Another victim of progressive judges, Chicago

[thebeave]

...Nobody here has ... expertise on his current mental state so its a little presumptuous to assume therapy is the proper place for him or even if it will change his ways.. ...

Hold on there. There have been two articles posted in this thread: one called him a lunatic, the other a maniac, and one noted he attacked a hospital social worker. Why do you think he was interacting with a hospital social worker in the first place?

You claimed I was "assuming" things. I am not assuming; I am concluding based on sources and behavior. His repeated violent acts—including starting fires—combined with the nonsensical, random nature of his behavior, are entirely consistent with severe mental illness. If you dislike that conclusion, please argue against it with evidence rather than dismissing it as an assumption.

In the meantime, here is a 3rd article that settles it:

Mr Reed, 50, has a history of mental illness and has been arrested 72 times since he turned 18, according to a Chicago affiliate of the BBC's partner CBS News.

What is your alternative hypothesis? That he is sane? That conclusion is so detached from reality that the conclusion itself needs medication.

Here are even more details on the attack prior to this one, explaining why he was on an electronic monitor:

At the time of the attack, Reed was on electronic monitoring after a Cook County judge declined to hold him in jail on an aggravated battery charge stemming from accusations that he hit a social worker at MacNeal Hospital Psychiatry and Behavioral Health in west suburban Berwyn.

The inference that he has serious mental health issues is correct. The real question is: Why was he out on the streets?

The answer lies in our broken healthcare infrastructure and the defunding of mental institutions. We are currently forcing the mentally ill through a criminal justice system that is not designed to treat them.

Consider the timeline: He is mentally unstable. He attacks a social worker at a psychiatric ward during treatment. The legal system then asks: should he stand trial for battery? We have a long history of case law regarding mental incompetence, but because we have largely dismantled the state mental institution system, judges are left with no viable options.

Sending a mentally ill person to jail often exacerbates their condition without treating the cause. Putting them on a monitoring program with outpatient therapy is a risk, as we saw here. The judge is forced to choose between two terrible options because the third option—involuntary commitment to a well-funded, secure mental health facility—largely no longer exists.

This situation required a hearing to determine his mental disposition, not just a standard criminal bail hearing. But again, that would require a system where the adjudicator has the power to place Reed in a secure medical facility.

This is a tragedy, but let’s be clear about what it is not. This is not evidence of a "career criminal"—a sane person rationally choosing to commit crimes for personal gain. Nor is it a justification for the fascist pipe dream of using the National Guard to purge the "undesirables."

It is evidence of a broken mental health system, and the direction we choose to fix it is up to us.

I don't think you read my response very carefully. First of all, I was responding to Poli's claim (only) that therapy was the appropriate treatment for him. There are multiple ways of treating mental health issues depending on the diagnosis and analysis of the patient's past history, by a mental health specialist (which he is not). It could very well be that he is schizophrenic, for which medication is often the best and only treatment needed. Or medication and therapy both. Or shock treatments. So, I was not dismissing that he was mentally ill.

My picture of the jail cell was posted because had he been detained behind bars until his trial after his last assault, like prosecutors had strongly recommended, that poor girl would not have been horribly burned. Or do you think he should have gone back to the psych hospital for safe keeping until trial? Is that fair to the staff and social workers there? I still think a jail cell would have been the best holding place for him and the general public, given the alternatives.

Further, you claimed that the use of terms "lunatic" and "maniac" by the posted articles counts as evidence of a mental health issue. The fact is, those words were commonly used in past years to describe mental patients, but are not commonly used in that context today. The colloquial useage is most likely how its used in the articles:

lunatic definition

maniac definition

The fact that he was previously in a psychiatric facility when he committed the previous assault does indicate a mental health issue, so yes, that is good evidence for his condition.

Why you jumped in and claimed I was "assuming" things about your responses is a little odd, TBH. How/why did you think I was talking about you?

 

[Politesse]

First of all, I was responding to Poli's claim (only) that therapy was the appropriate treatment for him.

I said no such thing. What I did say was that throwing him in the pen for a few weeks is not solving the problem, only delaying it.

Rather than echo Don's point, I'll just repost it:

Sending a mentally ill person to jail often exacerbates their condition without treating the cause. Putting them on a monitoring program with outpatient therapy is a risk, as we saw here. The judge is forced to choose between two terrible options because the third option—involuntary commitment to a well-funded, secure mental health facility—largely no longer exists.

Ditto.

