What Jon Stewart Said about the Charleston Massacre

50 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

1. Gordon Wilder says:

   June 20, 2015 at 4:18 pm

   I am ignorant, do not follow much TV and am totally unfamiliar with Jon Stewart
   but
   HOORAY for someone in the media who has his head on his shoulders, not somewhere else unmentionable.

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • Ellen Lubic says:

     June 20, 2015 at 4:47 pm

     Gordon…Stewart is IMO the greatest troubador of our times. And now, following Colbert, who is also in this small group of truth teller reporters, you might watch John Oliver….and even Bill Maher who is a bit too brittle and self serving These men, with dark humor, recount the real story of American and world history and politics.

     LikeLike

     Reply
     • Christine Langhoff says:

       June 20, 2015 at 11:08 pm

       I agree, Ellen. But I find it odd that our leaders are late night TV hosts.

       LikeLike

     • Ellen Lubic says:

       June 21, 2015 at 1:36 am

       Yes, Christine…good point. Of course, under the guise of comedy, they are free to say more than others, and without fear of blow back. It is why their punditry is so important.

       LikeLike

2. Joseph says:

   June 20, 2015 at 4:22 pm

   Is it guns that are causing all of these murders with his hand wringing.? He would dare not challenge his most powerful sponsors.

   Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold’s medical records have never been made available to the public.
   Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.
   Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.
   Chris Fetters, age 13, killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac.
   Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.
   Mathew Miller, age 13, hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days.
   Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.
   Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.
   A boy in Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed stand off at his school.
   Michael Carneal (Ritalin), age 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded..
   A young man in Huntsville, Alabama (Ritalin) went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another.
   Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others.
   TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates.
   Rod Mathews, age 14, (Ritalin) beat a classmate to death with a bat.
   James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers.
   Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania
   Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) – school shooting in El Cajon, California
   Jarred Viktor, age 15, (Paxil), after five days on Paxil he stabbed his grandmother 61 times.
   Chris Shanahan, age 15 (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman.
   Jeff Franklin (Prozac and Ritalin), Huntsville, AL, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic’s file, then attacked his younger brothers and sister.
   Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported to have been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.
   Kevin Rider, age 14, was withdrawing from Prozac when he died from a gunshot wound to his head. Initially it was ruled a suicide, but two years later, the investigation into his death was opened as a possible homicide. The prime suspect, also age 14, had been taking Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants.
   Alex Kim, age 13, hung himself shortly after his Lexapro prescription had been doubled.
   Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself.
   Billy Willkomm, an accomplished wrestler and a University of Florida student, was prescribed Prozac at the age of 17. His family found him dead of suicide – hanging from a tall ladder at the family’s Gulf Shore Boulevard home in July 2002.
   Kara Jaye Anne Fuller-Otter, age 12, was on Paxil when she hung herself from a hook in her closet. Kara’s parents said “…. the damn doctor wouldn’t take her off it and I asked him to when we went in on the second visit. I told him I thought she was having some sort of reaction to Paxil…”)
   Gareth Christian, Vancouver, age 18, was on Paxil when he committed suicide in 2002,
   (Gareth’s father could not accept his son’s death and killed himself.)
   Julie Woodward, age 17, was on Zoloft when she hung herself in her family’s detached garage.
   Matthew Miller was 13 when he saw a psychiatrist because he was having difficulty at school. The psychiatrist gave him samples of Zoloft. Seven days later his mother found him dead, hanging by a belt from a laundry hook in his closet.
   Kurt Danysh, age 18, and on Prozac, killed his father with a shotgun. He is now behind prison bars, and writes letters, trying to warn the world that SSRI drugs can kill.
   Woody ____, age 37, committed suicide while in his 5th week of taking Zoloft. Shortly before his death his physician suggested doubling the dose of the drug. He had seen his physician only for insomnia. He had never been depressed, nor did he have any history of any mental illness symptoms.
   A boy from Houston, age 10, shot and killed his father after his Prozac dosage was increased.
   Hammad Memon, age 15, shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and “other drugs for the conditions.”
   Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary student, shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.
   Steven Kazmierczak, age 27, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system.
   Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen, age 18, had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School – then he committed suicide.
   Asa Coon from Cleveland, age 14, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.
   Jon Romano, age 16, on medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his
   New York high school.

