America"s Painful Self-Delusion

Authored by Allen Marshall (Crimson Avenger) via Defiant Living blog,

America is the only nation brought forth by a set of beliefs, and those beliefs, captured so eloquently in our founding documents, are some of the most powerful and inspiring ever conceived. We consider this to be the land of the free, where the individual is supreme and nothing prevents us from going as far as our talents can take us. That image of America – that “brand” – is incredibly strong.

However, there’s a very large gap between that long-held image and the reality of America today.

What was once a government built for the people is now a government run for the rich and powerful, one that throws the people under the bus whenever their interests differ from those of the corporate and political leaders who run the show.

And living in one world (the corrupt) while stubbornly believing you live in another (the ideal), despite mounds of evidence, causes a distinct kind of stress, often called cognitive dissonance.

Psychologists suggest that when people are in a state of cognitive dissonance, they’ll search for a way to resolve it, either by rejecting one view or the other as either wrong or unimportant. If you’re a smoker looking at the link between smoking and cancer, for example, you’ll either quit smoking or decide that the research is biased, wrong, or doesn’t apply (in other words, that you’re smart enough to quit before the long-term damage is done).

But what happens if you can’t resolve the two?

For most of us Americans, resolving our cognitive dissonance would mean either accepting that we’re impotent and living futile (and feudal) lives, or rejecting our lifestyles and actively fighting the rot in the system.

If we’re not willing to do either of those, the dissonance stays – and eats at us.

People carrying this kind of ongoing, underlying stress find ways of coping with it; in America we’re doing it with self-medication, compulsive behaviors and distractions. Consider the following examples of the way we cope with the ever-present stress in our lives:

• Drugs – Our country is awash in drugs, both legal and illegal, that keep us numb. In 2014, there were 245 million prescriptions filled for opioid pain relievers. The number of deaths from drug overdoses has risen from around 30,000 in 2005 to 64,000 in 2016. And communities across the country are being devastated by the opioid epidemic, as explained in this in-depth reporting by Cincinnati.com.


• Drinking – People don’t only use drugs to self-medicate; drinking does the trick as well, and we’re doing a lot more of it than we used to. According to a new study in JAMA Psychiatry, overall drinking in the US increased by 11% between 2002-13, while high-risk and problem drinking rose even higher: high-risk drinking rose by 29.9%, while problem drinking rose by 50%.


• Mental Illness – In 2015, 17.9% of adults held a diagnosis for a mental disorder, while a 2010 study found that 46.3% of children ages 13-18 had a mental disorder at some point in their young lives, and the majority of those adults and children are given prescriptions. This includes a dramatic increase in ADHD diagnoses for children: According to SharpBrains, “Among children aged 5 to 18, between 1991-92 and 2008-09, rates of ADHD diagnosis increased nearly 4-fold among boys – from 39.5 to 144.6 per 1000 – and nearly 6-fold for girls – from 12.3 and 68.5 per 1000 visits.”


• Obesity – If drinking and drugs aren’t your thing – or even if they are – more of us are coping with stress by overeating, and it’s showing up on our waistlines. From 1990 to 2016, the average percentage of obese adults increased from 11.1% to 29.8%; when you add in the number of people who are overweight but not obese, it rises to more than two in three adults.


• Sleeping problems – Sleep has a significant impact on our physical and mental health, and in America we’re not getting enough of it: The CDC states that 50-70 million American adults have a sleep or wakefulness disorder.


• Media Usage – Is there any better distraction from life’s problems than media? We certainly spend a lot of our time being passively entertained: In 2016, Americans consumed an average of 10 hours of media per day, compared with 7.5 hours per day globally. Nielson reports that lower income adults spend much more time with media than do affluent adults, with adults in households with include under $25,000 watching 211 hours/month of television, versus 113 hours/month for adults in households earning $75,000 or more. (The trend is similar across other media as well.)


• The Disease of Debt – According to the New York Fed, household debt reached a new peak in the third quarter of 2017, at $12.8 trillion. Part of our debt problem comes from the compulsive shopping we do as a distraction; the other results from denying the reality that our wages aren’t keeping up with the increase in the cost of living, meaning that we use debt to plug the gap rather than reducing our living standards to align with our reality.

We’re collectively doing so much damage to ourselves, solely to protect our psyches from the reality that the America that used to be is no longer the America we have. And who does that help? As you can see from the points above, it doesn’t help us: Instead, it helps the rich and powerful who are subverting the system. They’re corrupting everything this country once was, and by willfully refusing to acknowledge that reality, we’re inadvertently helping them to do it.

The best thing we can do – for our mental and physical health, as well as for our country – is to open our eyes to what America has become, not what we wish it still was. It’s time to face reality and take action.

Does Hope Trump Reality?

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal.

“Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.

"They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”

-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

The Fed’s balance sheet will not be growing unless we have another market crash.

• GDP barely grew in the 1st quarter.


• Stock valuations are at all-time highs.


• The auto industry has begun to implode.


• Corporate profits are falling.


• Retailers are declaring bankruptcies and closing stores like we’re in the midst of a depression.


• Wages for the average person are stagnant. Real household income is declining when using real inflation numbers.

Hope can work for awhile but it eventually runs head on into reality.

We are living in a hope driven, profoundly abnormal society. 

“Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

-Red – The Shawshank Redemption

“Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.”

President Snow – Hunger Games

People don’t realize it, but danger is lurking just over the horizon.

Democrats Question Trump's Sanity, Blasted For "Weaponizing Mental Health"

The desperation is becoming grotesque as the left"s inability to move through the stages of grief is ever more evident.

