Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
I’m skeptical of the present suicide media craze.
There were a couple of high-profile celebrity suicides. Nobody knows why. But the CDC used the occasion to rush out a study showing a massive rise in suicide rates, then used that study to justify demands for restrictions on “lethal means.” Since both celebrities hanged themselves in hotels, about which nobody proposes to do anything, the CDC is engaging in politicized research again. Its demand is just code for “gun control” based on a supposed crisis of suicide.
And is there actually a crisis? I question the data set. Notice that it ran from just before the real estate crash until the end of the Obama administration. Everybody bought real estate to hop on the escalator of wealth – we were all going to get rich. Then it crashed and millions of families lost their life savings.
Who commits suicide? People who have lost hope. People engulfed in despair. And during those years, who were those people? Middle-class, middle-aged White men in flyover states. The people society insisted didn’t build anything, hadn’t earned any respect. The people mocked in every commercial and television show as bumblers when they weren’t portrayed as evil. The people society couldn’t wait to die so the world would be a better place.
Lost your home. Lost your job. Wife was unfulfilled in the marriage so she took the kids and family court stripped you of access to your own kids. The President scorns you as a bitter clinger. The queen-apparent thinks you’re deplorable. Immigrants are swarming into the country having more rights and benefits than you, who spent your entire life working to better this nation. What’s to live for?
But then, Trump.
The economy has flipped. The nation has jobs. People are daring to have hope. People are glimpsing a better world, one worth living in.
Do we still have a suicide crisis? Or was that a temporary problem caused by Obama and his Liberal allies? Maybe we’ve not only started to make America great again, maybe we’re making ourselves proud again, making life worth living again? Now THAT would be an astonishing Presidential legacy.
Joe Doakes
The timing is awfully convenient…
Despite these successes, people as so alienated against President Trump, that Democrats, merely touting that they are against him and will continue the obstructing him, reverse the tax cuts, increase dependency on the government, continue to win special elections in GOP districts. GOP supporters are just not turning out. In Wisconsin yesterday, another hard left candidate flipped another seat held by a Republican. Of course, Wisconsin has been more purple outside of the liberal bastions of Madison and Milwaukee, but I can’t believe that they want to go backward.
Mitch, Thank you so much for providing a forum where we can learn and read the wisdom of the person known as Joe Doakes. The world should benefit from this.
Obviously we need to ban hotels if it saves just one life.
While suicide is tragic the number of deaths in the US over the last 40 years pales in comparison with the number innocent by abortions. Seems to me that sadly the loss (by their own hand) of those that were already born brings more grief and concern than that of the defenseless unborn.
“I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.” ……Ronald Reagan
“But then, Trump.
The economy has flipped. The nation has jobs. People are daring to have hope. People are glimpsing a better world, one worth living in.”
NO NO NO, Joe, No.
The economy was on a continued line of improvement from 2010 on. Go look at the trend lines. Nothing Trump has done has materially improved that (and unlike you Cons, I will also say, nothing he did harmed it either, at least in the short term, well, until now, until his trade war idiocy).
What made the world of Obama not one worth living in to you, Joe, I mean economically? Was it that Obama didn’t bankrupt the country quite like Trump, he avoided giving away hand-outs to corporations, refrained from supply-side, easy money policies at a time when they were not needed and so looked to avoid a long-term debt crisis? Real wages climbed under Obama, they are climbing no appreciable amount faster under Trump.
The crisis you Cons created when Obama was President about debt seems to have fallen by the wayside, hasn’t it?
Physiker, heal thyself.
Well, well, well, a visit from the Pen-ster. Long time, no drool.
So my theory is all wet, huh? Everything was brilliant during the Obama years? Nobody had reason to despair, least of all those of us with White Privilege? Interesting.
And yet, 2/3 of the suicides in that data set were older White Men. Why’d they do it, if everything in their lives was rosy? Oh, wait, I know this one. The GUN did it. They had a GUN in the house and it leapt out of the drawer and shot them, all by itself. Sounds like some of Bill and Hillary’s friends.
I suppose Pen’s explanation is technically possible, just as it’s technically possible that Elvis is alive and living in Michigan under an assumed name. I don’t think it’s very likely. And I suspect that when we get the data set for suicides committed from 2015 to 2025, there will be a sharp reversal of the trend, for exactly the reasons I’ve mentioned. Wait and see.
Pen, I’d suggest that the despair we see today (and the suicides) are not a product of the last 18 months of Trumps tenure but a long slide downward from the previous 8yrs. of Barry’s term. Go ahead and blame Trump for that despair but I doubt that those who have made the most recent news in taking their own lives were thinking about current economics policies, more likely deeper more personal issues were at play.
Now Pen, go lay by your dish!
Hawaii,California, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, Washington state, and DC
“Hawaii, California, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, Washington state, and DC”
Oops, didn’t mean to add that. Those are the states that want to allow assisted suicide. The intention for that policy I believe is for those suffering from terminal diseases. Should overwhelming despair be considered a terminal disease?