest reason why local radio stations stayed in business. Even those who like “popular culture” listen to MP3 players and iPods; they are not necessarily listening to the radio the way Baby Boomers did. Talk shows, of course, are in a class of their own, and conservative hosts have to carve out their own niche instead of having it handed to them. Some do not listen to talk shows at all, of course, conservative or otherwise.
But the thorniest dilemma in Mr. Terzian’s piece is the part about it being “theoretically possible that a certain number of stations in marginal markets would succumb [without government subsidies]."
The problem is that not everyone can be a one-man Annie B. Casey Foundation or a Pew Charitable Trust. We live in a mobile society, and that means people transfer with their jobs — lots of people. Dallas, Texas, for example, abolished its PBS stations a few years ago, which meant not only classical music disappeared, but financial TV shows such as "Wall Street Week," which caters to an audience a bit more sophisticated that the one that listens to Dr. Phil. As classical music stations dwindled to the point of no return, anyone wishing to listen to complex orchestral pieces was forced to purchase a CD player, CDs, subscribe to satellite and/or cable (a sizeable outlay in some cases), and change out the radios that once graced the nightstand.
So, when we talk about a “market” for music, are we willing to say that only the elite, the rich, could possibly be attracted to Harry Connick, Jr.? Or guitarist Chet Atkins? Or what is, perhaps, the greatest stage musical of all time, Les Misérables? Now that’s a stretch….
Yet the musicians and musicals above were among the cream-of-the-crop features of PBS channels during last week’s Pledge Drive, not the music of controversial political figures, regardless of their merits at other times of the year. So, it is obvious that PBS executives know what the public likes best and what kind of programming is apt to draw pledges. If they know, so do a lot of other media moguls, philanthropists, and heads of charitable organizations — including conservative patriots.
In Tony-award-winning actress Patti LuPone’s new autobiography, she describes how she and her fellow thespians lived for years out of suitcases, traveling all over the country to perform before throngs of enthusiastic audiences, some of them out-of-the-way locales. The stages ranged from relatively small, as in college towns, to medium-sized like the Dallas Theater Center, to larger venues the size of The Strathmore in Kensington, Maryland, or The National Theater in Washington, D.C., and, of course, the biggest of them all, Broadway in New York City. The point, however, is that there is no dearth of fans for sophisticated entertainers, even among those who cannot afford large donations. In fact, many an individual’s one big splurge for the year might be for a chance to see, say, Andrea Boccelli, the blind Italian tenor from Tuscany whose incredible voice was first heard by many people on PBS. Boccelli then proceeded to pack sold-out houses the size of a football stadium around the country.
That kind of thing is going to change as young people and those living in outlying areas, long distances from major cities, hear nothing but boorish performances from the likes of Christina Aguilera and Eminem. Without a PBS around, they will never know whether they might have enjoyed operatic-crossover tenor Josh Grobin; or the dance phenomenon of Riverdance fame, Michael Flatley; or the Irish-Riverdance-spinoff female group, Celtic Woman — all seen for the first time by most people on PBS.
Of course, our “Ministry of Culture,” as it were, is called the National Endowment for the Arts. But it, too, has surrendered to political correctness, proliferating the works of extremists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, the “artist” of gross-out homosexual works, and Annie Sprinkle, the talent-challenged goofball who urinates in public.
In the present political climate, where even children’s programming is rife with leftist messages, junk science, and psychobabble, however subdued, it is probably a mistake to support CPB with taxpayer dollars. However, if the culture is ever to be turned around, conservative traditionalists need to step up to the plate and get on the boards of organizations that will present the kinds of high-culture programs that PBS does. The Left managed to get hold of the reins of the media, not by calling themselves The Marxist Entertainment Group. They simply got their act and funding partners together until they held a majority on most boards in journalistic circles, film, and television.
Monikers such as National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting carry no self-defining political terminologies. Conservatives, on the other hand, stupidly advertise themselves — and, thus their intentions — by labeling their networks, programs, and groups using religious and conservative titles right up front, so the Left doesn’t have to do it for them.
The result is hundreds of channels and stations to choose from and, more often than not, nothing uplifting to hear or watch.
