The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Whatever Happened to ‘Crazy’?

Posted on | April 4, 2014 | 24 Comments

Headline at American Power:

Fort Hood Shooter Was Being Treated for Depression

The Associated Press reports:

Unstable mental health may be a “fundamental, underlying cause” of a soldier’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood that left four people dead, though an argument with another service member likely preceded the attack, according to investigators.
Spc. Ivan Lopez turned his gun on himself after killing three people and wounding 16 others Wednesday at the sprawling Texas military base, where more than a dozen people were fatally shot by a soldier in 2009. An Army truck driver from Puerto Rico, Lopez was undergoing treatment for depression and anxiety while being evaluated for post-traumatic stress disorder, base officials said.

(Hat-tip: Regular Right Guy.)

We have become so sensitive about mental illness that we are afraid to call crazy by its right name. Since no one else will do it, therefore, let me be the first to say that Ivan Lopez was crazy, bonkers, deranged, off his rocker and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Being the Internet’s Leading Amateur Expert in Crazy, I’ve sometimes been accused of insensitivity toward nutjobs and wackos.

Sympathy for the demented has become so widespread that people nowadays write books  about how crazy they are, hoping to win some kind of Victimhood Derby Prize, like the lesbian professor who wrote a book about her borderline personality disorder. Being an affirmative action “twofer” — both female and homosexual — wasn’t enough for her, you see. Now she’s also disabled, so that if she goes off the deep end and starts having lesbian S & M orgies in the classroom as part of her Women’s Studies lectures, the university wouldn’t dare fire her, for fear of a civil-rights lawsuit.

Don’t laugh. Hugo Schwyzer nearly got away with that trick.

Using mental illness to play the Victimhood Card is becoming routine. Last year, when it was revealed that notorious Twitter troll Melissa Brewer (@catsrimportant) was a convicted prostitute, she immediately claimed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as an excuse. Because being a crazy whore is somehow better than being a sane whore.

So now we have the media telling us that Ivan Lopez was “undergoing treatment for depression and anxiety,” as if shooting 19 people before committing suicide wasn’t a big enough clue that his mental health was “unstable.” Gee, ya think so?

As I said four years ago, after Pentagon shooter Patrick Bedell was shot by police, “Whatever Happened to Crazy?

 

Comments

24 Responses to “Whatever Happened to ‘Crazy’?”

  1. ariyadesai01
    April 4th, 2014 @ 11:20 pm

    RT @smitty_one_each: TOM Whatever Happened to ‘Crazy’? http://t.co/9qdbiSM8vB #TCOT

  2. Kimberlin Unmasked
    April 4th, 2014 @ 11:25 pm

    Crazy is all around us. Many homeless people are not being treated and are not on the meds that would help them live more productive lives. But I am deeply disturbed about this trend in the military – where for the sake of political correctness, like in the case of Nidal Hasan, things are not being called by their real names, and disturbed people are not getting the help they need.

  3. Kirby McCain
    April 5th, 2014 @ 12:12 am

    I suppose even crazy people have the right to refuse medical treatment.

  4. Another GFZ Success! | Regular Right Guy
    April 5th, 2014 @ 12:49 am

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  5. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    April 5th, 2014 @ 1:03 am

  6. Adjoran
    April 5th, 2014 @ 3:01 am

    Crazy is definitely underused. It all goes back to the early ’70s court rulings that mentally ill people had to be allowed freedom unless they posed a direct threat to themselves or others. So all the inmates of mental institutions, most harmless but incapable of functioning and caring for themselves, were turned out onto the streets, becoming “the homeless.”

    And now it is almost impossible to have someone involuntarily committed until they’ve done something to make incarceration indisputably needed.

  7. Adjoran
    April 5th, 2014 @ 3:02 am

    Yes, they do. Crazy, eh?

  8. Zohydro
    April 5th, 2014 @ 9:12 am

    If they’re living on the pavement in a puddle of their own urine, maybe not!

