After Vietnam, the “physically healthy but psychologically ravaged veteran became part of the American storybook.
Eventually, it turned a spotlight – or at least a flashlight – on the damage veterans of all wars had, but had never really talked about.
I bring that up to set the stage for what may become a far greater psychic plague: PCSD.
Post Covic Stress Syndrome.
Like this…er, person:
Now that “Science!” has intersected with politics – specifically, pre-mid-term polling – and “blue’ governments are dropping restrictions faster than Jacob Frey dropping fashion shoots, look for these veterans of the pestilence to feel just as traumatized and abandoned as John Rambo at the end of First Blood.
Good catch. This is really, truly a thing. Canadian Liberals Deeply Worried They Might Lose COVID and Be Forced to Return to Normal. That headline writer isn’t even exaggerating – catch the image use to decorate the article.
Not only that, but we were inhaling dog-breath, cat sneezes, skunk farts, and drinking fish piss in our water.
The cruelest thought of all is inhaling all of these things sucked through a face diaper.
I say, let’s rid the world of strangers, dogs, cats, skunks and fish, then we would all feel so much safer.
Frankly, the worst part of living in the world is having to share it with other people.
Moshe Diane speaks. Maybe wearing a welding helmet would help.
Ha! I’ll bet our suddenly “Canadian living in the US” troll, will piss his pants when he reads this.
If only the US hadn’t closed so many mental institutions in the post-Cuckoo’s Nest craze. If mental health services were widely available and affordable, so many Liberals could regain control over their lives and move on to becoming useful, productive members of society again.
So sad.
^ That’s what I’ve been saying for years. Especially about that movie/novel.
This is an example of why restaurants may never get back to full strength. Think a person like that is going to be comfortable using a fork or glass that someone else used and was handled by a bus boy, dish washer, cook and server? Ewww, an sitting on the same chairs!
Just a guess but someone like that probably isn’t good with plastic/disposable utensils either. Better stay home and eat the vegetables grown in the home garden outside the high-density living complex. Uh oh, high-density living… public transportation… other people… all possible reasons for a spike in suicides in the early 20s. Life is just too dangerous. What’s a dedicated progressive to do?
These are the same people that believe climate should not change and be constant. Thank you libturds for destroying education and producing mindless, humorless drones.
So many thoughts:
1) I worked at the Faribault State Hospital during the deinstitutionalization phase. The hospital housed “mentally retarded” patients and the emptying of the place was a smashing success. Most of the mildly retarded (downs syndrome mostly) patients worked at the hospital. On the outside they got wages.
2) Emptying the crazy hospitals was an abject failure. Not necessarily because the patients needed the place, but more that they needed to take their meds. Our illustrious Supreme Court ordained that dangerously (to others or themselves) people could not be forced to take meds.
As a libertarian (small l), I embrace the idea of not forcing meds on people, but then I don’t like dodging poop and crazy people wielding sharp objects.
3) Reading the novel or seeing the film reveals that only Randle McMurphy was committed. Everyone else was there voluntarily. The realization that healthy but weak minded people submitted to the manipulation of Nurse (Karen) Ratchet – is truly revealing and analogous to today’s world.
4) Ken Kesey’s novel and life was all about freedom – but the movement he helped instigate has morphed into quite the opposite.
Somehow a person that worried about how much spit is in the air they breathe reminds me of those old stories about Howard Hughes using ten Kleenex to clean things off before he handled them. Which was especially weird when one considers the long list of women he apparently dated/bedded.
Reader15 – in High School, my brother was a bus boy and I was a dishwasher in a local restaurant. Nobody who saw video of that kitchen in operation would ever have eaten there again. Amazingly, nobody got sick from eating there either, so I conclude the level of sanitation necessary for functioning society must be far below social distance, masks and hand sanitizer.
What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall . . .
Waitress handing plate to seated eyepatch lady Chinchillazllla. “Here you go, ma’am, ribeye, medium.”
Chinchillazllla. “Waitress, your thumb is on my steak!!”
Waitress. “I didn’t want it to fall on the floor again.”
Nurse (Karen) Ratchet
Could this be where Karen moniker came from?
Emptying the crazy hospitals was an abject failure
I’m not surprised and for the very reasons you give. I accept that many crazy hospitals were ugly, badly run places that existed in large part to get unacceptable people out of society because they were too difficult for family (or sometimes no family) to deal with.
Kesey once said in conjunction with his Merry Pranksters trip that “If people could just understand it is possible to be different without being a threat.” While this is theoretically true, the flip-side of that coin is that it facilitated an acceptance, both personal and societal, of people with mental issues. And here we are, 50 years later, with tranny acceptance and soon pedos. This also heads into drug-addicted street people…
But it’s not just this. It’s also the widespread acceptance of the mild mental issues exhibited by the eyepatch lady with a mysophobia resembling that of Howard Hughes. She (apparently) feels no need to personally overcome her condition – indeed, she seems to relish it.
Whether the novel/movie is actually at fault for these changes is debatable but it does act as a marker for me.
Sorry, I threw in the name Karen to say that Nurse Ratchet is the full embodiment of a Karen, ie, “I am manipulating you to my whim [for the good of the world]”.
Her name in the novel was Mildred.
jdm,
The big difference is confusing being eccentric with being ill. It seems to me that an eccentric is one who enjoys their harmlessly offbeat views and behaviors, whereby someone who is ill is not happy at all.
Perhaps, Karenism is a disease because obviously few of them are happy.
Remember the film, The Ruling Class? The protagonist, Jack Gurney, thought he was Jesus Christ. His logic was simply, he claimed, “Every time I pray, I find that I am talking to myself, so I must be God.”
They cured his eccentricities, so Jack Gurney became another Jack…..The Ripper.
The big difference is confusing being eccentric with being ill
Well put. Thanks. Also what followed.
Speaking of the mentally ill wandering the streets, Lesko Brandon has a compassionate solution: hire them to be in charge of nuclear waste disposal. You know, the spent fuel from nuclear reactors which could perhaps be made into dirty bombs? The person in charge of that program?
https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/10/biden-taps-lgbtq-activist-drag-queen-and-pup-fetishist-for-high-level-position-at-the-office-of-nuclear-energy/
I’m not questioning the scientific credentials or management experience which might have been relevent to the position, just noting that those credentials are incidental footnotes in the news articles celebrating his extracurricular activities. Isn’t it wonderful? The first pup handler on the job. Thanks, Lesko Brandon. I feel so much safer now.
^ That made me laugh. Bitterly.
Having been interviewed by the FBI as friends of mine sought security clearances back in the 1990s, I can only imagine what the response would have been if I’d said and explained that the applicant was into “pup handling” and the like. I remember thinking when Clinton was running for President that “this guy could never pass an FBI background check”, and I dare say this guy leaves him in the dust.
Joe Doakes: “…
Chinchillazllla. “Waitress, your thumb is on my steak!!”
Waitress. “I didn’t want it to fall on the floor again.””
Thanks for the hearty laugh Joe!!