{"id":6216,"date":"2018-02-18T13:33:51","date_gmt":"2018-02-18T21:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=6216"},"modified":"2018-02-22T14:27:49","modified_gmt":"2018-02-22T22:27:49","slug":"reader-asks-vin-to-lay-off-the-bullshit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=6216","title":{"rendered":"Reader asks Vin to ‘Lay off the bullshit\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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One \u201cEtaoin Shrdlu\u201d has posted a comment below my post \u201cToo busy wiretapping candidates, rigging elections, covering their asses,\u201d (immediately below) as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cHey Vin, I just read another of your articles elsewhere. Lay off the \u2018SSRIs cause shootings\u2019 bullshit, huh? I know it\u2019s popular among the Limbaugh crowd to try to lay blame on SSRIs or anything else but the guns, but the fact is that for the vast majority of people taking them, we\u2019re stabilized by them, not turned into psychopaths. If you want even more school shootings, cut off everyone\u2019s medications so that they\u2019re untreated.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I know perfectly well that sometimes people have adverse reactions. One of my in-laws had to be strapped into a hospital bed for a week until they got one drug out of his system. Guess what? It\u2019s pretty easy to tell when someone goes berserk because of a new prescription, and it can be STOPPED really easily.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease give my regards to LNS; I hope he is doing better now. Kind regards, — E. Shrdlu, Esq.\u201d<\/p>\n

As 1,500 words is a bit of a heavy mouthful for the \u201cComments\u201d section, I\u2019ll reply here:<\/p>\n

VIN REPLIES:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hello, \u201cEtaoin\u201d —<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve posted your comment about the connection between SSRI drugs (including Prozac, Luvox, etc.) and mass shootings by troubled young men . . . most of whom appear to have been on, or withdrawing from, these very drugs . . . after a post where I believe I don\u2019t even mention the subject.<\/p>\n

Puzzled readers looking for some background may want to click through to my latest piece to mention this topic, at <\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.firearmsnews.com\/network-topics\/culture-politics-network\/theres-plenty-we-could-do-about-mass-shootings\/#ixzz57Tyunji4<\/a> <\/p>\n

(scrolling down to the sub-head \u201cAsk About The Crazy Drugs\u201d . . . <\/p>\n

. . . where, for the record, I was careful to note \u201cThe vast majority of people taking these drugs, of course, do no harm\u201d)<\/p>\n

. . . or, further down on this site, to a Dec. 5 post titled \u201cThe Dog That Didn\u2019t Bark,\u201d (
\nhttps:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=5953 <\/a>), scrolling down to the sub-head \u201cWhat Links All the \u2018Mass Shooting\u2019 Loonies?\u201d<\/p>\n

The facts are: 1) Leaving aside systematic, government-approved genocides against Jews, Armenian Christians, Ukrainians, Native Americans, etc. (which are evil, but not our topic today), we search almost completely in vain for this kind of mass shooting by troubled young men, anywhere, before the 1980s. They are historically highly abnormal. So: what changed in the 1980s?<\/p>\n

2) The prescription of these Selective Serotonin Uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs — Prozac, Luvox, etc.) — along with drugs advertised as \u201ccontrolling Attention Deficit Disorder,\u201d including Ritalin — to young inmates of the coercion-based government schools skyrocketed during and since the 1980s.<\/p>\n

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3) Leaving aside Muslim terrorists as at Fort Hood and the Boston Marathon, many (probably most — though we don\u2019t have access to medical records for all) of these mass killers were either ON these drugs, or in proximate withdrawal from them, at the time they committed these weird, anti-social crimes. (Specific examples are detailed in my two posts cited above.)<\/p>\n

4) The lengthy, fine-print \u201cwarning\u201d sheets included in the packaging of many (if not all) of these drugs \u2013- required by federal licensing authorities \u2013- mention such frightening, KNOWN AND ACKNOWLEDGED side effects as \u201cdepression, hallucinated voices, suicidal tendencies,\u201d etc., and<\/p>\n

5) The pharmaceutical firms that manufacture these drugs have a huge vested interest in discouraging or debunking or even threatening into silence anyone seeking to publicize these links, and plenty of resources to \u201cencourage\u201d those who are willing to do such debunking, dismissing those who gather up and attempt to publicize these simple facts as misguided or hostile \u201cconspiracy nuts,\u201d etc.<\/p>\n