  9. Zohydro
    April 5th, 2014 @ 9:20 am

    And look what we’ve got out of it—the highest incarceration rate in the world!

  10. Zohydro
    April 5th, 2014 @ 9:42 am

    Our troops really deserve better leadership, n’est-ce pas? I’d read recently that perhaps hundreds of our top commanders have been canned simply for their ideological impurity in not embracing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to the satisfaction of Obama…

  11. richard mcenroe
    April 5th, 2014 @ 9:44 am

    According to the NY ACLU in a precedent setting court case, that is an ‘exciting life choice’.

  12. M. Thompson
    April 5th, 2014 @ 10:38 am

    I saw a homeless woman pushing some stuff around this morning, shouting at the world obscenities.

    The only conclusion was that she is nuts.

  13. Dana
    April 5th, 2014 @ 10:56 am
  14. Rosalie
    April 5th, 2014 @ 11:26 am

    I’m not really sure how many buildings Creedmoor State Hospital had when I worked there; maybe 50. It had its own police force and fire department – plus apartments for doctors and employees. Thorazine was used very successfully, so maybe that had something to do with patients be released too.

  15. Bozikek
    April 5th, 2014 @ 11:37 am

    I recall visiting the ruins of nuthouses across New England in my youth. Some of the buildings are truly amazing in scale.

    It seems almost sad that such institutions were are destroyed rather then reformed.

  16. Rosalie
    April 5th, 2014 @ 11:53 am

    When I worked at Creedmoor it was thriving. I believe all those buildings have now been reduced to one big building. There’s something on the Internet about Building 25. I have no recollection of it. I worked in Building M. What was sad is that they’d put kids that ran away from home, and were normal, in with the mentally ill patients. It happened all the time in the building I worked in.

  17. Bob Belvedere
    April 5th, 2014 @ 4:37 pm

    Our next door neighbor’s brother is ‘incapable of functioning and caring for [himself]’, but the state courts will not allow him to be committed.

    They paid for a condo for him to live in, which he was just thrown out of because of the stink coming out of his unit and because he let his bath tub overflow and damage the units below.

    The state has announced they will no longer pay for him to have a place to live.

    His brother is elderly, has no other family, and has health problems, but the state will not allow him to commit his brother to an institution where he can be looked after and protected against himself.

  18. Bob Belvedere
    April 5th, 2014 @ 4:38 pm

    Why are you hanging around with Democrats???

  19. M. Thompson
    April 5th, 2014 @ 5:15 pm

    I was going to the College Republican State Convention in downtown Minneapolis. So, it was in the heart of enemy territorry.

  20. Rosalie
    April 5th, 2014 @ 5:50 pm

    I wonder if he could be put in a nursing home? If his brother knows the township commissioner, or someone with a little influence, maybe he could get him in that way. He wouldn’t get away with being destructive and he would live a more structured life, which would be good for him. There’s got to be someone who can help. Maybe through the church?

  21. Rosalie
    April 5th, 2014 @ 5:54 pm

    Portland, OR, where my son and his family live have a big problem with the homeless. But no matter what city we’ve visited, in this country or out of this country, there are homeless people. So it’s everywhere.

  22. Matt_SE
    April 5th, 2014 @ 5:58 pm

    I must dissent on this one. I have no problem calling sociopaths, psychopaths, multiple personality disorder people, etc “crazy.” They are unable to distinguish delusion from reality (much like Democrats *ZING*).
    But simple depression does not meet this standard, IMO. I think the Fort Hood shooter must’ve had other problems not yet diagnosed in order to do this.

  23. K-Bob
    April 5th, 2014 @ 5:58 pm

    The libs made it a thought crime to identify people as crazy. It’s part of the long march. And kudos to them for thinking in scales of time like decades and centuries.

    The idea all along was to have them out on the streets, voting Democrat. Never mind that the streets look like Detroit.

    Republicans never seem to think beyond this month’s cronyism.

  24. M. Thompson
    April 6th, 2014 @ 10:52 pm

    It’s more of a problem in places with mild climates.