This man has been in and out of our penal and healthcare systems his entire life. Another brief jail stay solves nothing. The real problem here is that there is no providence within our system for long-term mental health care once the patient turns 21, they are either in their family's care, or out on the street. Horrific incidents like what happened here are the result, and they are a daily occurence in all American cities.

 

[thebeave]

First of all, I was responding to Poli's claim (only) that therapy was the appropriate treatment for him.

I said no such thing. What I did say was that throwing him in the pen for a few weeks is not solving the problem, only delaying it.

Rather than echo Don's point, I'll just repost it:

Sending a mentally ill person to jail often exacerbates their condition without treating the cause. Putting them on a monitoring program with outpatient therapy is a risk, as we saw here. The judge is forced to choose between two terrible options because the third option—involuntary commitment to a well-funded, secure mental health facility—largely no longer exists.

Ditto.

This man has been in and out of our penal and healthcare systems his entire life. Another brief jail stay solves nothing. The real problem here is that there is no providence within our system for long-term mental health care once the patient turns 21, they are either in their family's care, or out on the street. Horrific incidents like what happened here are the result, and they are a daily occurence in all American cities.

No, you didn't say that either. Your exact words were:

"Jail cells aren't therapy, or this man would be the picture of health by now."

I admit I kind of struggled to understand exactly what you were trying to say, but ultimately inferred that you were advocating therapy in lieu of jail. Maybe I was wrong. So, shoot me. At any rate, I am generally in agreement with what both you and Don said above, except for where you said "Another brief jail stay solves nothing." It wouldn't haved solved any of his problems, but it would have solved the problem of this poor girl suffering immense pain and trauma and getting her life ruined.

 

[bilby]

At any rate, I am generally in agreement with what both you and Don said above, except for where you said "Another brief jail stay solves nothing." It wouldn't haved solved any of his problems, but it would have solved the problem of this poor girl suffering immense pain and trauma and getting her life ruined.

Would it? Or would it have just pushed those problems on to a different "poor girl" who he attacked after his brief jail stay?

Unless you are expecting jail to change him for the better, or you are arguing for life without parole, jail is not capable of achieving the aim of protecting the public from his violence.

Sure, jail would have protected this specific victim; And we naturally feel more concern for specific victims than we do for nebulous and unknown potential future victims. But once he was released and went on to attack a specific person, we would be right back here trying to find a way to protect the person he actually attacked.

No doubt the victim, her family, and her friends would be happier if he had spent a few weeks in jail, and then attacked someone they had never heard of upon his release. But why would we be happier with that outcome? We had never heard of his victim, until she became his victim.

 

[TSwizzle]

I said no such thing. What I did say was that throwing him in the pen for a few weeks is not solving the problem, only delaying it.

Lock him up permanently.

 

[Politesse]

I said no such thing. What I did say was that throwing him in the pen for a few weeks is not solving the problem, only delaying it.

Lock him up permanently.

So you are, in fact, advocating a life sentence in prison for vandalism? (The charge he had been arrested for when the judge made the decision you are complaining about?) Or for the previous charges of physical assault?

Don't get pissed at me for asking. YOU'RE calling for judicial reform. It is not unreasonable to ask what about the law you actually want changed. You have now clearly stated that you believe Charles Reed should already have been "locked up permanently". I have bolded this so you can find it, above. That would not be a legal outcome under our current body of law. So, what do you want changed about our legal system to allow for indefinite detainment without parole in a case where no crime subject to capital punishment has been alleged?

 

[TSwizzle]

I said no such thing. What I did say was that throwing him in the pen for a few weeks is not solving the problem, only delaying it.

Lock him up permanently.

So you are, in fact, advocating a life sentence in prison for vandalism? (The charge he had been arrested for when the judge made the decision you are complaining about?) Or for the previous charges of physical assault?

Where did I say vandalism should be a life sentence? How about you bold that part and I’ll respond to that?

 

[Politesse]

First of all, I was responding to Poli's claim (only) that therapy was the appropriate treatment for him.

I said no such thing. What I did say was that throwing him in the pen for a few weeks is not solving the problem, only delaying it.

Rather than echo Don's point, I'll just repost it:

Sending a mentally ill person to jail often exacerbates their condition without treating the cause. Putting them on a monitoring program with outpatient therapy is a risk, as we saw here. The judge is forced to choose between two terrible options because the third option—involuntary commitment to a well-funded, secure mental health facility—largely no longer exists.

Ditto.