DRUGS NOT THE ONLY PROBLEM<\/strong><\/p>\n

Which of these facts is \u201cbullshit,\u201d Etaoin? None of them. Dismissing obvious or provable facts as \u201cbullshit\u201d -\u2013 simply because we find them unpleasant, inconvenient, or threatening — is probably not a strategy well designed to help us analyze the causes of mass shootings, or our efforts to prevent them in future.<\/p>\n

If you want to argue that these drugs do more good than harm, feel free to present or link to some statistics to make that case. <\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t called for a \u201cprohibition\u201d of these drugs -\u2013 I\u2019m generally against government Prohibitions, which only create unregulated \u201cblack markets\u201d where the courts become unavailable to help enforce quality control and punish negligence and fraud. But could their formulas be altered? Might lower doses cause less harm? Could sensible changes be made in how they\u2019re prescribed and to whom, possibly warning much more strongly against prescribing to teen-age males, or at least advising parents, teachers and others to watch for and promptly report signs of the development of the more dangerous side effects, to physicians who could then impose a closely supervised withdrawal? <\/p>\n

We won\u2019t know if we try to shut off these discussions by crying \u201cBullshit!\u201d<\/p>\n

Nor have I said or implied that these drugs are the ONLY cause or problem.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ve repeatedly said that arming teachers and staff who are willing to undergo some handgun safety training (as in Israel) would provide immediate on-site defense, as well as a disincentive for these crazy shooters, who do seem to retain enough sanity to seek out the soft targets of our \u201cgun-free zones\u201d (seldom attacking police stations, for example.)<\/p>\n

But the coercion-based government youth propaganda camps (\u201cpublic schools\u201d), as well as being the TARGETS of most such shootings, are clearly also the breeding ground of the problem. Home-schooled kids don\u2019t do this shit.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

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For one thing, gathering young people together by age cohort, locking them away from the adult society amidst which they would ENJOY learning how to be normal adults, is unnatural, even perverse. It also encourages the young and the weak to be bullied mercilessly. Attend a screening or \u201cRock \u2018N Roll High School\u201d or watch the episode of \u201cBuffy the Vampire Slayer\u201d in which the high school gets blown up. Listen to the cheers from those who survived this \u201cinstitution.\u201d Does this teach us nothing?<\/p>\n

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Our government schools are now largely run by women — both as teachers and as administrators. (And what men remain are essentially gelded by the regulatory and administrative structure. How free are they, really, to say, \u201cYou boys seem restless, let\u2019s just leave all these books and go out and take a nature walk, or play a pick-up game of touch football\u201d?)<\/p>\n

Women, though of course they have some fine and indispensable attributes, are not well suited to raising and schooling teen-age boys, since they\u2019ve never BEEN teen-age boys. Male fathers and father-figures are not only better at disciplining young men (and I do not use \u201cdiscipline\u201d simply as a synonym for \u201cpunishment\u201d), they also understand that these kids need to be active. Many teen-age youths, newly come into their strength and virility, are literally, physically unable to sit still, walled up in boring classrooms, for interminable hour after hour.<\/p>\n

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In part since FEMALE administrators and teachers could literally be quickly overpowered by even a single teen-age boy — let alone a group of them — they seek to impose and maintain institutional \u201corder\u201d above all. So they welcome a medical excuse to treat the alleged \u201chyperactivity\u201d of these young men as a disruptive DISEASE, dosing them up with various drugs in hopes they can get them to sit still, even it means the subject boys are turned into zonked-out, anti-social zombies. (See the vast expansion of the extra-funded \u201cspecial needs\u201d classification -\u2013 implying all these lads are \u201cretarded,\u201d even if the use of that word itself is now banned.)<\/p>\n

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I see this as a problem.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, bright, inquisitive children of normal intelligence could absorb far more useful knowledge and skills than they currently get in 12 or 13 years of government schooling, in as few as three to seven years -\u2013 much of the later years in self-guided reading -\u2013 as was common in this country before the Civil War and certainly before 1917, when we produced some of our greatest and most productive geniuses.<\/p>\n

(I doubt most government-school inmates today could even stand and read aloud and make sense of the letters of Jefferson and Washington -\u2013 the latter honored above all for his “character” but NOT considered an intellectual giant of his time -\u2013 let alone pen anything demonstrating an equivalent eloquence, vocabulary, or complexity of thought. Yet these men never set foot in any institution resembling today\u2019s \u201cpublic schools,\u201d and their TOTAL \u201cschooling\u201d amounted to only a few years, mostly self-directed in the libraries of their rural neighbors.<\/p>\n

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THE BIGGER PICTURE<\/strong><\/p>\n