   Missing from list… 3 of 4 known to have taken these same meds….

   What drugs was Jared Lee Loughner on, age 21…… killed 6 people and injuring 14 others in Tuscon, Az
   What drugs was James Eagan Holmes on, age 24….. killed 12 people and injuring 59 others in Aurora Colorado
   What drugs was Jacob Tyler Roberts on, age 22, killed 2 injured 1, Clackamas Or
   What drugs was Adam Peter Lanza on, age 20, Killed 26 and wounded 2 in Newtown Ct

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • Ellen Lubic says:

     June 20, 2015 at 4:55 pm

     Guns are certainly the starting point. Roof got the gun as a birthday gift. With his history of mental problems, who would give him that kind of gift? And the psychogenic drugs that are handed out like candy without warnings about their side affects, create a deadly scenario. Big Pharma and Big Weapons industries, make it a perfect storm for mainly young males with intense hormonal input, plus rage issues, to exterminate multiples of innocents.

     LikeLike

     Reply
   • artseagal says:

     June 20, 2015 at 5:42 pm

     Joseph… you diatribe is powerful.

     LikeLike

     Reply
   • Threatened Out West says:

     June 20, 2015 at 9:14 pm

     As someone who has had to be on antidepressants for much of my life, I am tired of people who make the problem out to be about medications. This is part of the reason that mental illnesses are still so taboo in society. We wouldn’t blame murders on heart medications or diabetes medications.

     LikeLike

     Reply
     • Joe says:

       June 20, 2015 at 9:30 pm

       Thank you, Threatened Out West, I am also tired of people who try to blame all these horrific massacres on drugs or medications. It’s too simplistic and is there any actual scientific study about a connection between these shooters and the medications they supposedly take?

       LikeLike

     • dianeravitch says:

       June 20, 2015 at 10:40 pm

       Joe, the killer was taking hate pills

       LikeLike

     • Threatened Out West says:

       June 20, 2015 at 10:46 pm

       Thank you, Joe. We are doing a major disservice to people with mental illness, in particular students, by making mental illnesses and the need for medication out to be some sort of weakness of character. It’s an illness. We wouldn’t say that people with cancer have a weakness of character.

       I didn’t tell people for years that I was suicidal, which I was by the age of 7, because of the stigma. How much better would I be today if I could have gotten help when I was younger?

       LikeLike

     • Threatened Out West says:

       June 20, 2015 at 11:03 pm

       http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/its_not_about_mental_illness_the_big_lie_that_always_follows_mass_shootings_by_white_males/

       A good article. Joseph–it links studies that show that most killers DO NOT have mental illness.

       What is your source for your diatribe?

       LikeLike

     • artseagal says:

       June 21, 2015 at 7:05 am

       Threatened Out West, glad these medicines have worked for you. I know someone who was a highly respected researcher for a major drug company who quit because this person knew that certain drugs were making it through the trials process but had VERY SERIOUS and KNOWN side effects that were ignored in the name of profit. This person understood from a medical standpoint what was coming down the pike for too many people taking a particular type of drug. Drugs are definitely not the end all in the equation… in fact they should be a last resort. But they are not treated this way. In working with students, teachers contend all the time with this. In what Joseph lists, our nation is dealing with strong societal “illness” from bullying to poverty and a host if issues in between. These medicines can be helpful for many but are clearly not a panacea.

       LikeLike

     • Threatened Out West says:

       June 21, 2015 at 11:15 am

       But there are a LOT of us that take these medications that are never violent. Blaming mental illness or medications is a cop out, and just makes people terrified of those with mental illness to the point that we hide our symptoms and often don’t get the help we need.

       LikeLike

     • Threatened Out West says:

       June 21, 2015 at 11:20 am

       And making the medications “a last resort” means that the person has suffered a long time before they can get help. For those of us with really stubborn, long last mental illnesses, the medications are the ONLY help. You wouldn’t say that “medications should be the last resort” for someone with diabetes or heart disease, would you? For those with bipolar or schizophrenia or really major depression, the medications are NECESSARY.

       I’m horrified that many of the commenters here just take the “medications are evil” line without really understanding that those of us with mental illness are almost never a threat. In fact, those with mental illness are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators.

       The lack of decent help for mental illness and the stigma of these diseases means that we are victimized twice. It’s not right.

       LikeLike

   • M says:

     June 21, 2015 at 1:01 am

     Maybe try a few of those drugs.

     The inference you make seems to be that medications cause psychiatric problems.

     While anti depressants are seldom prescribed to teens because of their still developing brains and a known association between anti depressants causing suicidal thoughts in children for unknown reasons, you list people who are square adults as well so I imagine that isn’t your concern.

     Ask yourself this, is it more likely psychiatric drugs caused psychotic behavior or that the people likely to be on psychiatric drugs are already more prone to such behavior. For those who have none known, were they at a likely age when a psychiatric illness would present itself such as but not limited to schizophrenia.

     You list one who killer who killed after a few days on Paxil…it takes weeks for all anti depressants I know of to work including Zoloft Paxil and Luvox .

     Take this dream about big pharma elsewhere please. Mental illnesses are too real and too serious to be blamed on a conspiracy theory like this.

     LikeLike

     Reply
     • Ellen Lubic says:

       June 21, 2015 at 2:52 am

       Unfortunately, some meds like hallucinogenics such as Halcyon (no longer marketed), may cause worsening of symptoms, particularly in the not fully formed brains of youth. I believe the latest research shows that the human brain is not fully formed until age 22, but this is not my field, so perhaps someone here can expand on this. And not all prescribing MDs are fully informed. Too many depend on the advice of the Pharma detail sales people, and mis-prescribe meds intended for one illness to such as bipolar to use as sleeping medication based on partial info from non-experts. Amgen has had huge financial setbacks for this sort of situation…as have other drug companies. It is trial and error with many psychiatrists who may prescribe meds along with talk therapy, or by themselves. Lots of problems also with addicting properties which often lead to overdose and fatalities. There is much good info online at legitimate sites such as the major medical centers.

       LikeLike

     • M says:

       June 21, 2015 at 5:18 am

       I have not heard of a doctor prescribing hallucinogenics. As for off-label usage of products, or misusage, those imo fall into the area of malpractice if a doctor is relying on a sales pitch to determine what to prescribe someone though some feel most SSRIs are created equal etc. so then they let themselves be moved to a brand since they end up doing trial and error with patients anyway to determine what works.

       As for the content of this thread, blaming mass murder on teenagers seeking help for mental illness and saying that the drugs somehow caused them to commit their crimes is also harmful. Throwing out those kinds of claims stigmatizes people who seek help for illness as any association they have with a product that someone reads on the internets can have such a harmful effect, can harm the reputation of anyone taking them.

       There is no substantial proof that this claim is valid or research that confirms it. There are many millions of people on psychiatric drugs and there are a handful of students with too much access to weapons and problems that they were trying to treat that then took their pain and turned it on others.

       The farthest you might be able to take it is that of the small percentage of people who commit such crimes many of them seek help for mental health issues some of which may attempt to be treated psychiatrically. To extend that to “their doctors are incompetent and the drugs cause X issues” is a massive leap in the chain of scientific evidence (shall we count the implicit assumptions necessary for such a drug to succeed over decades).

       I was a senior in High School when Columbine happened – before that mass shootings were not remotely common feature of the American psyche. SSRIs have been in use for several decades at this point with the newest ones I know of being at least a decade old.

       There is no reason to shun these drugs or declare doctors incompetent because some of their patients made fatal decisions. There is a very human element here that is extremely intangible and isn’t so easy to solve as pills are simply part of the solution – all studies I’m aware of come to the conclusion that therapy of various kinds in conjunction with medication work best.

       To attribute what happened to all these people as some conspiracy of big pharma to cover up the effects of their drugs only serves to taint those who take them to solve real medical problems. It smacks of the dismissiveness that depression was once treated with and anxiety disorders.

       In other words – what should they have done instead? Not “what drugs are today’s killers taking?”

       LikeLike

     • Threatened Out West says:

       June 21, 2015 at 11:21 am

       M: Thank you. I’m glad someone on this forum gets it.

       LikeLike

     • Threatened Out West says:

       June 21, 2015 at 11:23 am

       Because I’m on antidepressants, I now have to get a doctors note every six months in order to keep my driver’s license. Talk about stigma.

       LikeLike

3. Thomas Hauck says:

   June 20, 2015 at 5:00 pm

   The latest FBI statistics (2013) show an average of over 23 people per day are killed by firearms in the US. The Charleston nine are being accorded some respect and deservedly so, but what about the others who are killed and buried without any public remorse.

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • Duane Swacker says:

     June 21, 2015 at 11:16 am

     Why, because this was obviously racially motivated killings with an ulterior motive of starting a racial war. There are many white/white, black/black, nationality/nationality, etc. . . killings.

     LikeLike

     Reply
4. Dr. Marie Fonzi says:

   June 20, 2015 at 5:42 pm

   Everyone is missing the bottom line. Peel away the layers of hatred in this kid’s being. Look into his dead eyes and see what led him to this horrific behavior. This kid was lost, alone, an isolate, who was never identified and helped to find his way. While easy access to weapons and internet messages may have contributed to this tragedy in differing degrees, the most important basic ingredient that led this kid to alienation leading to the destruction of innocents was his PAIN. In this case the killer acted alone while, in other tragedies, the isolates found each other and banded together. We need to identify and guide these children before their pain festers and they reach for weapons.

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • Dottie says:

     June 20, 2015 at 7:26 pm

     I agree Dr. Marie Fonzi. This is what has been taken away from schools. I went to the school counselor many times to try to get my troubled students help to little or no avail. There is no longer time nor money for this. I will not be surprised to see one or more of my students on the news for something awful like we have already seen. A sad statement for me to say.

     LikeLike

     Reply
   • Joe says:

     June 20, 2015 at 8:48 pm

     He wasn’t alone, he did have friends who are now coming forward.

     LikeLike

     Reply
5. MathVale says:

   June 20, 2015 at 7:16 pm

   I am very saddened. It is hard to comprehend. Yet nothing will be done. Growing up, guns were just another tool in the shed for hunting. Now, they are a way of life and a religion for some of the unhinged fringe.

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • Stan Armour says:

     June 21, 2015 at 8:42 am

     MathVvale, as much as people continue to blame the gun, many law-abiding citizens in the US own guns and the vast majority do not shoot people. Please stop blaming the gun. Until we recognize what the problems in society really are, nothing will ever get fixed…

     LikeLike

     Reply
     • dianeravitch says:

       June 21, 2015 at 10:10 am

       Stan, it would seem that we should stop selling guns to all until we “recognize what the problems in society really are,” as you put it. In the meanwhile, too many wing nuts and extremists and fascists have guns. We need to limit or ban the sales until those problems are solved.

       LikeLike

     • Duane Swacker says:

       June 21, 2015 at 11:26 am

       Can’t agree with you Diane on “it would seem that we should stop selling guns to all until. . . ”

       I am a legal owner and sometimes shooter of a number of guns. I enjoy practicing shooting and sometimes go hunting. (although not much as I am a more of a piscatorial pleasure seeker). It is not the inanimate object, the gun, that is the problem. It is our society’s total embrace of the death and destruction machine that specifically targets and propagandizes young men into seeing that war machine and killing the “other” as patriotic, admirable, desirable. It’s called desensitization and the blind adherence/obedience to a false patriotism.

