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Edited on Tue Jan-11-11 11:54 PM by truedelphi
It is said that insanity is merely doing the same thing over and over again, yet expecting some different results.
Sometime on Sat Jan 9th 2011, a lone gunman opened fire on a group of people in Arizona, leaving twenty people wounded, six fatally, and putting the target of his ambition, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, in critical condition.
Much is now being made of the fact that the year 2010 was a year in which huge amounts of money were diverted from the mental health fund for Pima County AZ. There is now ample speculation that had this money diversion not occurred, then perhaps Loughner would not have been roaming the streets equipped with an automatic gun and ready to use it. Instead we are to assume that Loughner would have obtained the services that his mental condition required.
Making those assumptions is simply one of the many ways that people cope with this tragedy. And of course, none of us will ever know.
However, if we examine the previous July, when only a handful of our elected officials voted against the 33 Billion dollar budgetary item that ensures this nation's ability to continue to wage a war in Afghanistan, then an insightful picture comes into focus.
It no longer seems possible to allow our states to afford many necessary activities, such as education, fire fighting, social programs or mental health services. There are wars to fight, dammit. And before anyone ask for such services, the accounting must be done, and the wars must be allocated the monies for those primary activities. This is the nation that we have become, the very nation that Dwight D Eisenhower once warned us of:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. Dwight D. Eisenhower
Between the heist of the eleven to thirty trillion dollars (and counting) "electronic monies" that the Geithner/Bernanke duo have trundled out the back door of the Federal Reserve, over to their friends on Wall Street, and the trillions of dollars spent on Homeland Security matters, including TSA, together with the monies spent on our wars and military adventures, we citizens have been robbed. We now live in an age where the provision of any type of social services for the People is not possible.
If you wanna start saying that it is the RW Talking Heads who bear responsibility, you won't find any argument from me there. Their actions have been the political equivalent of a hypnotic trance imposed upon the minds of many people - their notion that violence is a normal and decent way to solve one's problems, dislikes and concerns.
But until we find ourselves people in Congress willing to relinquish the campaign funds from the MIC lobbyists, we will not see the return of funding for mental health matters. And so a vicious circle is created, and will not be slowed from its ascent to power any time soon.
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