_______________
Beverly K. Eakman began her career as a teacher in 1968. She left to become a science writer for a NASA contractor and went on to serve as a speechwriter — for the Voice of America and for the late Chief Justice Warren E. Burger when he chaired the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution. She was an editor and writer for the U.S. Dept. of Justice before retiring from federal government. She became an expert on education policy, mental-health issues, data-trafficking and political strategy with six books and dozens of speeches, feature articles and op-eds to her credit. Her most recent works are A Common Sense Platform for the 21st Century and the 2011 Edition of her ever-popular seminar manual, How To Counter Group Manipulation Tactics (Midnight Whistler Publishers). Mrs. Eakman can be reached through her website at www.BeverlyE.com .
MONDAY, 14 MARCH 2011 14:59 The New American (www.thenewamerican.com)
As House Republicans pushed to eliminate federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) this month, Democrats fought back with a vengeance. Barack Obama even upped the ante a whopping $6 million, by asking $451 million for CPB as part of his $3.7 Trillion-Dollar Baby. This is the same historic 2012 budget that many lawmakers say is already trimmed to the bone (with a gross federal debt approaching $14 trillion).
In response, NPR and PBS stations nationwide stepped up their rhetoric to listening and viewing audiences, going so far as to ask them to “stop the Senate” (and even “Republicans” in particular) and “defend federal funding” for public broadcasting. Some legislators and opponents predictably cried “foul,” insisting that CPB and/or its affiliates had violated laws that ban nonprofits and government-funded entities from lobbying.
Try telling that to leaders at the National Education Association, which for years has not only produced a highly politicized, and barely education-related, Legislative Agenda, but by advocating for every leftist cause imaginable. It also owns a big, apparently tax-exempt, office building in the heart of Washington, D.C.
Weekly Standard writer Philip Terzian has pointed out in his recent article that just because “public broadcasting depends on federal funds does not mean that it cannot subsist without federal funds"; and advocated breaking its “welfare dependency.” He also notes that “If NPR and PBS were to go private, that would not only end the perpetual tension … between taxpayer funds and public accountability, it would leave them exempt from political pressure and interference” so they could air whatever they wanted.
All true. But Mr. Terzian’s best point broaches an issue rarely discussed in public, although frequently in closed company: “…while it is theoretically possible that a certain number of stations in marginal markets would succumb, that might well be the cost (if it happens)….” The underlying issue here is a topic that other countries, such as France, once believed to be crucial. Like our own nation, France, too, wound up overwhelmed by what some disdainfully describe as “the popular culture,” despite a Ministry that worked for years, in their case, to avoid what one appointee once described as “the horror of American radio and television.”
Mr. Terzian opined that the kinds of radio and television he likes — classic jazz and classical music, as well as documentaries on history, literature, and science — were nearly nonexistent on the air, except on PBS and NPR, but that “the market has demonstrated that no private broadcaster would [ever] fill the vacuum.”
He is not alone in his basic complaint, but it is far from clear that the “market” per se has demonstrated any such thing. If Mr. Terzian is correct in his view that the typical fare presented on commercial radio and television is “predominantly … or relentlessly lowbrow” whereas “the kind of elitist fare” he likes is found only on PBS and NPR, then it might be because the “market” for lowbrow entertainment has been artificially subsidized.
Beginning in the 1950s (read about "Payola"), disc jockeys were lambasted for taking kickbacks from managers and other interested parties to play certain songs and music, to feature the works of particular entertainers, and, finally, to offer only “reliable” genres like soul, country, classical, or rock to the public. Stations were often bought and sold with that in mind. By the 1990s, many people were turned off by the nonstop howling and screeching of so-called popular music, not to mention noisy, crass commercials. They didn’t want to set their alarms and wake up to such cacophony.
So, radios started being sold that had an accompanying audiotape feature so one could awake to a favorite tape, commercial-free. As digital came along, Sirius and XM satellite providers provided listeners with the capability to access their favorite genre 24/7, even in their car. No more station-fade-out problems on the road or local jabber when traveling through an unfamiliar part of the country.
The only problem was that one didn’t get any weather, traffic updates or news that way. That is probably the largest reason why local radio stations stayed in business. Even those who like “popular culture” listen to MP3 players and iPods; they are not necessarily listening to the radio the way Baby Boomers did. Talk shows, of course, are in a class of their own, and conservative hosts have to carve out their own niche instead of having it handed to them. Some do not listen to talk shows at all, of course, conservative or otherwise.
But the thorniest dilemma in Mr. Terzian’s piece is the part about it being “theoretically possible that a certain number of stations in marginal markets would succumb [without government subsidies]."