This man has been in and out of our penal and healthcare systems his entire life. Another brief jail stay solves nothing. The real problem here is that there is no providence within our system for long-term mental health care once the patient turns 21, they are either in their family's care, or out on the street. Horrific incidents like what happened here are the result, and they are a daily occurence in all American cities.

No, you didn't say that either. Your exact words were:

"Jail cells aren't therapy, or this man would be the picture of health by now."

I admit I kind of struggled to understand exactly what you were trying to say, but ultimately inferred that you were advocating therapy in lieu of jail. Maybe I was wrong. So, shoot me. At any rate, I am generally in agreement with what both you and Don said above, except for where you said "Another brief jail stay solves nothing." It wouldn't haved solved any of his problems, but it would have solved the problem of this poor girl suffering immense pain and trauma and getting her life ruined.

You were. I think part of your problem is perhaps that you read "therapy" and think of Freudian psychoanalysis or something like that? Any treatment intended to relieve or heal a disorder is a therapy, and that is the sense in which I meant it. There are a lot of potential therapies, some more serious than others. But serial brief detainments in the penal system are not therapies by any definition, and instead most assuredly contributed to the deterioration of this man's condition over three decades of consistent abuse and neglect, both done to and perpetrated by this man. This does not absolve him of blame, but it does mean that our health and legal systems have been repeatedly failing Charles Reed, and by extension Amy Eck, Bethany MaGee, and all of his other victims for the past 32 years.

To me, increasing the rate of arrests and imprisonments is not "solving" this or any problem, and rather is actively making things worse. Just what is the National Guard supposed to do when it gets to Chicago?

 

[Politesse]

I said no such thing. What I did say was that throwing him in the pen for a few weeks is not solving the problem, only delaying it.

Lock him up permanently.

So you are, in fact, advocating a life sentence in prison for vandalism? (The charge he had been arrested for when the judge made the decision you are complaining about?) Or for the previous charges of physical assault?

Where did I say vandalism should be a life sentence? How about you bold that part and I’ll respond to that?

Then clarify. I didn't "accuse" you of an opinion, I'm asking you to tell us what that opinion is. I asked about the vandalism case, because that is the only case you have explicitly mentioned an objection to the handling of, as it is the reason he was on parole at the time of the accused assault on Bethany MaGee. Since that doesn't make any sense at all, I also asked if you meant the previous physical assault, as that would be slightly more reasonable, though still 100% illegal under our current body of law. Assault is not, at present, a crime that carries a life sentence. Somehow, you believe Charles Reed should be in prison for life. In your directly quoted words "Lock him up permanently." You have stated this clearly. I am asking you on what charge should he have been "locked up permanently"? Or by what other legal mechanism, if you did not mean as punishment for a crime?

 

[TSwizzle]

I said no such thing. What I did say was that throwing him in the pen for a few weeks is not solving the problem, only delaying it.

Lock him up permanently.

So you are, in fact, advocating a life sentence in prison for vandalism? (The charge he had been arrested for when the judge made the decision you are complaining about?) Or for the previous charges of physical assault?

Where did I say vandalism should be a life sentence? How about you bold that part and I’ll respond to that?

Then clarify.

lol, quote and bold the part where I said vandalism should be a life sentence.

 

[ZiprHead]

I said no such thing. What I did say was that throwing him in the pen for a few weeks is not solving the problem, only delaying it.

Lock him up permanently.

So you are, in fact, advocating a life sentence in prison for vandalism? (The charge he had been arrested for when the judge made the decision you are complaining about?) Or for the previous charges of physical assault?

Where did I say vandalism should be a life sentence? How about you bold that part and I’ll respond to that?

Then clarify.

lol, quote and bold the part where I said vandalism should be a life sentence.

It was the only charge he could have been held for.

You got busted making a stupid point. Admit it and move on, and stop accusing others of misrepresenting your point.

 

[Derec]

So are you claiming that brief (or long) jail stints improve mental health and make people with severe mental health challenges less violent?

Not necessarily, but at least they are not out in the community, attacking random citizens. And he is more likely to receive some mental health treatment inside than out on the streets.

What this guy learned from Chiraq judges is that he can commit all sorts of crimes, get arrested 72 times, convicted many times, and still face little to no consequences. Do you really think that's the right thing to do for a judge?

 

[Derec]

I suppose for some people it's just easier not to think, out of sight, out of mind.

More like, out of the community, can't terrorize people in the community.

