“And please let us not forget all of the mean-spirited talk about mental illness and people not being allowed to buy guns, as if we don’t already have a bunch of armed and deranged police and corrections officers in this country who, especially, shoot, and often murder, unarmed African American and Latino men, at alarming rates each year”
Dear friends,
I was perusing some articles from the past, and ran into one by my
old and dear friend, legendary Philly journalist Elmer Smith. This is an
important piece, on the link below. It deals with a subject, as quiet as it’s
kept, that every family experiences. It is mental illness.
To be sure, a number of great thinkers, from Freud to Fromm to
Fanon, have pointed out the significance of our mental life to its physical
counterpart. Unfortunately, cost accounting as opposed to methods of healing,
has dominated the dialogue in “health care reform”.
Not even insurance companies take the problem seriously, as they
do, for example, with physical well-being. However, our mental life is, literally,
half our our existence.
Nevertheless, regarding mental illness and the right to vote,
religious and political illusions often debase that aforementioned right - e.g.
the Tea Party. (is that group’s activity related to mental health?). “ And
please let us not forget all of the mean-spirited talk about mental illness and
people not being allowed to buy guns, as if we don’t already have a bunch of
armed and deranged police and
corrections officers in this country who, especially, shoot, and often murder,
unarmed African American and Latino men, at alarming rates each year”. In fact,
is this really a sane society?
Finally, while there is mention of the term, in the piece on the
link below, I always cringe at the reference to “mental retardation”. After
all, at least to me, there is an equality of intelligence among all people, since
we each learn that which we choose to learn at whatever pace to which we are
able. Besides, as Dr. King taught us, in his manifesto called “Letter from a Birmingham
One Love!
G. Djata Bumpus
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