Half truths, whole lies.

Why it's not mental health.

The American holiday has turned into a three part horror. One part celebration, one part shooting and then the last part, the crying.

We are over “thoughts and prayers” or “tots and pears”. The conversation that follows about guns is charged with emotion of lost loved ones, heart breaking stories as well as questions of need versus rights. In this conversation mental health is also typically sited as an underlying cause of the shootings. Here’s hoping the topic of mental health may soon be replaced.

Right wing culpability is often drawn about shootings as the conservative right and guns along with the ridiculously monikered “pro life” movement seem to own this territory. The GOP are the hand that gives and takes with the same sweeping motion. The “why” never seems to end and keeps this perpetual motion machine going. If guns don’t kill people why are there so many dead? Mental health is the one answer that, when the conversation leads there it lands and stalls like it is an unfixable inevitability. People feel ill equipped to fix mental health. So then we are quiet or start ciphering the obligatory list of “things Reagan did” that we must somehow just live with now.

Thirty years have passed since Reagan left office.

One obvious gun solution is to keep guns out of the hands of the mental ill. The logic becomes a chicken and egg story and difficult to stop before an incident. A person gets a gun, makes their plan in secret and goes on a rampage. Either there were no red flags, no red flags visible, or red flags buried after the shooting deaths which often include the shooter. There are always warnings if you look. So what now? Clairvoyants at every gun emporium? Sweet.

Mental health is in a crisis in our country and there is little denial of that. A person dealing with depression, paranoia or other troubles, homelessness, lack of a job, each trouble compounds the other. Mental illness is difficult but not impossible to deal with.

We are in a war of words and thoughts and deeds. This war unlike a conventional war is woven into our lives through tv, phone and media du jour. Bias is in the news we choose, the friends we keep and in a crowded setting we may now be targets. Chilling is the word of the day, I prefer terrorizing, for that is what it is and if you’re mentally ill, it’s likely paralyzing too, unless it is taken as a call to action.

What is a call to action? “Stand back and stand by”. I’d say so. And these calls to action are coming not from unconventional places. They are coming from traditionally, the most conventional place. The top of the Republican Party and those that consider these thoughts as a command to help. Mass shootings aren’t new and neither are the pushes into violence by some to get others to do their bidding. Every dictator used them. We don’t have a dictator but we do have a mean guy with a huge megaphone who won’t quit. So, make guns widely available and tell your fragile supporters how unfair life is and how you need them.

The internet is alive in the dark web with similar more targeted calls of persecution and how to help. How to be a useful patriot. Subtle and not so subtle messaging and igniting passion in people. There is much more and less obvious tricks that are the same but worse. The effect is like taking a person with PTSD and banging a pot over their head endlessly and wondering why they become violent. Must be mental illness. Sure, but, the pot.

Bela Lugosi in his role as Dracula in the 1931 film of the same name, working his spell.

Free speech. It’s uniquely American as hot dogs and guns. It’s not so without a cost, as it seems our children and every minority is a target. Have we seen a shooting at a MAGA gathering? No. No guns allowed. It’s a managed gathering at a hall or fair grounds. No guns.

Free speech. We learn it’s not ok to yell “Fire” unless there is one. Free speech is our protected right to speak our mind freely to criticize our government or praise it. We can do it at home or a street corner. Inciting another to violence you don’t want to do yourself is sinister. Mob tactic, sure. The mobster puts a spin on a top and walking away says “Whatever the top is gonna do, is up to the top”, is disingenuous at best, another lie.

The lines between shootings in schools, gatherings of blacks, a Jewish neighborhood don’t seem so random but hard to connect. The lines are there, buried in the code of the internet and written by those who seek to pull at a weakened string.

The government is working on it. The internet isn’t simple. We can be and must be more diligent in our response as what we can accept. Demand the truth. If we can’t get that, ok, don’t accept the lie.

Like the every book about Vampires tells us, they can’t come into your house and bite you, unless they are invited in.