       LikeLike

     • dianeravitch says:

       June 21, 2015 at 12:16 pm

       Duane, I am not running for office. I sincerely believe that only the police and military should carry handguns. Rifles for hunting, maybe. But certainly careful checks of I.D. and background. This psychopathic racist in SC should not have had a gun of any kind.

       LikeLike

6. Ed Johnson says:

   June 20, 2015 at 7:27 pm

   Diane asks: “Why do we do so little to keep Americans safe at home?”

   Well, if we did that, then we would have to admit cooperation would serve us better than competition, especially here at home.

   My open letter to then-First Lady Laura Bush, on July 9, 2003, then a decade later to President Obama, on December 14, 2012, invites them to consider:

   “On [the] one hand, invariably, the few winner kids who grow up mostly on extrinsic motivators will learn to perpetuate win-lose behavior as normal behavior, the way the “real world” works. ….

   “On the other hand, invariably, the many loser kids who grow up mostly on extrinsic motivators will learn to take on self-protective behaviors generally not conducive to anybody’s well-being, including their own. The continuing epidemic of school shootings exemplifies this behavior, in the extreme.

   “Contrary to popular opinion, the many school shootings have not been random acts of violence; they have been normal acts of violence, built into educational systems that encourage win-lose behavior, especially success at the expense of others.”

   So consider that, if only in his way of thinking perhaps formed from having been tagged “loser” in some way too many times, 21-year-old Dylann Roof figured out how to become a “winner” by terrorizing and causing, by gunshot, the death of nine adults, at Emanuel AME Church, Charleston, SC, on June 17, 2015.

   Also consider that, if only in his way of thinking perhaps formed from having been tagged “loser” in some way too many times, 20-year-old Adam Lanza had also figured out how to become a “winner” by terrorizing and causing, by gunshot, the death of 20 children and 6 adults, at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, CT, on December 14, 2012.

   A great number of other examples can be considered, and competition in the form of explicitly or implicitly winning by loss of human life is the common element among them all. Whether school shootings, church shootings, police shootings, inter-group, intra-group, goading suicide, whatever the context, the common element is the same — winning by loss of human life.

   So consider that the real culturally inculcated and deeply rooted cause just might be less about “racism” and instead be more about competition, a most insidious and inhuman form of competition — the kind of competition to which no people have complete immunity, as history shows.

   Still, doesn’t it stand to reason that competition inculcated inappropriately, or even appropriately, at one time and place is more likely to show up at a later time and place as a Dylann Roof or an Adam Lanza than if cooperation had been inculcated?

   LikeLike

   Reply
7. Duane Swacker says:

   June 20, 2015 at 8:50 pm

   “Why do we do so little to keep Americans safe at home?”

   It is not a matter of doing so little. One cannot prevent every tragedy from happening. But we could do a hell of lot more starting with reigning in our War Department and all that it entails. Eisenhower warned us of the Military Industrial Complex. The most powerful writing/speech of MLK in his Riverside Church speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” in which he stated:

   “I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

   The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

   Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

   Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say. Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. . . .

   Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents. . . .

   I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor — both black and white — through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

   Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.”

   And so it is today, 2015 with our aggressive wars of invasion and dominance over others outside this country. And the “normalization” of the “war on terror” has stoked the fires of hatred in too many Americans. If it is fine for our country to kill with impunity why can’t any individual kill with impunity? The “other” is disposable!

   LikeLike

   Reply
8. Barbara says:

   June 20, 2015 at 9:55 pm

   As I was watching Stewart, I realized I wished he could be President. Outstandingly eloquent. As much as I liked Obama’s statements, I don’t think it is an accident that the TPP reemerged during this whole tragedy and in fact I think Obama will use this tragedy for cover to pass the terrible trade deal that will further impoverish Americans.

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • dianeravitch says:

     June 20, 2015 at 10:41 pm

     TPP will outsource more jobs

     LikeLike

     Reply
     • Robin S. Kuykendall says:

       June 20, 2015 at 11:29 pm

       And I believe that it will destroy the remnants we have of the rule of law. It is a terrible mistake for civilization.