The problem is that not everyone can be a one-man Annie B. Casey Foundation or a Pew Charitable Trust. We live in a mobile society, and that means people transfer with their jobs — lots of people. Dallas, Texas, for example, abolished its PBS stations a few years ago, which meant not only classical music disappeared, but financial TV shows such as "Wall Street Week," which caters to an audience a bit more sophisticated that the one that listens to Dr. Phil. As classical music stations dwindled to the point of no return, anyone wishing to listen to complex orchestral pieces was forced to purchase a CD player, CDs, subscribe to satellite and/or cable (a sizeable outlay in some cases), and change out the radios that once graced the nightstand.
So, when we talk about a “market” for music, are we willing to say that only the elite, the rich, could possibly be attracted to Harry Connick, Jr.? Or guitarist Chet Atkins? Or what is, perhaps, the greatest stage musical of all time, Les Misérables? Now that’s a stretch….
Yet the musicians and musicals above were among the cream-of-the-crop features of PBS channels during last week’s Pledge Drive, not the music of controversial political figures, regardless of their merits at other times of the year. So, it is obvious that PBS executives know what the public likes best and what kind of programming is apt to draw pledges. If they know, so do a lot of other media moguls, philanthropists, and heads of charitable organizations — including conservative patriots.
In Tony-award-winning actress Patti LuPone’s new autobiography, she describes how she and her fellow thespians lived for years out of suitcases, traveling all over the country to perform before throngs of enthusiastic audiences, some of them out-of-the-way locales. The stages ranged from relatively small, as in college towns, to medium-sized like the Dallas Theater Center, to larger venues the size of The Strathmore in Kensington, Maryland, or The National Theater in Washington, D.C., and, of course, the biggest of them all, Broadway in New York City. The point, however, is that there is no dearth of fans for sophisticated entertainers, even among those who cannot afford large donations. In fact, many an individual’s one big splurge for the year might be for a chance to see, say, Andrea Boccelli, the blind Italian tenor from Tuscany whose incredible voice was first heard by many people on PBS. Boccelli then proceeded to pack sold-out houses the size of a football stadium around the country.
That kind of thing is going to change as young people and those living in outlying areas, long distances from major cities, hear nothing but boorish performances from the likes of Christina Aguilera and Eminem. Without a PBS around, they will never know whether they might have enjoyed operatic-crossover tenor Josh Grobin; or the dance phenomenon of Riverdance fame, Michael Flatley; or the Irish-Riverdance-spinoff female group, Celtic Woman — all seen for the first time by most people on PBS.
Of course, our “Ministry of Culture,” as it were, is called the National Endowment for the Arts. But it, too, has surrendered to political correctness, proliferating the works of extremists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, the “artist” of gross-out homosexual works, and Annie Sprinkle, the talent-challenged goofball who urinates in public.
In the present political climate, where even children’s programming is rife with leftist messages, junk science, and psychobabble, however subdued, it is probably a mistake to support CPB with taxpayer dollars. However, if the culture is ever to be turned around, conservative traditionalists need to step up to the plate and get on the boards of organizations that will present the kinds of high-culture programs that PBS does. The Left managed to get hold of the reins of the media, not by calling themselves The Marxist Entertainment Group. They simply got their act and funding partners together until they held a majority on most boards in journalistic circles, film, and television.
Monikers such as National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting carry no self-defining political terminologies. Conservatives, on the other hand, stupidly advertise themselves — and, thus their intentions — by labeling their networks, programs, and groups using religious and conservative titles right up front, so the Left doesn’t have to do it for them.
The result is hundreds of channels and stations to choose from and, more often than not, nothing uplifting to hear or watch.
_______________
Beverly K. Eakman began her career as a teacher in 1968. She left to become a science writer for a NASA contractor and went on to serve as a speechwriter — for the Voice of America and for the late Chief Justice Warren E. Burger when he chaired the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution. She was an editor and writer for the U.S. Dept. of Justice before retiring from federal government. She became an expert on education policy, mental-health issues, data-trafficking and political strategy with six books and dozens of speeches, feature articles and op-eds to her credit. Her most recent works are A Common Sense Platform for the 21st Century and the 2011 Edition of her ever-popular seminar manual, How To Counter Group Manipulation Tactics (Midnight Whistler Publishers). Mrs. Eakman can be reached through her website at www.BeverlyE.com .
