The amoral reaction to the massacre of innocent Americans is now routine to the point of banality on Fox News, in the Trump administration or any other familiar quarter of right wing opinion: Offer a platitude of condolence, warn about the dangers of punishing law abiding gun owners and mumble something incoherent about mental illness. It is the last element that is indicative of the extent to which most elected Republican politicians and pundits have become hypocritical, abusive to the welfare of the American people and indifferent to mass scale misery.
Paul Ryan identified mental illness as a “critical ingredient” in school shootings, while Donald Trump has vaguely declared that America must “do more” to address mental health. If only the president of the United States and the speaker of the house were in the position to have any influence.
Republicans are correct that there is a mental health care crisis in America, but it is one that they helped to create, continue to aggravate and insist, through their actual policies — not their rhetoric — on doing absolutely nothing to address.
Ron Powers, a journalist and cultural critic whose son died by suicide after suffering from schizophrenia for several years, wrote an essential and unforgettable book documenting and describing what he calls “the chaos and heartbreak of mental illness in America.” His title derives from an anecdote involving current governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. When Walker was beginning his gubernatorial campaign, a scandal broke involving the vicious mistreatment of the mentally ill in Milwaukee County hospitals while Walker was Milwaukee County Executive. A leaked email revealed that his campaign manager eased his worries with words that now serve as the title of Powers’ book: “No one cares about crazy people.”
America suffers for its indifference. The story of how the situation has gotten worse, rather than better, over the past 60 years causes a question mark to shadow all of our notions of progress.
Conservative folk hero Ronald Reagan completed the deinstitutionalization of California's state mental health residents in 1967, causing an explosion of homelessness in his state and opening a fatal gap in mental health services for those too poor or isolated to obtain treatment, medicine, therapy and supervision through private means. Because of California’s size and Reagan’s popularity, the destructive move exerted an influence on many smaller states. It was not too long until the catastrophe of untreated mental illness spread around the country.
Nothing if not consistent in his cruelty, once elected President, Reagan quickly repealed President Jimmy Carter’s Mental Health Systems Act. In one of his last decisions as President, Carter increased funding for federal mental health facilities and authorized the creation of a grant system to offer opportunities for additional subsidy. Reagan, in one of his first moves, revealing a set of dangerous priorities, revoked funding. Many federal mental health hospitals, as a result, shut their doors.
President Clinton, in 1996, signed into law the Mental Health Parity Act, prohibiting insurers from enforcing a lower limit on mental health coverage than physical, but most of the people who were in federal or state hospitals were too poor to have insurance, and by then, the “Reagan revolution” had already destroyed the lives of many, with damage visible at what are now three populous institutions for the mentally ill: streets, prisons and cemeteries.
With the Affordable Care Act, President Obama improved access to mental health services, and in separate measures, he provided larger funding for research into the causes of mental illness than any of his predecessors, but it is inarguable that the Democratic approach is inadequate. Even so, the Republicans committed themselves with maniacal gusto to the repeal of Obamacare, and in both state capitals and the federal government, continually argue for the reduction, if not outright elimination, of social services for the mentally ill and disabled.
One in six American adults have a mental health condition, suicide is on the rise, teen depression has steadily increased over the past five years, one in nine Americans regularly take an anti-depressant, and according to every study, demand for mental health services vastly outweighs the supply. Two politically divergent approaches exist to daily disaster prevention and management in the United States: The Democrats soften the edges of an incompetent, cruel and negligent system, periodically making marginal improvements. Republicans fight to obliterate the last remaining vestiges of civilization, preventing people whose minds are waging a war against them from becoming more ill, more isolated, suicidal, even homicidal — or some or all of the above.
Then, in the equivalent of honking their horns as they drive by a moment of silence at a funeral service, Republicans use mental illness to deflect attention away from America’s gun problem.
If officials and spokespeople for the Republican Party actually made a sweeping proposal to fully fund, strengthen and broaden the country’s mental health services, one could believe they were wrong to adopt the mindless NRA position on firearm regulation but that they were, at least, attempting to serve the public interest by providing desperately necessary assistance for millions of sick people.
Far from altruistic and responsible, Republicans are dousing the forest with gasoline while giving a lecture on fire safety. Their budget reduces funding for Medicaid, which will make mental health services even harder to acquire for countless people, and Trump’s latest health care proposals allows for insurance companies to offer plans that do not cover mental health.
After a handful of school shootings in Europe, countries within the EU dramatically increased their funding for in-school psychologists. Many American schools do not even have a psychologist or social worker on campus, and those that do, often beleaguer their solitary mental health worker with an overwhelming case load. Has one Republican suggested greater funds for school psychologists and social workers? How long before they fall back into their familiar and boring script of thrashing public schools and offering dubious charter schools as a model for the future?
The best that Republicans are seemingly capable of is to propose arming a handful of teachers in every school. This is a perfectly stupid plan in a nation with a mental crisis. So, why stop at the teachers? Maybe American schools are not truly safe until all of the students are armed, even those at the elementary level.
Republicans are in the best position, and possess the necessary power, to achieve the alignment of their words with their actions. If they continue to display nothing more than cold blooded cynicism, then the next time bullets fly down school hallways, by the indictment of their own analysis, they should find the nearest mirror when seeking someone besides the actual shooter to blame.
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