       LikeLike

9. SomeDAM Poet says:

   June 20, 2015 at 10:33 pm

   “Cultivating Hatred”

   Racism is the root
   Evil is the plant
   Violence the fruit
   Cultihate we shan’t

   LikeLike

   Reply
10. subversivemommy says:

    June 20, 2015 at 11:04 pm

    How does a White-American comedian make more sense in 5 minutes, than a country of 350 million, can’t figure out about events that span at least 400 years?!

    LikeLike

    Reply
11. michaellangford2012 says:

    June 21, 2015 at 10:48 am

    “The inference you make seems to be that medications cause psychiatric problems.” actually, No. Joseph’s *diatribe* is a classic “correlation ergo causation” argument. The dissenting arguments here are equally flawed, extending a particular to serve as a generality (my meds don’t make me psychotic…)
    Doctors commit malpractice regularly, they are beholden to pharmaceutical companies, and the latest edition of DSM leads us further down the path of prescribing unproven medication instead of counseling and compassion.
    Be tolerant, we’re all in this together…

    LikeLike

    Reply
    • Threatened Out West says:

      June 21, 2015 at 11:33 am

      I can’t believe I’m reading all of this on a forum of supposedly enlightened educators. Counseling and compassion alone will NOT take care of the mental illness issues. No one would say that to a diabetic–“We’ll just give you counseling and compassion. No need for insulin.”

      I sincerely hope that none of you who made these uninformed comments ever have to go through mental illness, and that none of your loved ones have to go through it, either. It’s a lonely, difficult, and humiliating process to get help, and it takes years of struggle. The stigma is all too real, and it prevents people from getting the help that they need, often before it’s too late and they take their own lives.

      And to claim that “doctors commit malpractice regularly” is similar to what teachers have to go through. Doctors are human, and mistakes happen, and a few doctors are crooks. But to lump all of them together because of a few awful ones is disgusting. Teachers have the same thing happen to them, and we have decried the policies that lump all teachers together on this very forum.

      I’m sorry that I’m seeing this in a progressive forum. Diane–not your fault, but I’m sad for the students with mental illness.

      LikeLike

      Reply
      • dianeravitch says:

        June 21, 2015 at 12:18 pm

        Threatened Out West, I haven’t seen any report that the killer was on medications. I don’t know how that became an issue on the blog. Is there a med for hatred?

        LikeLike

      • M says:

        June 21, 2015 at 12:25 pm

        Diane it’s all a response to Joseph’s rant that Stewart is in the pocket of Big Pharma (“his sponsors”) and that it’s not access to guns that’s the problem (where’d that come from?) but access to psychiatric medications for lots of teens who killed themselves and/or others and were on medication, and the open ended question of which drug turned this sad teen into this monster.

        LikeLike

      • dianeravitch says:

        June 21, 2015 at 1:08 pm

        Thanks, M. I try to read every single comment but I missed that one. So Jon Stewart is in the hands of Big Pharma? Absurd. He is the best political commentator in the media. Bar none.

        LikeLike

      • Christine Langhoff says:

        June 21, 2015 at 12:29 pm

        Rick Perry called this deliberated act “an accident” and theorized it was caused by prescription opiates.

        http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/19/rick-perry-charleston-church-shooting-accident

        Dylann Roof was previously arrested and found to have had the drug Suboxone: “The Wall Street Journal reports a police incident document said Roof was found to have strips of Suboxone, a pain drug sometimes used to treat opiate addiction. He did not have a prescription for the drug, which is commonly sold illegally on the street.”

        LikeLike

      • Christine Langhoff says:

        June 21, 2015 at 12:35 pm

        Threatened –

        I’m sorry too, to see this kind of discussion here. It seems until people live through the pain caused by a mental illness like depression that they just don’t understand the nuances of it. Or perhaps, they find it so frightening they won’t accept it as being a reality.