Let's not fund any programs for the mentally ill. Fuck those guys. Oh look, a mentally ill person harming someone. Quick Trump, send in the marines! That won't cost me any money.

Who is saying that we should not fund mental health programs? But judges should not send people with eight felony convictions - including for multiple assaults and for arson - out into the community. Note that even the Democratic Cook County DA objected to this leniency - so it's not partisan and neither should it be.

 

[Derec]

The national guard was tongue in cheek but I think this was more to do with the judge who let him go. Apparently the prosecutor is not pleased with this judge.

Yes. People like Don2 are arguing against Democratic DAs here. This guy had no business being out.

 

[Derec]

Hold on there. There have been two articles posted in this thread: one called him a lunatic, the other a maniac, and one noted he attacked a hospital social worker. Why do you think he was interacting with a hospital social worker in the first place?

So the solution is to just let him go over and over again, no matter what he does?

You claimed I was "assuming" things. I am not assuming; I am concluding based on sources and behavior. His repeated violent acts—including starting fires—combined with the nonsensical, random nature of his behavior, are entirely consistent with severe mental illness. If you dislike that conclusion, please argue against it with evidence rather than dismissing it as an assumption.

Which means he is a danger to others and he should have been held in a mental institution or a mental wing of a prison, not released into the community.

At the time of the attack, Reed was on electronic monitoring after a Cook County judge declined to hold him in jail on an aggravated battery charge stemming from accusations that he hit a social worker at MacNeal Hospital Psychiatry and Behavioral Health in west suburban Berwyn.

The judge is partly responsible for what Reed did to this woman. Even in jail there is medical personell that could have administered psych meds. And in jail he'd not have been able to terrorize the community. Somebody with his history of violence should not have been released after yet another assault.

The inference that he has serious mental health issues is correct. The real question is: Why was he out on the streets?

Because of this judge. Even the Cook County prosecutors objected.

The answer lies in our broken healthcare infrastructure and the defunding of mental institutions. We are currently forcing the mentally ill through a criminal justice system that is not designed to treat them.

They are still better equipped to treat them than being released into the streets. And most importantly, he would not have been able to attack random people.

Illinois and Chicago are completely run by Democrats. Whose fault is it that there is a shortage of closed mental health facilities for the criminally insane?

Consider the timeline: He is mentally unstable. He attacks a social worker at a psychiatric ward during treatment. The legal system then asks: should he stand trial for battery? We have a long history of case law regarding mental incompetence, but because we have largely dismantled the state mental institution system, judges are left with no viable options.

Please cite the Illinois law that prevented the judge from remanding him for a violent crime after well-documented propensity for violence. And even if there is such a law, whose fault is it?

Sending a mentally ill person to jail often exacerbates their condition without treating the cause. Putting them on a monitoring program with outpatient therapy is a risk, as we saw here. The judge is forced to choose between two terrible options because the third option—involuntary commitment to a well-funded, secure mental health facility—largely no longer exists.

He can be better controlled in jail, including for medication compliance. I do not see how anybody can think releasing a violent offender is the better option here.

This situation required a hearing to determine his mental disposition, not just a standard criminal bail hearing. But again, that would require a system where the adjudicator has the power to place Reed in a secure medical facility.

Cite the law that says that the judge could not have remanded Reed pending such a hearing.

This is a tragedy, but let’s be clear about what it is not. This is not evidence of a "career criminal"—a sane person rationally choosing to commit crimes for personal gain. Nor is it a justification for the fascist pipe dream of using the National Guard to purge the "undesirables."
It is evidence of a broken mental health system, and the direction we choose to fix it is up to us.

It's an evidence of a judge that does not care about the dangers offenders like Reed pose to the community.
And locking up dangerous individuals is hardly a "fascist pipe dream" - it is the bedrock of a functioning society.
By all means, reform the mental health system to include well-funded mental hospitals, and make it easier to involuntarily commit dangerous mental cases. But until then, treat them in jail and prisons instead of just letting them go every time they attack somebody.

 

[Politesse]

Not necessarily, but at least they are not out in the community, attacking random citizens.

Why wouldn't they? Jail terms end. Unless that is what you are proposing changing. Are you?

And he is more likely to receive some mental health treatment inside than out on the streets.

Incorrect. Jails are not consistent or effective mental health care providers. Do you believe that they should be? We could design such a system, but we do not have such a system.

What this guy learned from Chiraq judges is that he can commit all sorts of crimes, get arrested 72 times, convicted many times, and still face little to no consequences. Do you really think that's the right thing to do for a judge?

"Little to no consequences"? The man has spent fifty years drifting from one form of temporary involuntary detainment to another, and was otherwise homeless. In what universe is that "no consequence"?

 

[scombrid]

Meanwhile the cunts don’t care that Trump is pardoning another convicted drug kingpin.

 

[scombrid]

Like I wrote.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I don't think you read my response very carefully. First of all, I was responding to Poli's claim (only) that therapy was the appropriate treatment for him.

Nope. I read your response very carefully, so perhaps instead you were being reckless with words. Let's review the words you posted and that I already included in my response.

This is you:

...Nobody here...

"here" is in reference to this thread. "Nobody" means there does not exist a person. In conjunction they begin a mathematical construction: There does not exist a person in this thread such that...

This then includes everyone in the thread, including me....a person whom you just claimed you were not talking about.

To continue with the quote that I already posted in response:

...has ... expertise on his current mental state ...

See this is the section I was responding to.

You have stated in effect There does not exist a person in this thread such that they have expertise on his current mental state.

We have a good amount of knowledge on his mental state and this is sufficient, not full-on psychiatric degrees and "expertise." I have already documented the wealth of knowledge we have. Because there is a sufficient amount of data out there, we need not be psychiatrists. It all follows from logic and evidence. So, people who did read carefully articles about the topic and make inferences came to the correct conclusion that he is a chronically mentally ill person who at times is a danger to society.

Now your particular beef with Politesse might or might not be a thing, but included within your beef, you included everyone else in the thread and made a statement contrary to evidence. This is because there DO exist persons in the thread who have a sufficient level of knowledge of his mental state to comment on what disposition of his person would best serve public interest.

Why you jumped in and claimed I was "assuming" things about your responses is a little odd, TBH. How/why did you think I was talking about you?

This has already been explained as you wrote about everyone in the thread and you were quoted doing so. Perhaps I could be clearer next time as to why I am responding or perhaps next time you could be more careful when you begin statements like "Nobody here." Either way my response is relevant to the thread topic.

I don't think any of this conversation is necessary since it is a board with multiple people and it is expected that people jump in all the time when two posters are writing to each other. For example, Politesse responded to Ziprhead and you jumped in to that.

Now that this is out of the way, let's look at portions of your post related to disposition of Reed:

First of all, I was responding to Poli's claim (only) that therapy was the appropriate treatment for him. There are multiple ways of treating mental health issues depending on the diagnosis and analysis of the patient's past history, by a mental health specialist (which he is not). It could very well be that he is schizophrenic, for which medication is often the best and only treatment needed. Or medication and therapy both. Or shock treatments. ...

*FULL STOP* I think perhaps you have the wrong impression either of Politesse as a person or of the post made. Did you think that Politesse imagined Reed going to a psychotherapist appointment one hour a week to lay on a couch and talk about his mother to an older gentleman in his study wearing a Noam Chomsky sweater and smoking a pipe? That sarcasm isn't meant to be berating, it's meant to illustrate a point to you in interpretation. Politesse wasn't discussing narrowly psychotherapy appointments to the exclusion of anything else. Most of the alternatives you listed in your paragraph ARE therapy. Therapy is "treatment intended to relieve or heal a disorder." The "medication" you refer to as "best and only treatment needed" for schizophrenia would be part of a therapy program. Even "shock treatments" that you mention are therapy--also called electroshock therapy, by the way. Finally, even if we were discussing therapy as an intervention, if everything is working properly and done properly, such narrowly defined psychotherapy is a doorway to broader treatments (also therapy).

So, I was not dismissing that he was mentally ill.

That's fair, but it isn't as nuanced as what you or I was writing. You had written that nobody here had expertise on his "current mental state." I've discussed at length above on why expertise is not necessary and that the knowledge available is sufficient already. But here, let's focus on the word "current." That is, on the preponderance of evidence his current mental state is dangerous to the public and exhibiting mental illness. All of the recent arrests we are aware of show irrational behavior--the kind consistent with mental illness or __mania__ and inconsistent with a sane individual. The frequency of his arrests are absurd and show not merely a consistent pattern, but a __continuous__ pattern: 72 arrests since 18 at 50 years old means ~2.2 arrests* per year. This isn't a situation where we can say yesterday he was mentally ill but today he is fine, but rather there has been a continuous problem since adulthood, possibly even since childhood....we cannot say because that isn't reportable.

