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| From American Madness, by Jonathan Rosen, The Atlantic |
In this case the good intentions to help rehabilitate people with mental health problems. Started with John F. Kennedy in 1963, I learnt about it in the late sixties and still remember R.D. Laing, mentioned above. I remember how everyone got hot on R.D.Laing. During our LSD days, man. And then on the pop version of Laing: the “turn on, tune in, drop out” of Timothy Leary. The Road to hell...” , man. The days of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. Anything goes. I remember hearing about it. That mental health was just an invention by society, that we were all on a spectrum, that we were all “normal” -- insanity as “a perfectly normal adjustment to an insane world” -- just some of us are more normal than others. Or some less normal. A spectrum.
I don’t recall that I bought into this whole concept, and I don’t have a blog from the time, so that’s just my recollection: that I thought... hmmm... interesting, yeah, but no.
But it most assuredly was an idea of the Left and it was indeed driven by the idea that we would make things better for crazy people and better for society as a whole. But which went awry. And led to the homeless epidemic on the streets of California today, half of whom have mental health issues.
And when they try a course correction, as it seems New York Mayor, Eric Adams is trying, there’s immediate kick back:
Because there’s nothing like doubling down on a failed policy.
According to people who spend their times among the homeless, about half have mental health issues and about half are drug addicted. Many both. Very few because they’ve lost a job and are temporarily short of money. Most are there for treatable problems. It can be done. It has been done. It’s just a matter of overcoming the likes of the American Civil Liberties Union, who want to keep on walking down that Road to Hell. Because they don’t recognise that it’s the road to hell. Weird but true. There are many who don’t recognise, for another example, that defunding the police and weak sentencing policies, have led to high double digit increases in crime across the Untied States. Weird but true.
Here’s what happened:
