Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter: Beyond
the issue of the free
availability of guns, this latest massacre again highlights the
dire
state of
mental health care in the United States.
Newtown: A
Tragedy Foretold (El Universal, Mexico)
"Behind each of the murderers and of each of the victims of Newtown, Aurora, or many other places, were not only disturbed individuals whose inner demons led them to commit atrocities, but also, I would say above all, a long series of failed policies that have led the world's most powerful nation to live under greater threat from its own citizens than any potential external enemy. ... Since the years of Ronald Reagan, the U.S. has systematically cut funding for the care of people with mental disorders. ... incredibly, many of these people can buy, without further requirements, weapons of every description."
The most recent - certainly not the last - killing of
innocent civilians in the United States, happened in one of the most peaceful
and idyllic placed one can imagine. Newtown, Connecticut, is a small town that looks
like a combination of a New England postcard and a painting by Norman Rockwell
- the artist whose work depicted a U.S. as it always wanted to be: harmonious,
peaceful, united and family-friendly.
While Rockwell also dealt with civil rights and freedoms,
his fame and popularity came from a capacity to display faces that were always
clear, limpid, and free of anxiety and existential conflict. A long-time resident
of Massachusetts, not far from the site of this horrific crime, one almost
shudders to see one of his works today: a policeman and a boy sitting in an ice
cream shop, enjoying a good talk, entitled The
Runaway, something like, "the boy who ran away from home" ...
The picture gave me chills, because that child - or one
like him - could be the image of any of the victims, or even the perpetrator of
the slaughter in Newtown. It could have been the 20-year-old who killed his
mother in her own home, any of the kindergarten and first graders, the teachers
who tried to protect them, or any innocent infants we never considered being
affected by such a nightmare.
Posted by Worldmeets.US
Norman Rockwell's The Runaway
There are no words one can imagine or express that can adequately
describe what happened, nor what their parents, siblings, friends and family
are feeling right now. Unexpected death is a always a horror of horrors, but
even more so when it is violent and affects the innocent. Sadly, that seems to
be the constant in the United States: shootings and absurd and irrational killings
for which there appears no logical explanation.
But there is. Behind each of the murderers and of each of
the victims of Newtown, Aurora, or many other places, were not only disturbed
individuals whose inner demons led them to commit such atrocities, but also, I
would say above all, a long series of failed policies that have led the world's
most powerful nation to live under greater threat from its own citizens than
any potential external enemy.
The most obvious reason is, of course, the absolute ease
with which virtually any U.S. citizen may acquire and/or carry weapons designed
and manufactured for the express purpose of killing large numbers of people in very
little time. Rifles called semi-automatic, capable of firing bursts with such
speed that the police who investigated the Newtown crime scene didn't dare to
calculate how many bullets the murderer may have used in the few minutes it
took for him to commit his atrocity. Weapons like that, whose bullets travel at
a speed of about a thousand feet per second, with the intention that the
projectile will remain within the body of the victim and create the greatest
possible damage to organs and tissues ...
Much has been said and written of the disproportionate
influence of the National Rifle Association, the lobbying power of which is
such that no one dare cut it down to size, but that this time, the scale of
what happened may, hopefully, make a difference in Washington, at least as far
as concerns assault weapons.
But there is another issue that cannot be ignored: the
constant reductions to mental health budgets in the United States.
Since the years of Ronald Reagan, the U.S. has
systematically cut funding for the care of people with mental disorders, which
has resulted in a growing number of individuals who fail to receive the
necessary diagnosis or treatment, or who can't receive care or be hospitalized
for lack of space or personnel. Just one figure is sufficient to convey the
magnitude of the problem: between 2009 and 2012, state budgets for mental health
have declined by $4.3 billion. And every one of those dollars represents a
patient, a treatment, a drug, a recipe that was NOT delivered in a timely
fashion ...
And, incredibly, many of those untreated people can buy,
without further requirements, weapons of every description.
These tragedies all have their reasons and explanations.