My picture of the jail cell was posted because had he been detained behind bars until his trial after his last assault, like prosecutors had strongly recommended, that poor girl would not have been horribly burned. Or do you think he should have gone back to the psych hospital for safe keeping until trial? Is that fair to the staff and social workers there? I still think a jail cell would have been the best holding place for him and the general public, given the alternatives.

There's a lot there. Let's go through this slowly. First, what historically does our legal system do with the insane? How does one work with the other? One purpose of the criminal justice system is accountability and another is deterrent and yet another is rehabilitation. The problem with applying these concepts to the insane is that they might not be able to understand the consequences to their own actions or to stop themselves without intervention or mental health treatment (therapy). Making one accountable makes sense for someone who appreciates the consequences of their actions. Deterring them from future misbehaviors makes sense if they are capable of controlling themselves. Rehabilitation might make sense if prison systems worked that way. (I know you wrote jail but I am talking in general about the system first).

"...psych hospital..." Note that he had previously been in a psych ward at a hospital. This is a different kind of entity from a state-run mental health facility. The former is for acute, short-term care. The latter is for long-term care of chronic conditions. In an ideal world, I think that these kinds of institutions need more funding and in such a world, Reed ought to have been placed in such system __earlier__ by virtue of all the evidence of his chronic issues. The man is now 50 years old. How much more severe is his condition now than it would have been earlier and how much easier would it have been to intervene earlier in his life?

Is that fair to the staff and social workers there?

Note that you could ask the same question on the same grounds about every single mentally ill person in either a psych ward of a hospital or in a long-term mental health facility. Is it fair to social workers and mental health professionals that they sometimes may be physically hurt at work and have very difficult jobs? You could even ask the same question about a guard in a prison who is murdered in trying to argue for the death penalty of _all_ violent offenders in prisons. We simply have systems in place where there is some kind of optimization of public freedom and public security where we err on the side of freedom and life and there are tough jobs in support of those optimizations. These jobs carry risk but they are also voluntary.

Regarding a long-term mental health facility versus a jail proposition specifically for violent mentally ill persons, I see no reason why a mental health facility cannot have restraints and medications as appropriate for the offenders in question who may improve their condition with treatment. I am unaware of any such mental health facility that does __not__ have restraints or even padded rooms on a needed basis.

Let's be clear about something here:

I still think a jail cell would have been the best holding place for him and the general public, given the alternatives.

...the above is a retrospective analysis or as the colloquial saying goes, "hindsight is 20/20." That is what the whole thread is about, hypothetical past scenarios that would deal with the problem differently to produce better outcomes. It begins with the thread "progressive judges..." In other words, it's saying that if only there had been a conservative judge, then this tragedy would not have occurred. The thread op author then went on to say to bring in the National Guard. I am arguing that we have a system of laws and institutions that is in place to deal with the mentally ill (though it has been underfunded and many other things not dealt with adequately). That further if we want to deal in hypotheticals we could also discuss that.

Now, we could also hypothesize that law enforcement (typically MAGAs) probation officers could also have been doing a better job monitoring Reed. This is because he had been out during the time of his latest offense __during curfew__. We cannot blame the judge for believing that persons would do their jobs and that systems being advocated (monitoring programs) work as advertised.

In analysis, one factor here is then the monitoring of Reed. It is more proximal than the judge. And the under-funding and lack of utilizing a long-term mental health facility is more toward a root cause than a proximal cause. The judge's decision to believe in monitoring program and limited risk of that course is arbitrarily in-between these two other causes.

Of course, it isn't really arbitrary. It is part of a pattern to upend institutions in the country. The trolling pwn the libs commentary of sending in the National Guard is a clue as well. BUT, even ignoring all that drama, there's still work to do here, is there not?

More than 30% of seriously mentally ill people in the country do not receive mental health treatment. We see in thread after thread in this forum, MAGAs make excuses for someone with a gun murdering someone: "Oh well, they were mentally ill. We do not need gun control." Okay, fine. Then, what is being done to make society safer and _better_ considering all these mentally ill people? Cutting funding by DOGE but that was par for the course over a lot of time of removing funding. And what have Republicans done about healthcare costs which feed into pushing patients out of those psych wards faster?

In reality, when we look objectively at causes of events there are many. The causes we choose to focus upon and the solutions we therefore then advocate for say a lot about us as individuals.

 

[Elixir]

Isn’t it wonderful that we have so many heavily armed mental health specialists poised and ready to eliminate threats to innocents like Fizzle.