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Social Media is Keeping Me from My Friends!
When I joined MySpace, I did it as myself - then I found out you could have one with music, so I signed up as a "band" - but then I've been writing more lately, so I signed up as me - the author. Then I got invitations from my friends to join Naymz, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Local events are organized on Capture Carolina and Inside 919, as I live in Raleigh, NC. Then I have my email, my music email, author email, publisher email, an old email that still has a few things sent to it and one I keep for offers and newsletters - though offers and newsletters tend to show up everywhere. I put a blog on this site and one on another as me, the author. There are blogs on all three MySpace sites as well. And my friends wondered why I didn't have time for them!
So now, I have pared down my social media sites. I am trying to keep up with Inside 919 but have let go of Capture Carolina. Sorry, guys. I'm keeping Twitter and Facebook, but the rest have cobwebs on them. All my MySpace sites have been sadly neglected and I am turning my sites to my email situation. But first, let me handle my blogs.
I've opened a blog on my home page of www.jonbatson.com and that is going to be it. If you have been reading my blog - then I thank you. Now you can go to www.jonbatson.com, click the blog link and read on.
Thanks for your attention.
Jon
So now, I have pared down my social media sites. I am trying to keep up with Inside 919 but have let go of Capture Carolina. Sorry, guys. I'm keeping Twitter and Facebook, but the rest have cobwebs on them. All my MySpace sites have been sadly neglected and I am turning my sites to my email situation. But first, let me handle my blogs.
I've opened a blog on my home page of www.jonbatson.com and that is going to be it. If you have been reading my blog - then I thank you. Now you can go to www.jonbatson.com, click the blog link and read on.
Thanks for your attention.
Jon
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Tea Party Party
My friend, Bev Eakman, wrote an article, Saving Civil Society and a Culture of Merit, (http://tinyurl.com/y9zo2qy) in which she said,
A flurry of new conservative websites, groups, and talk-show hosts have emerged in the wake of failing dominoes: ObamaCare, federal takeovers, bailouts, and stimulus packages. Tea-Partiers represent but a smattering of upstart activists that increasingly feel alienated from old stalwarts of the conservative movement: among them, the Heritage Foundation, American Conservative Union, Conservative Political Action Committee and Americans for Tax Reform, Empower America, and even the old Silent Majority and the Dr. Laura show.
Today, the very term “conservative” has a bad rap. The trusty dictionary and thesaurus define conservative variously as “conformist,” “unadventurous,” “old-fashioned,” “old school,” “cautious,” and “conventional.” Nothing exciting, expansive, or smacking of the can-do spirit there. Thus, the “conservative” moniker fails to reflect the level of political anger of those who once were loyalists of a constitutionalist-traditionalist Republican Party, the one fashioned out of the old Revolutionary War-era Whig Party that supported the supremacy of Congress over the Executive Branch and fought for independence as opposed to autocratic rule in alignment with the Founding Fathers.
Go to the site (URL above) to see the entire article.
Bev has been asked to do some writing for the Tea Party movement, in anticipation of a new party. Always up for a party, I will look forward to when it is and what I should bring. I wonder if they need any protest songs.
Please comment back: Are you in the mood for a new, third party?
A flurry of new conservative websites, groups, and talk-show hosts have emerged in the wake of failing dominoes: ObamaCare, federal takeovers, bailouts, and stimulus packages. Tea-Partiers represent but a smattering of upstart activists that increasingly feel alienated from old stalwarts of the conservative movement: among them, the Heritage Foundation, American Conservative Union, Conservative Political Action Committee and Americans for Tax Reform, Empower America, and even the old Silent Majority and the Dr. Laura show.
Today, the very term “conservative” has a bad rap. The trusty dictionary and thesaurus define conservative variously as “conformist,” “unadventurous,” “old-fashioned,” “old school,” “cautious,” and “conventional.” Nothing exciting, expansive, or smacking of the can-do spirit there. Thus, the “conservative” moniker fails to reflect the level of political anger of those who once were loyalists of a constitutionalist-traditionalist Republican Party, the one fashioned out of the old Revolutionary War-era Whig Party that supported the supremacy of Congress over the Executive Branch and fought for independence as opposed to autocratic rule in alignment with the Founding Fathers.
Go to the site (URL above) to see the entire article.
Bev has been asked to do some writing for the Tea Party movement, in anticipation of a new party. Always up for a party, I will look forward to when it is and what I should bring. I wonder if they need any protest songs.