In the latest farcical attempt to create a narrative, as The Hill reports, a growing number of Democrats are openly questioning President Trump’s mental health.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) in a floor speech this week called for a review of the Constitution"s procedures for removing a president. He warned the 25th Amendment of the Constitution falls short when it comes to mental or emotional fitness for office.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) during a weekend interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” said that “a few” Republican colleagues have expressed concern to him about Trump"s mental health.

And Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) plans to introduce legislation that would require the presence of a psychiatrist or psychologist in the White House.

The Democrats justify their questions by pointing to Trump’s habit of making demonstrably false claims.

“It’s not normal behavior. I don’t know anybody in a position of responsibility that doesn’t know if they’re being rained on. And nobody I work with serially offers up verifiably false statements on an ongoing basis,”

So not hapy with dividing the nation by sex (all of them), race, wealth, and clothing manufacturer, The Democrats have decided to pray on mental health, which has invited criticism that they have gone too far...

“It’s divisive. The bottom line is, if Trump doesn’t succeed, we all fail. It’s time to give the guy a chance,” said Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.).

Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) both burst out laughing when told some Democratic colleagues were questioning Trump’s mental health.

“Are you serious?” Hunter asked. “Yeah, I don’t care what they say.”

“I think that’s a stretch,” Simpson said.

Furthermore, mental health professionals say the politicization comes at a cost. Political actors suggesting an opponent has psychological problems risks stigmatizing people with actual mental illnesses, they say.

“I think the politicization is troubling,” said Joshua Miller, a psychologist at the University of Georgia whose research focuses on pathological personality traits and personality disorders.

“We certainly wouldn’t want individuals to use mental illness as a weapon to harm others.”

Still when all you have an identity-politics hammer, every feeling-hurting problem is a nail.

Perhaps the Democrats should remember that, as Judge Jeanine notes, "the American people voted for Trump because he made sense to them..."

.@JudgeJeanine: "The American people voted for [@realdonaldTrump] because he makes sense to them." pic.twitter.com/dCV4HqCyBn

— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) February 17, 2017

House Votes To Overturn Obama Gun Rule Banning Sales To The Mentally Impaired

The House continued to dismantle Obama"s legacy one item at a time, when on Thursday it struck down regulations that blocked gun ownership by some who have been deemed mentally impaired by the Social Security Administration.

The House voted 235-180 along party lines Thursday to repeal an Obama-era rule requiring the Social Security Administration to send records of some beneficiaries to the federal firearms background check system after they’ve been deemed mentally incapable of managing their financial affairs. The database is used to determine eligibility for buying a firearm.  

The rule, when implemented, would affect about 75,000 recipients of disability insurance and supplemental insurance income who require a representative to manage their benefits because of a disabling mental disorder, ranging from anxiety to schizophrenia. It applies to those between age 18 and full retirement age.  Critics said the rule stripped Second Amendment rights from people who are not dangerously mentally ill, such as those who have eating disorders or mental disorders that prevent them from managing their own finances.

“This is a slap in the face for those in the disabled community because it paints all those who suffer from mental disorders with the same broad brush,” said House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. “It assumes that simply because an individual suffers from a mental condition, that individual is unfit to exercise his or her Second Amendment rights.”

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, called the Social Security regulation “reckless, overly broad and an affront to the Second Amendment rights of people with disabilities." He introduced an identical resolution to reverse it in the Senate on Thursday with 25 Republican co-sponsors, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

“Whenever the government acts to limit the fundamental constitutional rights of citizens, it must do so carefully, lawfully and in a way that doesn’t unduly impact law-abiding Americans,” Grassley said in a statement.

The rule, which took effect Jan. 18 and sets a December compliance date, requires the agency to notify individuals of their possible prohibition from possessing or receiving firearms and their rights to appeal.

The National Rifle Association opposed the rule. While the group says it supports keeping guns away from the mentally ill, it said the determination about who is mentally ill should be left to the courts. “The Obama administration’s last minute, back-door gun grab would have stripped law-abiding Americans of their Second Amendment rights without due process,” said Chris Cox, the NRA’s top lobbyist.

Supporters of the rule said the step was necessary to keep guns away from people with mental disorders like schizophrenia and severe anxiety. Democrats agreed the government must not stigmatize those with disabilities but said this rule affects a small group with severe, long-term mental disorders preventing them from doing any work. Passage of the resolution puts others at risk, they said.

“These are not just people having a bad day,” said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif. “These are not people simply suffering from depression or anxiety. These are people with a severe mental illness who can’t hold any kind of job or make any decisions about their affairs. So the law says very clearly they shouldn’t have a firearm.”

According to The Hill, Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-Conn.) accused Republicans of weakening the background check system. "The House charged ahead with an extreme, hastily written, one-sided measure that would make the American people less safe," she said. The Social Security Administration rule would have reported the disability recipients with severe mental disorders to the FBI"s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. House Republicans turned to the Congressional Review Act to overturn the regulation. The law allows lawmakers to roll back rules they disapprove of. Critically for Republicans, the resolutions cannot be filibustered in the Senate.

The regulation is among a host that Republicans aim to repeal under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to dismiss an outgoing administration’s recently enacted regulations. It requires only a simple majority vote in the Senate.

Earlier Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said House efforts to block five Obama regulations by the end of this week are “just the start.” The House has also voted to overturn a rule to protect streams from coal mining debris, a rule requiring federal contractors to disclose labor and worker safety violations, and another rule requiring oil, gas and minerals companies to disclose payments to foreign governments. “In the weeks ahead, we will act on more resolutions to deliver relief from excessive regulations,” Ryan said. “When you think about the fact that the Obama administration was issuing major regulations at a rate of one every three days, this is real sea change.”