A caricature is putting
the face of a joke on the body of a truth.
(Victory, by Joseph
Conrad)
What is most important for
democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great
fortunes should not remain in the same hands, In that way there are
rich men, but they do not form a class.
(Alexis de Tocqueville,
author of Democracy in America, 1835)
2016
I can't say I'm unhappy
about seeing the end of 2016 even though 2017 holds promises of being
much worse. In October of 2016 my dearest friend was murdered in her
home. It was brutal and violent and has changed my life forever.
In December of 2016 I was
diagnosed with moderate osteoarthritis in my right knee, hardly earth
shaking, uncommon nor remotely unexpected. It has, however, become a
permanent and irritating reminder of my physical self. But
“irritating” is the operating word, not chronic, debilitating
pain that can control a person's life in so many ways.
Increasing the pain in
America
Angus Deaton, the 2015
winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, published a study along with
his wife Anne Case, about a segment of white America, which has
proven to be eye opening and startling in its conclusions.
The two economists analyzed
various information on working class whites, 45 to 54 years of age,
with less than a college education. They discovered a 22% rise in
death rates from 1999 to 2013, largely due to alcohol, drug abuse and
suicide. (See white America). Deaton and Case concluded that this was
a community engulfed by pain, which is both chronic and persistent
physical and emotional pain. The researchers have suggested that
possibly one-half million people are dead who should not be.
A people's dream died at
the Battle of Wounded Knee.
(Black Elk, Lakota holy
man)
A pain perspective
Frantz Fanon, the French
psychiatrist, achieved near cult status in the 1960s among the global
Left. Fanon, the author of Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched
of the Earth, explored the relationship between racism, colonialism,
mental illness and freedom while serving as a psychiatrist during the
Algerian War of Independence against France. Fanon himself was born
in the Caribbean island of Martinique to descendants of free black
cocoa farmers.
Frantz Fanon was most
interested in the psychological injuries, particularly the “shame
and self contempt” it spreads among its victims. He also noted that
both the oppressed and the oppressors were locked together and the
chains could not be broken until those that were oppressed chose to
struggle for their own independence.
Today, the American
Psychological Association states that “pain has biological,
psychological and emotional factors.” It is not purely a physical
sensation. We know now that chronic pain can certainly cause feelings
such as hopelessness, sadness, anxiety and most definitely anger.
An American dystopia
No, the death rates in
general among African-Americans is still greater than rates for white
Americans, but for a particular segment of white America—in the
millions—there is a backward trend, unlike any other group in the
developed world at the present time. It likely began in the early
1980s.
Yes, it is an oftentimes
unspoken belief and feeling that this is the group that has provided
the racist ground troops, the neo-Nazis, the xenophobia and the
bottomless ignorance that has allowed the American kleptocracy to
manipulate and exploit the so called white working class.
After all, wasn't it “Johnny
Reb” in 1860, barefoot and penniless, that marched off to defend a
vile, racist plantocracy? And yes, is this not the group that is
about to put Donald Trump in the White House?
Of course the element of
truth is there. But the pain, physical and psychological is real. And
who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor? Can it sometimes be
one and the same?
The painful cause
The truth may not always set
you free but it has always been visible if you are ever so willing to
actually study your surroundings. Frantz Fanon was right. It really
is a matter of the oppressed finally deciding to be free.
Right now a significant
percentage of the rich and the powerful in the United States is
gleefully ready to gut American health care (among so many other
things), which includes critically important mental health services.
No one will be arriving in the nick of time to save us.
For an interesting example
of our “free market” health care system go to Inside the WestVirginia prescription painkiller epidemic.