Please comment back: Are you in the mood for a new, third party?
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Selling the Concept: Take Your Meds!
It started with “Touched by an Angel” when the “Angel of the Lord” tells a musician that his medication is a “Gift from God” and he should be on it. The poor fellow couldn't function without his meds, but couldn't be creative while on them. The Angels told him he had to make a choice and give up being creative. Some choice!
Today, TV is selling the concept of medication.
“Criminal Minds” has a fellow who is psychotic because he is off his medication. If he had been on his meds, he would be all right. To the message is “Stay on your meds.”
On “The Mentalist” a police detective tells the consultant, who is acting unusual, “Are you off your meds?” Just another hint to stay on your meds if you don't want to be considered odd or off-kilter.
Do I sound like an alarmist? Should I just ignore one little wise-crack among friends? Or is this part of a new wave of sales techniques for the message of the largest sponsors.
For years everyone on TV smoked. Lighting up a cigarette was a statement, a show of emotion, an offer of love and so on. Have you notice that everyone on television drinks? They meet in a bar, have wine with dinner, have a beer after work or on the weekends. They never get drunk and never have a driving-related accident, unless a character needs to have a shady past – then a DWI comes in handy. But the message is “Have a drink, you won't get drunk or wreck your car.”
And now, the message is creeping in: “Take your medication.” There is no assumption that someone would get along better without artificial medication, just the presumption that someone would be silly enough to think they might. The message is that they had better not try – terrible things happen!
Every time I see that the writers of a show have run out of ideas, the show becomes about the lead character's long lost child from a former flirtation. Ex-soap-opera writers seem to invade every show sooner or later. Soon after, the show dies, replaced by the latest clone of the latest most-watched show.
Lately, I also turn a show off as soon as I see Big Pharma sticking its nose into the writers' business. They'll look for a twist and stick in a pro-psychotropic message, as with The Mentalist – a casual quip between friends. Or they'll write a whole new show around the message, as with Criminal Minds.
There are surely more examples, but truth be told, I don't watch all that much TV of late. One thing I did watch is a video by Citizens Commission for Human Rights, called Making a Killing.
The video covers one of my favorite beefs – the commercials that tell you to “Ask your doctor if Xyzzyx is right for you.” Take a look: Watch it at http://www.cchr.org/#/videos/making-a-killing-introduction.
Today, TV is selling the concept of medication.
“Criminal Minds” has a fellow who is psychotic because he is off his medication. If he had been on his meds, he would be all right. To the message is “Stay on your meds.”
On “The Mentalist” a police detective tells the consultant, who is acting unusual, “Are you off your meds?” Just another hint to stay on your meds if you don't want to be considered odd or off-kilter.
Do I sound like an alarmist? Should I just ignore one little wise-crack among friends? Or is this part of a new wave of sales techniques for the message of the largest sponsors.
For years everyone on TV smoked. Lighting up a cigarette was a statement, a show of emotion, an offer of love and so on. Have you notice that everyone on television drinks? They meet in a bar, have wine with dinner, have a beer after work or on the weekends. They never get drunk and never have a driving-related accident, unless a character needs to have a shady past – then a DWI comes in handy. But the message is “Have a drink, you won't get drunk or wreck your car.”
And now, the message is creeping in: “Take your medication.” There is no assumption that someone would get along better without artificial medication, just the presumption that someone would be silly enough to think they might. The message is that they had better not try – terrible things happen!
Every time I see that the writers of a show have run out of ideas, the show becomes about the lead character's long lost child from a former flirtation. Ex-soap-opera writers seem to invade every show sooner or later. Soon after, the show dies, replaced by the latest clone of the latest most-watched show.
Lately, I also turn a show off as soon as I see Big Pharma sticking its nose into the writers' business. They'll look for a twist and stick in a pro-psychotropic message, as with The Mentalist – a casual quip between friends. Or they'll write a whole new show around the message, as with Criminal Minds.
There are surely more examples, but truth be told, I don't watch all that much TV of late. One thing I did watch is a video by Citizens Commission for Human Rights, called Making a Killing.
The video covers one of my favorite beefs – the commercials that tell you to “Ask your doctor if Xyzzyx is right for you.” Take a look: Watch it at http://www.cchr.org/#/videos/making-a-killing-introduction.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
We're all in China now!
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).
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).
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.
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