Public Comment

War equals senseless violence, murder, destruction, and idiocy, falsely construed to be in the name of country. War is atrocity with no reason behind it. When a country initiates war, it puts life and death decisions in the hands of bullshitters and con artists. War cannot find justification.

When countries have initiated war on the U.S., in our past, we've had to collectively defend ourselves; the other choice was to cease to exist. This is not to imply that the U.S. is immune to initiating war for no good reason. And it is not to imply that the U.S. always has a moral "high ground." When the U.S. has initiated war, and when we didn't have a good reason for it, this is the same stupidity as many other countries. The wars in which I would consider U.S. involvement justifiable include the American Civil War, WWI, WWII, and the Cold War. Other countries won't disappear, and neither would the threat of them if the U.S. decided to become pacifistic.

Some pacifists would argue that no war involvement whatsoever is better, that declining to "defend ourselves" is a better option, because it is a nonviolent choice. And this is despite the threat or even the certainty that we would be killed. In that vein, a person keeps one's soul alive but loses his or her body. Many people have a different take on war than that of conventional thought. I, personally, would never have made it as a soldier, and if drafted, would likely have drawn a "Bad Conduct Discharge," before even putting on a pair of Army boots. Such a discharge from the military could block future opportunities.

The Cold War of the nineteen fifties, sixties, seventies, and nineteen eighties, and the second Cold War of today, seem as though they are a competition of which country can most efficiently wipe out all life on Earth. 

I have a close friend who was hospitalized during "Operation Desert Storm." That person had the psychotic illusion that they were in the midst of that war. 

People with mental illness may be more deeply affected by war because we generally have fewer psychological defenses. While many in the public believe that mentally ill people are violent and unaware, in fact we are aware of things, and we are often sensitive to external events. We are more affected by things that take place in our environment, including international events. Insofar as "violent"--most mentally ill aren't, and there are plenty of people with uncompromised minds who are violent. Many mentally ill people became ill in the first place due to mainstream violence in all its forms. 

War using nuclear weapons, which is an ever-present threat to life, is highly disturbing, to me and probably to many others with psychiatric conditions. How do psych consumers deal with war? Maybe a lot of us can't. And I fear that in the not-so-distant future, the U.S. could become increasingly involved in the expanding war of Russia versus Ukraine. Such involvement could spell the beginning of the end. And other than that, it will disturb many American people to the point of losing our minds. 

President Putin is not mentally ill. He understands fully what he is trying to do, and I am not aware of him having any symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. In other words, Putin is competent. And because of this, he is fully culpable. The very same holds true for Donald Trump, who has shown in the past that he likes Putin and is aligned with Putin in many ways. Many members of government seem oblivious to this on a moral level and are only concerned with their own political prospects. 

When the Nazis came to power, it wasn't just the Jews they came for--it was Lesbian, and Gay people. (Transgender people didn't yet exist.) And it was also mentally ill people. As a writer with controversial views who expresses myself freely in print and on the internet, I feel particularly threatened by Trump's vie for power, since he resembles another Adolf Hitler, is aligned with Putin--and if he got into office and got his way on things, I'd most likely be among those imprisoned or killed. That's reality, that's not psychosis speaking. Any good journalist, also, has a lot to fear. And that's why we must speak up. We must not be silenced; we must defeat the enemy. In this case, the enemy we face is human ignorance.