Government schooling today is s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d- o-u-t to (and past) age 18 because a) it\u2019s a jobs program, where today barely 50 percent of the staff actually teach in a classroom — tax-subsidized in a way that rewards every possible incentive for keeping bored butts in the seats — and b) because of the fallacious theory that citizens aged 15 to 18 have to be kept off the job market because there \u201caren\u2019t enough jobs to go around.\u201d<\/p>\n

How many of these mass shooters have been married? None that I know of. Yet it\u2019s obviously biological more normal, sensible and healthy for young people to marry and start families soon after reaching sexual maturity -\u2013 certainly by age 17 or 18, as was common in this country before 1917 and as remains common in much of the world. <\/p>\n

Why does our culture (and that of modern Europe) discourage such healthy behaviors? A change here would obviously boost our statistical \u201cfertility rate\u201d (now dangerously low, inviting dangerous levels of non-assimilating immigration), while as a bonus having a hugely stabilizing influence on our young men, who would thus find themselves with a responsible role in the adult community, with families to support -\u2013 as was normal for tens of thousands of years, up until the past century?<\/p>\n

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Part of the problem, clearly, is the personal wage tax (still called the \u201cincome tax,\u201d though in legal terms \u201cincome\u201d used to mean something other than wages, or profits made on the investment of AFTER-TAX wages), which since the Second World War has turned us from a nation where a family could be supported in a free-standing home by a SINGLE breadwinner, into a land where most wives must now work outside the home just to add enough to the family income to pay the wage (\u201cincome\u201d) tax.<\/p>\n

The best solution would be to repeal entirely the unnecessary \u201cincome tax\u201d (a tax which is barred by the 13th amendment, as well as by the specific limitation to two specific types of federal taxes in the Constitution as written), paring down the size and cost of the central government as necessary. A second-best solution would be to exempt from the income tax all those under the age of 25, giving them a chance (and in fact encouraging them) to start a home and family at a more biologically sensible age. (They don\u2019t currently pay a lot, anyway, since so few of them earn a decent living.) Huge “income tax” deductions could also be offered to older parents who offer to help their newly married 16-to-21-year-old children buy or build homes or enter into trade apprenticeships.<\/p>\n

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“Children do not learn in school; they are babysat. It takes maybe 50 hours to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. After that, students can teach themselves. Mainly what school does is to keep the children off the streets and out of the job market.” — John Taylor Gatto, New York City (and state) Teacher of the Year 1989, 1990, and 1991.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019re not very creative in analyzing these problems, or envisioning solutions. We tend to be very blindered, assuming that “we couldn’t possibly SURVIVE” without an “income tax” that our great-grandparents were assured would “only affect millionaires” and that was unknown from 1607 to 1912 . . . and that OF COURSE no institution as large and well-established as \u201cthe public schools\u201d could be inherently evil, or subject to massive deconstruction or even total elimination. (Read or watch some John Taylor Gatto . . . please:<\/p>\n

(Take a look at https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Underground-History-American-Education\/dp\/B000KF42JK<\/a> . . . . . or . . . . . http:\/\/projectavalon.net\/forum4\/showthread.php?43292-John-Taylor-Gatto-book-free-online<\/a> .)<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t help, of course, that the loud minority who favor totalitarian collectivism (and their Useful Idiot followers, including non-English-speaking Mexican hotel maids bused to early voting stations by the Culinary Union \u2013 ( https:\/\/lasvegassun.com\/news\/2016\/oct\/29\/unions-flex-muscle-in-nevadas-high-stakes-senate-r\/<\/a> ) use every opportunity to shriek that we must disarm the peasant class -\u2013 the way Hitler and Stalin did, and for the same terminal purpose -\u2013 thus drawing us ever back into defending the keystone of our liberties in a pointless debate over a \u201cgun-control solution\u201d which wouldn\u2019t work, and can never be allowed to happen in a free land.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One \u201cEtaoin Shrdlu\u201d has posted a comment below my post \u201cToo busy wiretapping candidates, rigging elections, covering their asses,\u201d (immediately below) as follows: \u201cHey Vin, I just read another of your articles elsewhere. Lay off the \u2018SSRIs cause shootings\u2019 bullshit, huh? I know it\u2019s popular among the Limbaugh crowd to try to lay blame on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[89,8,17,14,26,50,51,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-election","category-2nd-amendment","category-big-brother","category-education","category-literacy","category-psychiatry","category-self-defense","category-taxation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-1Cg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6216"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6265,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6216\/revisions\/6265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}