        I have found Andrew Solomon’s book, “The Noonday Demon” to be of tremendous help towards a greater understanding.

        LikeLike

      • Christine Langhoff says:

        June 21, 2015 at 12:47 pm

        And here’s the ever topical NYT, suggesting treatment for mental illnesses via a computer program without a therapist. You know, like teaching without teachers.

        http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/depressed-try-therapy-without-the-therapist/?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

        LikeLike

      • Threatened Out West says:

        June 21, 2015 at 2:07 pm

        Thank you to those who backed up my comments. Diane–I’m sorry if I hijacked this forum. That was not my intention. But I couldn’t sit back and say nothing when Joseph went on his rant and then people agreed with him. I, too, have seen nothing that indicates that this killer was being treated for any legitimate mental illness, and I doubt that there will be that evidence.

        LikeLike

      • michaellangford2012 says:

        June 21, 2015 at 8:38 pm

        The water supplies of most major cities are a toxic cocktail of heavy metal residues, petrochemicals, known and unknown carcinogens, and (for some) measurable quantities of pharmaceuticals. Fracking will add exponentially more.
        Hospitals struggle with antibiotic-resistant staph and strep, while herbicide-resistant weeds encourage the use of even more glyphosate by increasingly corporate agriculture. Nobody know what the long-term effects of GMO foods will be, Europeans don’t want them and I don’t either. USDA definition of *organic* is a bad joke. Obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are on the rise, quite possibly related to the consumption of sugar, fat, and carbohydrates (+hormones and preservatives) on an unprecedented scale.
        Pass the Prozac®

        LikeLike

    • M says:

      June 21, 2015 at 11:52 am

      My proof was not “my meds don’t make me psychotic” – it was more “millions of people take these meds and don’t become psychotic” combined with millions taking them over decades with no clinical proof of causing this kind of disturbance.

      Claiming the DSM is basically malarkey for lack of a better word, the creation of greedy doctors and big pharma to solve what you say is a lack of “counseling and compassion” is not a valid argument – it seems to infer that all mental illness is invalid at the very least. The biggest additions to the DSM were many designations regarding the autism spectrum, mood disorders, depression, and anxiety disorders receiving different delineations (recognition) with separate criteria for diagnosis.

      Yes we have millions of people seeking help for acute mental distress because big pharma told them they should. I have nothing else to say except that your belief in a lack of compassion and counseling extends to a lack of compassion who have very real suffering requiring more than a pat on the back and assurances that everything will be ok.

      LikeLike

      Reply
      • Threatened Out West says:

        June 21, 2015 at 2:10 pm

        Amen, M.

        LikeLike

12. bethree5 says:

    June 22, 2015 at 8:09 am

    Chiming in late after much thought on this thread. I for one am glad to get a sampling of reactions from such an intelligent and well-read crowd on MI, its treatment, & how that may or may not relate to this & other mass shootings in recent years.

    I agree with many here that the social context [racism & associated hatred– its encouragement & social acceptance in Roof’s environment] is first and foremost factor to be addressed and discussed. In fact the poem posted by Columbia”s Poet Laureate says it best– he is one of us. However the discussion of drug availability/ war on drugs/ affect on the mentally unstable must be had as well, given that the killer was picked up for suboxone abuse a few months prior.

    Joseph’s post suggesting we blame ‘all of these murders’ on over-/mis-prescription of AD’s & Ritalin is simplistic at best; one might equally point to the failure of professionals to find helpful treatment for Lanza, Loughner, Holmes. Yes, our society complicates and even worsens delivery of health treatment (like delivery of education) by delegating issues of public good to profit-driven enterprise. But trying to attribute any proportion of our huge violent crime statistics to mental illness/treatment is like saying K-12 test scores have caused the downfall of the economy.

    If any discussion of drugs can be related to the Charleston crime, the ‘war on drugs’ would be more germaine. Suboxone is part of the heroin-opiates-& substitute maintenance therapy chain.

    LikeLike

    Reply